1969: barbara lance, betty whitman, jean muniz, rene howard and suzan thomas in “the layout”
title: the layout, scene 5
performers: barbara lance, betty whitman, jean muniz, rene howard, suzan thomasproduction credits: joe sarno (dir.)
studio: deluxe | running time: 24:20
release date: 1969 | purchase
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| jean muniz, barbara lance, rene howard |
it's significant that despite my mini-treatise in the previous entry on what the omnipresence of lesbianism in pulp signified to the late-1960s pop-culture imagination, i can't really find a way to fit joe sarno's work into that matrix even though girl/girl action is one of the abiding themes of his work, from the early sexploitation films through the last-gasp vhs porno hack jobs. any filmography as vast as his will, of course, approach a topic from a variety of angles (not all of which would necessarily be intentional), but his scripts strike me as (at least in general) remarkably free from anxiety, abjectness, or sensationalism on the subject; or at least, from any more sensationalism than is necessary to sell tickets. girl/girl in a sarno film is generally presented as a whole lot of fun, and part of the sexual landscape that any well-rounded, sexually mature woman can expect to traverse. so far, so porn, of course; girl/girl is one of the fetishes that reliably sells, so it's included whether there's any psychological credibility to it or not. but sarno at his best always provides some psychological credibility.
and the layout might be among his best, at least as regards my particular focus on girl/girl. not that the psychological credibility goes very deep: in 1969 the habitual cinematographic language could still cast a woman orchestrating a surprise five-woman orgy as a rapacious villainess rather than the spirit of sexual liberation she would be a few short years later. the soap-opera plot is summed up as: ice queen designer suzan thomas and business partner betty whitman get into a tangle when betty takes up with their hunky contractor (the only man in the picture, with a few early scenes of perfunctory softcore tumbling). in revenge, his wife (barbara lance) seduces a reluctant suzan, using a personal massager that is more or less the seventh lead of the film. things get even more tangled when suzan's sinister cousin rene howard and her latina sidekick jean muniz plot to seduce every woman in the place, and do so in order. the culminating five-woman orgy is by way of disentangling everything: suzan, either a) her passions finally awakened or b) horrified by the rampant lesbian sex mania, runs off with the contractor, leaving the rest still deep in the throes of vibrating orgasms.
it's a softcore picture, but it's a straight-up porn plot, and not a bad one as they go. (eight years ago someone like jacky st. james could have stolen it wholesale and made quite a fun little movie.) genitals remain firmly obscured, but the writhing beneath the ministrations of the personal massager is as authentic-seeming as any porn response i've seen, and rene and betty even occasionally appear to know how to kiss each other. suzan is the weak link, but it's hard to say that's not by design: the part of the plot that would be an absolute no-go today is that the orgy begins by stripping her while she's asleep, and she never, in fact, consents to any of the goings-on. the a) or b) choice i gave above is false: the script explicitly identifies it as b) — "you're all mad, you're mad" she mutters as she flees — and it's only a generous reading informed by later sarno work that would want it to be a).
the luscious cinematography drenched in noir shadows, the hair and makeup giving each woman a distinctive look (the two juvenile predators in bangs, the ice queen in a bouffant, and the two pale brunettes in long hair and a sensible bob) for ease of tracking during the long sex sequences where bodies all look pretty similar in chiaroscuro, and sarno's characteristic sharp shot compositions keep the whole thing visually satsifying even as the horniness escalates to absurd levels.
nearly all the same actors had been in sarno's odd triangle and desire under the palms the year before (apparently they were all batch-shot in florida rather than sarno's usual new york stomping grounds), both of which had more men in them but still focused heavily on massager-oriented girl/girl. i think they both strained harder to lesser effect; the layout teeters just on the delicious precipice of being camp,
the findlays return with perhaps their most pretentious and lush picture on the heels of the spare, squalid nastiness of the flesh trilogy. mnasidika is a feminine greek name best known from the fragments of sappho's poetry (it was also, famously, a lesbian bookstore in haight-ashbury), and the story here, such as it is, is suitably mythopoeic, as a modern man (findlay himself, natch) finds himself in ancient lesbos and (equally natch) murders a woman (sarno regular maria lease) for rebuffing him. cue a solid forty-five minutes of rhapsodically meandering filmmaking set to an intermittent recitation of pierre louÿs' songs of bilitis, as we meet the cult of lesbians on the island: buxom softcore queens linda boyce and uta erickson, among the others named, classily strip off mock-classical robes, frolic, pose, and stroke each other gingerly; this decorousness is interrupted by twenty minutes of three skinny uncredited girls romping about in the altogether, spreading their legs explicitly for the camera, hovering over each other's mouths and fingers, and coming as close to hardcore action as possible without tipping over the line as the poetry heats up. the supreme court's april 1969 decision in stanley v. georgia made it impossible to criminalize the possession of obscene materials, and i've seen speculation that the three nameless women were spliced into the film to take advantage of the nation's newly permissive atmosphere. andy warhol's july 1969 blue movie was the first theatrically released motion picture to feature penetrative sex, and the roof was blown off the sucker.
