Big Thumbs

I actually saw this extremely rare movie twice theatrically, albeit in a watered down soft core version, some 20 odd years ago. For trivia's sake, the first time was at the Paris cinema in the Belgian coastal town of Ostend, the second time a couple of weeks later right here in my home town of Bruges at the Ritz theater. Both dens of depravity were unfortunately closed down ages ago. Ah, memories...

For some reason I would love to learn more about, this side-splitting little gem never turned up on US video and hardly anywhere else, excluding a brief British cassette release, let alone DVD. The late porn critic slash filmmaker Jim Holliday listed it at the top of his 10 most sought after porno flicks unavailable on tape in his seminal 1986 book Only the Best, a line-up further including the Mitchell Brothers' notorious box office bomb SODOM AND GOMORRAH. If it were out there for the world to see, I'm sure it would be judged on a par with other classic adult comedies such as Chuck Vincent's JACK 'N' JILL and MISBEHAVIN'.

From Hustler magazine's review at the time, I recall that director Richard Lipton was involved in several off-Broadway shows as actor,producer and director. He certainly brought an infectious sense of silly fun to this, his only directorial effort, though he produced and starred in a little sexploitation number called THE FEMALE RESPONSE made by Tim Kincaid a/k/a gay porn "auteur" Joe Gage.

The story as I remember it - please, excuse me for being a bit hazy after two decades ! - has reserved Andrea Dove (the very pretty Jeanette Sinclair, who played nurses in both Bill Milling's BLONDE VELVET and Roberta Findlay's SWEET, SWEET FREEDOM a/k/a HOT NURSES, duh !) inadvertently bumping her head when she gets stuck in the elevator with a frisky young stud, effectively turning her into a nymphomaniac, which is kind of like the premise to Max Pécas' I AM A NYMPHOMANIAC played for laughs, well, deliberate ones anyway ! She immediately jumps the lucky guy's bones and he's not complaining. Still, this does not even begin to satisfy her suddenly unquenchable urges however, so she sets out on a quest to find the ultimate sexual satisfaction with a wealth of passing partners. The flat-out funniest bit has her wandering through the park, wearing nothing but a raincoat, flashing a flasher ! After some mutual showing off, Andrea grabs hold of the guy's goodies, only to have him disgustedly call her a pervert before scurrying off ! All these public displays of wantonness eventually land the poor girl in court where the judge orders stud extraordinaire Jamie Gillis to meet her needs in front of a packed to capacity courtroom.

This stands out in my mind as a tremendously enjoyable farce with some truly polished cinematography by Pierre Schwartz who worked wonders on the snowy scapes of Joel Scott's A COMING OF ANGELS and a bouncy title song rivaling DEEP THROAT's for inane fun. The balding rotund judge was portrayed by legit character actor David Lipman, a regular on TV's LAW & ORDER and the cast further includes such adult luminaries as Jennifer Jordan, Eric Edwards, pretty boy Ras Kean - who's pure leading man material, as evidenced by Armand Weston's excellent EXPOSE ME, LOVELY - and surly Sonny Landham, who once ran for Governor in the state of Kentucky until his porno past caught up with him ! Someone somewhere, please track down this rarity and put it out on DVD, pronto !