Far Out Films from the Seventies: Jack + Jill (1979)

An extremely sexy and witty take on Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) from auteur Chuck Vincent, Jack + Jill (1979) is one of the savviest adult films of the seventies. Featuring an extraordinary cast including the awesome Samantha Fox (who won a Best Actress award for her fetching and funny portrayal of Jill), handsome Jack Wrangler, Eric Edwards, Merle Michaels, Vanessa Del Rio and Annie Sprinkle, Jack + Jill is a steamy satirical joyride that is as entertaining as it is smart.





Jack and Jill are a happily married couple who enjoy role-playing and who are always open to new experiences to spice up their already enjoyable sex-lives. The deeply in love pair find that ‘swinging’ is the next logical next and they begin to hook up with a variety of partners without ever losing focus on each other.







Guided by Vincent’s sure-handed direction, Billy Schaeffer’s amusing script and Larry Revene’s vivid color photography, Jack + Jill is a wonderful mixture of snappy dialogue, funny situations and hot sex. Breezy at just over seventy minutes, Vincent’s film manages to be both a satirical look at the swinging scene of the late seventies as well as a tribute to a couple very much in love with each other. Jack + Jill is also a wonderful tribute to New York with one particularly stunning extended shot of a sunrise being a particularly sweet valentine to the city.









Michigan native Vincent had already been working steadily through the better part of the seventies and by 1979 had well established himself as one of adult cinema’s great directors. He had hit a major winning streak in 1978 with the releases of the great Misbehavin, Bad Penny and That Lucky Stiff. Working sometimes under the pseudonym of Mark Ubell, Vincent was an extremely intelligent filmmaker who managed to make what could have been run of the mill sex films compelling and engaging. Jack + Jill is one of his greatest works and it would help mark his cinematic partnership with smokin' Samantha Fox as one of the most important of the period.





Born Stasia Therese Angela Micula in New York City in 1951, petite Samantha Fox came of age as a classical trained dancer and theater-based actress in her teenage years before she ended up hosting a popular local television show in the early seventies. Fox began appearing in adult features by the mid seventies but she didn’t really hit gold until Chuck Vincent cast her Bad Penny (1978). A charming and lovely woman who had serious acting chops, Fox was a perfect Lombard to Vincent’s Lubitsch and their work together is quite remarkable and would continue well into the eighties.




While Jack + Jill is ultimately a celebration of the Fox-Vincent team, Jack Wrangler makes a perfect Jack in the film and is both charismatic and funny. Edwards is of course always strong and Del Rio makes the most of her one (Shakespeare inspired) sequence. The best supporting players though are the delightful Annie Sprinkle and Rikki O’Neal (an often underused stunner who would only appear in a handful of films after Jack + Jill) who play a pair of beautiful prank callers whose place in the film doesn’t become apparent until a delightful twist at the end.




Jack + Jill was a big hit on the adult circuit when it hit theaters in 1979 and got a lot of justified acclaim. It is since become known as one of the great adult films of the era and it is available uncut through Distribpix’s great Video X Pix’s DVD label. While the disc doesn’t have any film specific extras, it is uncut and contains a fairly nice looking print of the film and is highly recommended.

Far Out Films from the Seventies: Midnight Desires (1976)

Released a year after his ambitious and fascinating feature The Passions of Carol (1975), Shaun Costello’s Midnight Desires (1976) helped continue to solidify him as one of the most original voices in all of adult cinema. Featuring a superb cast of some of the era’s best actors and adult-icons, including Jamie Gillis, C.J. Laing, Eric Edwards, Jenny Baxter and Vanessa del Rio, Midnight Desires is an erotic and witty film that is as entertaining as it is sizzling.









Essentially a series of four vignettes tied together by a humorous storyline, Midnight Desires focuses on a wealthy bored couple (Gillis and Laing) who entertain themselves each weekend by inviting another couple over to tell their fantasies to each other. The script, from Costello’s own pen, is given a nice twist with a funny plot device that has a butler bringing Gillis updates on Hitler’s invasion of Poland, and the outcome of World War Two, even though the film is set in the late seventies. This bizarre behavior of Gillis and Laing adds to Costello’s ingenious look at just how docile and humdrum the lives of the rich can be, and Midnight Desires finally plays out as an erotic satire, and a comedy of manners, elevated at every tun by Costello’s solid direction and the great performances from his talented cast.





Indeed it is the cast that makes Midnight Desires so compulsively watchable and downright fun. Gillis is at his most debonair and charming here and his vignette with del Rio, in which he plays a boxer who refuses to be bought out, shows how ferociously physical he could be. Simply put, there has never been anyone quite like Jamie Gillis and he shines here. Equally compelling is Laing, as his bored but loving wife, who stands as one of the most underrated great stars of the era. Like her work in Waterpower (1977) a year later for Costello, Laing shows herself as absolutely fearless, with go-for-broke anddevil-may-care attitude that few adult performers can match. She’s also absolutely gorgeous and cinematographer Bill Markle photographs her obsessively well here.






