Video Vixens (1975/Troma)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: C Film: C+
Ronald
Sullivan aka Henri Pachard had been a producer on the wildly successful
counterculture comedy Putney Swope. Like Woody Allen’s Take The Money & Run (1969), the film has a loose narrative at
best ands is really a showcase for comic skits and vignettes. Sullivan/Pachard decided to try to pull off
such a film with the self-X-rated Video
Vixens from 1975. Featuring enough
frontal nudity from both genders, sexuality and sexual situations to get it a
hard R (no pun intended) or NC-17 (especially lately), the film has sex
producers hijacking a TV station.
Film fans
will notice Robyn Hilton from Mel Brooks’ Blazing
Saddles and Terri Jones from Flesh
Gordon (both reviewed elsewhere on this site) in some of the skits and unknowns
for the most part in others. At the time, when there was only the
occasional closed circuit TV and big three networks, this was likely
funnier. With cable TV and a much cruder
society via The Internet and literally hundreds of cable/satellite choices, the
film is a time capsule. It is at its
worse when it tries to be Kubrick’s Dr.
Strangelove, but best when it reflects the dark humor of the counterculture
when it comes to sex and commercialism.
Brian De
Palma had done some of this kind of thing early on and with the soundbyte so
common, that might give newer audiences a “big deal” shrug, but Video Vixens also is an unintended of
the XXX cycle of the 1970s (often associated with Paul W.S. Anderson’s Boogie Nights) without being a
fictional drama or actual XXX hardcore film.
Some moments are even embarrassing, but when done in a context that just
about everything is open (outside of the most personal information and right to
privacy that is suddenly at issue for no good reason) about sex and like
relations are there, some of the awkwardness makes some more sense. That is why this film is worth a look.
The 1.33
X 1 image is soft and looks like an older transfer, typical of independent and
XXX films of the time, but it will be interesting to finally see one of these
cleaned up and fixed up as HD approaches.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is also aged on the film, while loud and a
bit shrill on the extras, which include the usual Troma propaganda, like intros
and clips from other recent Troma product.
Only the original trailer and clip from The First Turn-On have subtler sound.
- Nicholas Sheffo
