Acting Out (1978/Troma’s The Swingin’ 70s, Volume One)
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: B- Film: B-
At its height, the sex film industry had all kinds of
entries and that included the occasional magazine sponsoring a film long before
the home video market existed. One of
the racier magazines was Gallery, in the Penthouse mode that was near the top
with Playboy and Hustler for the print magazine market. Enlisting the help of filmmakers Carl
Gurevich and Ralph Rosenblum, they filmed the results of a contest the magazine
had about living out a fantasy. The ten
winners all turn up seeing if expectations can be met in Acting Out, the
debut installment of Troma’s new “Swingin’ 70s” series.
Not every fantasy is a success and they are diverse
without being pretentious like they might be today. The attitude of the film (and the magazine to some extent) is
that exploring any fantasies is a right and totally personal affair that is
above criticism. Part of the
reactionary brainwashing to this is that no one should be happy, be naked, have
any sex, think about sex or be an individual.
It was not that long ago the society was openly the opposite, before sex
was “Las Vegasized” and debased.
This cannot be called amateur XXX since there are actors
and a company involved, nor is it like a forerunner of “reality TV” because the
sex and situations are far from that controlled and contrived. Instead, it is a compilation of the ten
winners doing their own thing, though the magazine and producers sometimes pick
the wrong surrogate sex actors to join in, so the results vary from scenario to
scenario. With as explicit as the
society and more hardcore XXX titles are, it is to the credit of the film that
this holds up as well as it does.
Some moments work, like the woman who wants to have sex
with a whole football team, while the gay ones seem to backfire because the
magazine is not one that usually deals with that in the first place. There is the man who wants to get together
with a blonde and a can of baking grease that is the most hardcore of the ten,
but the results are not what anyone expected.
Best of all is that it captures an attitude and serves as a valuable
time capsule of the era, even when the film odes not always work. Acting Out is far from childish, trite
or another tired Freudian know-it-all trip, but a truly mature work that still
seems a bit ahead of its time.
The letterboxed 1.66 X 1 image shows its age with some
flatness in depth and color, but the flesh tones and activities of the people
they belong to are more than enough to understand why the film was initially
rated X for erotic content. The Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono is average, but the real problem here is that the sound seems
to have been transferred at a lower level than necessary. The sound is good, but you will have to turn
it up a bit more to compensate as much as possible. As for the narrator, who does such a good job, is that E.G
Marshall, John Forsythe or some guy from a TV commercial? The voice sounds familiar. Extras include Lloyd Kaufman interviewing
“Mr. Skin” & that interviewee (who has his own website) discussing nudity
in film, trailers for several other Troma titles in the genre of Horror (three)
and sexy (three more).
- Nicholas Sheffo
