Soft Skin On Black Silk
Picture: C-
Sound: D Extras: C- Film: C-
After watching and reviewing several of the Radley
Metzger-released films from the early 1960s are a formula that have a lame
resistance against sex, which never explicitly happens in the films anyhow, but
oh those prudes and how they know nothing.
However, the people getting sexual are not exactly the brightest people
either, so you get cheesecake (and cheesy) women and their none-too-bright
guys. Other men are just jerks in these
films, and Soft Skin on Black Silk (1961) is no exception.
Agnes Laurent is here again, this time in a flashback
about love, which inevitably turns into a diatribe about stupidity. In between the bad storytelling is sex
hi-jinks that are campy as campy can get.
Unlike previous films from the series, this one was not as daring,
relatively speaking. As I looked at the
credits, I was astounded about the screenplay.
It took three people to write this?
The picture, which has a lack-of-quality disclaimer before
it begins, is full screen black and white.
Much of the footage is off of awful analog videotape turning it
green. The better footage has grain and
artifacts. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
is only here as an English dub, which shows its age and has some major twiddle
and distortion troubles in the beginning.
Notice no new English dub track was cut, since the performers would
likely be laughing too much to finish one.
The extras include the English theatrical trailer, the far more
interesting French trailer (even better than watching the film itself), a
22-still picture gallery, other trailers in the series, and The Twilight
Girls shower scenes; edited and unedited.
This is just a curio at best, perhaps for completists or
those studying censorship and morality of the times. I laughed more at other titles in the series reviewed elsewhere
on the site, like Twilight Girls, Daniella at Night, and The
Nude Set. At 83-minutes, Soft
Skin on Black Silk comes close to being nails on a chalkboard, but this
critic will still want to see the rest of the films in the series for more
laughs just the same.
- Nicholas Sheffo