the third major girl/girl softcore auteur of the late 1960s and early 70s, after the solidly unpretentious sarno and the mercurial gonzo of the findlays, was nick millard, who was neither unpretentious nor mercurial. if anything he was too consistent: a numbing repetitiveness could be considered one hallmark of his filmography, especially if you don't share his leather fetish or obsession with performers who look unnervingly young. l'amour de femme was his first all-girl softcore opus, initially focusing on a couple of san francisco roommates who host wild girl/girl sex parties bankrolled by sugar daddies who are more interested in each other than them. another girl coming between them is intercut with the story of kiki (there are no credits, but she appeared in other work as cathy stewart) who is so obsessed with lesbian sex that she hires a streetwalker, played by a similarly uncredited woman who looks a lot like a younger edition of sarah lorhman (who shot one hardcore film in 1979) in a platinum wig. once past the encounter iteself and back to the roommate soap opera, millard continues to splice in their "sex" (some of which is fairly well choreographed) with bewildered street scenes as the narrator waxes about kiki's downward spiral — the sex worker kicks her out when she can't keep paying, and she ends the film by overdosing, either as a cautionary tale about lesbianism (though other girls romp on) or because there needed to be some kind of ending. but it's the urgency of cathy's performance, something millard is not known for encouraging, that makes this last third of the movie more compellng than the previous two.
1969 runners up:
denise lemain, linda boyce, maria lorello, maria lease, rosine marinque, uta erickson et al. in mnasidika, scenes 2-4
afdc (dir. michael & roberta findlay), 43:24
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| two women |
the findlays return with perhaps their most pretentious and lush picture on the heels of the spare, squalid nastiness of the flesh trilogy. mnasidika is a feminine greek name best known from the fragments of sappho's poetry (it was also, famously, a lesbian bookstore in haight-ashbury), and the story here, such as it is, is suitably mythopoeic, as a modern man (findlay himself, natch) finds himself in ancient lesbos and (equally natch) murders a woman (sarno regular maria lease) for rebuffing him. cue a solid forty-five minutes of rhapsodically meandering filmmaking set to an intermittent recitation of pierre louÿs' songs of bilitis, as we meet the cult of lesbians on the island: buxom softcore queens linda boyce and uta erickson, among the others named, classily strip off mock-classical robes, frolic, pose, and stroke each other gingerly; this decorousness is interrupted by twenty minutes of three skinny uncredited girls romping about in the altogether, spreading their legs explicitly for the camera, hovering over each other's mouths and fingers, and coming as close to hardcore action as possible without tipping over the line as the poetry heats up. the supreme court's april 1969 decision in stanley v. georgia made it impossible to criminalize the possession of obscene materials, and i've seen speculation that the three nameless women were spliced into the film to take advantage of the nation's newly permissive atmosphere. andy warhol's july 1969 blue movie was the first theatrically released motion picture to feature penetrative sex, and the roof was blown off the sucker.
cathy stewart and sarah lorhman in l'amour de femme, scene 3
alternative cinema (dir. nick millard), 20:11
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| susan, cathy |
the third major girl/girl softcore auteur of the late 1960s and early 70s, after the solidly unpretentious sarno and the mercurial gonzo of the findlays, was nick millard, who was neither unpretentious nor mercurial. if anything he was too consistent: a numbing repetitiveness could be considered one hallmark of his filmography, especially if you don't share his leather fetish or obsession with performers who look unnervingly young. l'amour de femme was his first all-girl softcore opus, initially focusing on a couple of san francisco roommates who host wild girl/girl sex parties bankrolled by sugar daddies who are more interested in each other than them. another girl coming between them is intercut with the story of kiki (there are no credits, but she appeared in other work as cathy stewart) who is so obsessed with lesbian sex that she hires a streetwalker, played by a similarly uncredited woman who looks a lot like a younger edition of sarah lorhman (who shot one hardcore film in 1979) in a platinum wig. once past the encounter iteself and back to the roommate soap opera, millard continues to splice in their "sex" (some of which is fairly well choreographed) with bewildered street scenes as the narrator waxes about kiki's downward spiral — the sex worker kicks her out when she can't keep paying, and she ends the film by overdosing, either as a cautionary tale about lesbianism (though other girls romp on) or because there needed to be some kind of ending. but it's the urgency of cathy's performance, something millard is not known for encouraging, that makes this last third of the movie more compellng than the previous two.
also noteworthy:
scenes
- marsha jordan and sandra wing in her odd tastes, scene 5 | hollywood cinema assoc. (don davis)
- bambi allen and sharon matt in linda and abilene, scene 6 | united pictures org. (herschell lewis)
- linda boyce, sheila britt and uta erickson in marcy, scene 4 | deluxe (joe sarno)
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