As the unsuspecting couple who visit Gillis and Laing, Edwards and Baxter are both quite charming in Midnight Desires. Edwards is of course, along with Gillis, one of the great male performers in adult film history and he’s very funny here and plays both shock and surprise at Gillis and Laing’s antics quite well. Baxter, who would prove so memorable in a couple of key Radley Metzger productions in the years following Midnight Desires, is also a delight and her period-based vignette that ends the film is quite unforgettable.







Even though it was shot very quickly, Midnight Desires is an exceptionally good-looking film, thanks to Craig Esposito’s production design and art-direction. As he did for Costello in The Passions of Carol, Esposito helps Costello make what is in reality a very low-budget work into something that looks both elegant and plush. The DVD from Video-X-Pix serves the film well and the rumored possible special edition of the film would be cause for celebration. More information on Midnight Desires can be found at Distribpix’s website and blog.







Midnight Desires is a terrific film from adult’s golden age, as well as being one of the best works from Shaun Costello, one of the great auteur’s of porn. Fans shouldn’t miss it.

Far Out Films from the Seventies: A Sharon Mitchell Double-Feature

When listing the greatest performers in adult cinema history, one would have to include Sharon Mitchell. The New Jersey born beauty always proved a great addition to any film she graced and she would turn out to be one of the most admirable people in the adult world, thanks to her tireless work in providing AIDS information and testing for other performers. Mitchell, now a PHD and the founder of the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation, is a survivor, who made it through everything from hard drug addiction to a terrible attack and rape from a sick stalker, and she is deserving of a whole lot of respect. She’s also one of my favorite actors from Adult Films' Golden era. Let’s take a look at two of her films from the swinging seventies.



First up we have one of Sharon’s greatest films, the extremely well done Joy (1976), in which Mitchell plays the title character. Shot on location in New York City in 1976 by director first-time director Harley Mansfield, Joy is one of the most entertaining adult-films of the seventies and one of the funniest.











Joy is quite a wicked politically incorrect black comedy, as well as a startling revenge thriller that tells the tale of a teenage girl who begins ‘raping’ the men of NYC after she is attacked in her home at the beginning of the film. Joy’s sexual exploits starts a wave of copycats all over town that leaves the cops baffled and puts an end to all other crime in the city.




If the plot for Joy sounds somewhat ugly, Harwell’s successfully satirical slant takes much of the sting away. Joy is, at heart, a vigilante film about female-empowerment being told in a period where society was still mostly male-dominated. As the title character, Sharon Mitchell is an absolute delight and she gives one of the best performances in all of seventies adult cinema. Mitchell manages to be laugh out loud funny, as well as extremely sexy, and Harwell films her wonderfully. Everything from a back-alley hook-up with the great Robert Kerman (R. Bolla) to an audacious subway sequence with Frank Kewood is handled expertly and it is impossible to take your eyes off the 21-year-old Mitchell, who was at her most fetching in 1976.




While Joy is basically a vehicle that highlights the charms and talent of Sharon Mitchell, some other adult icons are on hand for Mansfield as well including Melinda Marlowe, who appears as a Burglar in one-scene, Gloria Leonard, in a blink and miss cameo, and Herschel Savage, who gets taken advantage of by three eager ladies in an elevator. Bobby Astyr and Eric Edwards are also on hand for the festivities, as well as scene-stealing Jake Teague as the hapless Lt. Handcock.
















Harley Mansfield’s IMDB listing states that Joy was his only work as a director and that is a surprise as the film is so well done. Mitchell would become an accomplished director later on in her own career so one can imagine her taking notes on the set of Joy, as it is finally such a succesful work.







Joy is available from VideoXPix on DVD and it is a nice disc, featuring a well-preserved and clean print of the film. No film-specific extras are on the disc but it is an essential addition for adult film fans.








Up next on our Sharon Mitchell double feature is a work from one of adult films greatest auteurs, Chuck Vincent. Visions (1977) is an ambitious, if not entirely successful, work from Vincent that is more of an avant-garde piece than a typical narrative film. Focusing on a composer named Larry, played well by Wade Nichols, who enters a sexual otherworld after being hit on the head by a burglar, Visions plays out as an almost silent film and it is an admirably forward-thinking work. Ultimately though I didn’t find the film to be among Vincent’s best works like the more dialogue driven pieces he would later make with great actors like Kelly Nichols and Veronica Hart. Visions is a fascinating work though and it is always great to see a filmmaker pushing the boundaries as Vincent does here.



Sharon only has a small part in Visions and appears in just a couple of scenes. Wade Nichols is the real star of the show and he is joined by memorable figures such as Susan McBain and Victoria Corsaut, who would prove to be quite unforgettable in a couple of lesser-known Gerard Damiano films from the period.
Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about Visions is that none other than much-loved cult filmmaker Roberta Findlay handles the cinematography, operating under the pseudonym of Anna Riva. It is finally the fantastical look of Visions that separates it from most adult films of the period and Findlay does an excellent job, considering the miniscule budget and quick shooting schedule.
Visions isn’t one of VideoXPix’s sharper DVDs and a remastered version would be a very welcome addition to their catalogue. While I don’t think this is one of Chuck Vincent’s more successful films I think Visions would make a splendid title for special edition status down the line. More information on Joy and Visions can be found here at the official site and blog for Distribpix and VideoXDVD.