Secret Key Motion Pictures | Review
by Crites
Now this is quite the pile of celluloid sleaze, albeit in print & DVD format: two discs and a full-color photo-illustrated booklet loaded with cheap smut from the grimy era of the late Sixties.
‘Grindhouse Film Historian' 42nd Street Pete opens this top-heavy program with a colorful "Grindhouse History" and an introduction to our low-rent triple feature, and then the reels start rolling with UTA. This titular character casually introduces herself with the statement, "I make my living from sex," but don't go thinking she's some whore; she explains the difference while applying perfume during her bath in preparation for her big date with Carl. At a Hollywood burlesque house, no less; for a while they watch a "farm fresh" hippie chick writhe around on stage scratching at her scabies, and this lackluster strip show goes on for some time. When they're good and ready Uta and "Carl the Slob" head home and hit the sack for a failed attempt at some lackluster lovemaking.
In between tricks Uta lolls around, counting the moments until her lover gets back from a business trip. One such trick is Bradley, a ‘kink' who digs leather clothing. Lying around yet some more, Uta waxes philosophical about her lifestyle of choice: "I'd been laid, relayed and parlayed before I reached my eighteenth birthday. Uta was no small town chick virgin; she was sophisticated. A chick who dug cities. One who knew her way around…I wanted to turn on, and I had." In fact, she spends much of the rest of her day contemplating her own coolness ("Uta had what it takes," "Uta was the grooviest"; Uta talks about herself way too much in the third-person) and preparing for her darling's return.
Baby finally comes home, and what do you know; the sugar daddy we've been expecting is really a doll – Uta's flame is a butch. (Uta likes the ladies.) The welcome-home softcore sexplay is as clumsy and unappealing as it is unending, but when it's finally over the black and white film goes red, Uta's voice is heard talking backwards, and, SPOILER!: Both ladies are found dead in what we're left to believe is a car accident. The End. (What the fuck was that all about? Some kind of morality play? If you're a lesbian whore you'll never get into heaven, that kind of thing?)
Disc one wraps up with the Secret Key Trailer Vault, a collection of previews of naughty films the likes of TOPLESS TAPIOCA WRESTLING, SEX HEX, THE BREASTFORD WIVES, THE HOUSE ON HOOTER HILL, etc. Most of which appear to be softcore lesbo flicks starring Darian Caine.
Disc two jumps us right into a double feature, starting with THE PIMP PRIMER. Lovingly unrestored scratched-up filmstock missing cells takes us into the boudoir of just such a player, even now tending to one of his stable in softcore fashion as the narration provides a fitting definition: "In the dictionary of life a pimp would perhaps be described as one of the lower forms of vermin akin to the rat or snake. A person who feeds their ego, wallet and genital desires upon the bodies of emotionally weak young girls."
Pimp Carl embodies the role right away, kicking his gal Jerri out of the sack and into her next trick so he can line up some new meat. As Jerri arrives for her date with John and the two have chubby red-headed sex, Carl picks up Sherrie the waitress and plies his greasy trade. A sweaty roll in the hay and some sleazy sweet talk later and, bingo, Sherrie's a ho; she's easily convinced that "slinging her ass" is a better way to make it than "slinging hash." Even if it will involve handling a little bit of "the les action."
When Jerri comes home she comes face to face with Sherrie's muff – literally, as Carl puts on the tough guy routine and forces the gals to "practice" for their big scene at tomorrow's party. A party that boasts a half-dozen swingers, including Uschi Digart and a young John Holmes (in a nearly cock-free scene). Pretty soon a soft orgy is going down, and none too pretty it is. The narrator drags us out in that cautionary and condemnatory way (um, I think some of them died, or went to prison, or something), and that's the end.
LUSTY NEIGHBORS closes out our triple feature, and begins with a hot slutty blond inviting her demure brunette neighbor out for a swinging weekend with their husbands. To sweeten the pot Marsha strips out of her towel and begins playing with herself right there on the couch in front of Betty. When Marsha finishes a somewhat shocked Betty stumbles out the door with an, "I've got to be going…" But not before taking a last look at her lusty neighbor and promising that she'll be back for the weekend. When she gets home Betty takes a cold shower, but realizing she's still pretty hot she starts exploring her body in the mirror and is soon bringing herself off.
The weekend arrives, but as it's too rainy for the sunbathing party they'd planned Marsha's husband Bill breaks out a board game – a stripping game. And although Betty's hubby Jim won't take a drink during the day he's got no problem at all letting his wife lose her pants in front of their hosts during the very first round. Betty gets a little weirded out by this turn of events, hiding in the patio changing room and complaining that, "We came here to sunbathe, not to play a game," when Jim comes looking for her. Jim agrees to take off, but when they return to the rumpus room they find Bill and Marsha going at it right there on the floor.
As they're kind of doing it right on top of their clothing Jim and Betty just have to wait until their hosts are finished screwing, Betty looking on with the same expression of pained surprise that she had when Marsha first started diddling her beaver.
Yet the very next weekend Jim and Betty are again partying with their neighbors, this time joined by another lusty couple. And when the nekkid go-go dancing begins, Jim jumps right up and gets in on some of that action. It's all too much for Betty, who is laid thoughtfully to bed by Marsha. Just in the nick of time too, because out in the living room the strobe light comes on and the swinging kicks in – meaning that Jim's getting a piece of strange. Back in the bedroom, it's, "Why don't you take your clothes off – you'll feel better," and with Marsha only too willing to lend her young friend a hand there's soon a sighing 69 taking place.
A very relaxed Betty is carried back to the party and laid out on the pool table in the game room, to be (SPOILER) viciously raped with a pool cue; when Jim intervenes he's savagely beaten as Marsha continues to lick Betty's bloody snatch. Sirens wail, and thus endeth LUSTY NEIGHBORS.
Sleazy, yes, trashy, for sure; but aside from the all-but-lost slice of a bygone era factor there's not a whole lot of satisfaction to be found here in the Grindhouse Trash Collection. Not for lack of trying; this is an impressive package, and if Secret Key / Alternative Cinema keep it up they could develop an impressive library encompassing the golden age of trash and exploitation. (That is, if Something Weird doesn't have the distribution rights already locked up for the majority of recovered Sixties/Seventies smut.) But simply put, these films are absolutely terrible; they're cheap all right, but not nearly dirty or vile enough to satisfy a 21st Century audience who can find cheaper thrills in many, many places. It is kind of interesting to see just how lowbrow these things are, but it's an interest that quickly wanes. If you're drawn to a title with ‘grindhouse' in it, chances are you may already have better in your home collection.
