Deep Throat (1972/Umbrella Entertainment/PAL Region Zero/0/Import) + Linda Lovelace For President (MPI
Region 1 NTSC DVD)
Picture: C/C+ Sound: C/C+ Extras: C+/C- Films: C*
* Warning:
After some research and comparisons, the print of Deep Throat being used on this import DVD may have been supplied by
the official owner, Arrow Productions, but it turns out to be the infamous “R”
rated version the company release a few years ago trying to capitalize on the
release of the excellent documentary Inside
Deep Throat, which has the uncut version in the NC-17 version out on
DVD. We have reviewed it elsewhere on
this site.
PLEASE NOTE: This import DVD version of Deep Throat can only be operated on machines capable of
playing back DVDs that can handle Region Zero/0 PAL format software and can be
ordered from our friends at Umbrella Entertainment at the website address
provided at the end of the review. MPI
has Linda Lovelace For President
available as a Region 1 U.S. NTSC DVD now.
With
images of sex all over the mainstream media, fashion advertising, Internet and
music (especially Hip Hop), it is becoming increasingly hard to imagine a time
when a film like the 1972 breakthrough “porno chic” classic Deep Throat could be such a craze and
the hottest movie ticket in town, but that is exactly what happened to the
62-minutes long pastiche work (old XXX loops added with new footage) bring
hardcore sex films to light. The target
of censorship and controversy, we first discussed the basic idea of the film in
the review of the Inside Deep Throat
documentary, which you can read more about at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2834/Inside+Deep+Throat+(NC-17/Docu
The
center of the film’s success was not only what star Linda Lovelace was capable
of doing, as implied by the title of the film, but by her presence that was a
mix of “good girl, bad girl” that heightened all the explicit sex and gave sex
stars an identity they could have never had from silent XXX shorts that led up
to the film. Oddly, she only made a few
films and the last one (before she turned on the industry that used her) was an
X-rated comedy, Linda
Lovelace For President. Both are
now on DVD and we will look at both.
As this
version of Deep Throat is a
censored version, we have to downgrade the rating, but for the record, our
rating for the uncut film would be B- simply because of its controversy,
influence and that it is still shocking enough that its owners would feel they
needed to cut it to a lame R version.
Having already covered the plot idea in the documentary review, you can
even see in this version of the film that the film tried to have some kind of
story, even though some older XXX loop shorts director Gerald Damiano (under
his pseudonym Jerry Gerard) previous shot to pad out the film.
The cost
of shooting this feature at the time was a mere $25,000 (though some sources,
including David Flint’s smart, informative book Babylon Blue, say it may have been as high as $40,000) would result
in a battle that drove its profits to at least $600 Million, though since
organized crime was involved and accounting of the box office was not handled
very well, it may have been higher. In
adjusted dollars based on ticket prices (versus inflation) in 2008, this film
would have made well over $1 Billion just in the U.S. alone.
Seeing
the film again with its single-entendre jokes and bad acting, you realize the
explicit sex may be the main attraction, but two other things help the film
from being a dated curio outright. One,
the editing and pace have a certain feel as if the editing is going out of its
way to work itself up to the peak moment.
Two, showing it is a product of the more upbeat side of the
counterculture and free love movement (no matter its gangster co-producers or
what happened behind the scenes) has this amusing soundtrack that combines what
it thinks is sexy Pop/Rock/Soul/Jazz instrumentals with vocal songs that
includes an amusing remake of the 1957 Mickey & Sylvia classic hit Love Is Strange. Without that cultural backup, this film would
have never been heard of. The government
trying to stop it from being seen just pushed it over the top.
I am not
happy with this R cut because that kills the whole purpose of seeing the film
to begin with and is a film (for whatever reasons) changed filmmaking forever,
including launching a XXX big screen film industry that would have a good 10 –
15 years before VHS & Beta killed it, with 99% of content being made on
analog videotape. It is also among the
ten XXX films you need to see to understand the rise and fall of the industry,
along with the background to a film like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights. Those films (alphabetically, aimed at
heterosexual audiences & excluding any film with the word “Inside” or
“Opening” in the title) are:
Behind The Green Door (1972)
Caligula (1980)
Debbie Does Dallas (1978)
Deep Throat (1972)
The Devil In Miss Jones (1972)
Flesh Gordon (1974)
Hard Candy (1976/3-D)
Insatiable (1980)
Sexworld (1977)
Through The Looking Glass (1977)
On its
own, the industry tried everything and much sleazier titles with more obvious
content, with some hoping and thinking their industry would merge with
mainstream film. That never happened,
though some important films with sexual content were made at this time, some
with X rating before the rating was rendered pointless and there were even
attempts at various sex comedies where the comedy competed with the sex,
including Linda Lovelace For
President (1975) which happened to be a comedy that received an X
rating and had Linda making single-entendre jokes throughout. She looked good here and the film actually
has recognizable supporting actors like Scatman Crothers, legendary comic Joe
E. Ross, Marty Ingels, Earl Jolly Brown, Stafford Repp (Chief O’Hara from the
1960s Batman series), Val Bisoglio,
Chuck McCann and Monkees’ singer Mickey Dolenz trying to break his squeaky
clean image.
Though it
has some funny moments, some unintended and it is not a graphic XXX film per
se, it is sometimes awkward, also wears thin quickly, but is worth tolerating
the many problems it has since it is one of the closet times the mainstream and
XXX film businesses merged. It is a time
capsule, period piece and is actually not as bad as many of the bad comedies we
have seen lately. Miss Lovelace decides
to run for president and she would be the first woman to do so, which is funny
for whole new reasons now thanks to the 2008 campaigns form both major parties,
but reminds us of how much fun the anything goes independent film movement
could be, even when it was bad. Unlike
the Deep Throat DVD, it
does not seem to be edited or cut in any suspicious ways.
Both films originated on 35mm film (give or take a few
shots on Throat, it seems) and were
shot 1.33 X 1 for 1.85 X 1 projection.
Both DVDs are an anamorphically enhanced, but Throat is at an awkward
1.77 X 1 with a sloppy R-rated/censored edition with dumb zoom-ins, color
issues (beyond anything we would consider EastmanColor fading), softness and a
print that looks more like 16mm than 35mm.
Comparisons to the 35mm footage on Inside Deep Throat will show. Arrow will not be able to get away with this
on Blu-ray!
Linda
Lovelace For President looks much better with decent color and clarity,
though the print has some flaws, it looks much better than the Deep Throat
and the footage outdoes previous stock footage ewe have seen of the
film, including that used in Inside Deep Throat.
Both films were also monophonic sound releases, with Dolby Digital 2.0
Mono in both cases, but President sounds
better than Throat, which sounds
compressed (even versus other bad clips from the past) and noisier than it
should, reinforcing the fact that the R-rated print is a few generations down.
Both discs have featurettes as extras, with Throat featuring an original theatrical
trailer, new featurette hosted by co-star Eric Edwards that Arrow wanted to
make to give their side of the story of the making of the film versus rumors
and myths about it (which have some credibility) and the complete original
soundtrack music (by Damiano!) accompanied by stills of the film, et al. It turns out that except for promo handouts
at some theaters, this had not been available to the public until a 1982 vinyl
release. Until 2000, those were the only official
copies until the first CD arrived in a seeming out of print CD, but a
2005-released official CD exists. The
music here is in Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono here.
President
includes the very good featurette Deep
Vote: The Oral History Of Linda Lovelace
For President. All are
recommended.
As noted above, Linda
Lovelace For President is available from MPI in the U.S., while you can
order this Deep Throat PAL DVD import
exclusively from Umbrella at:
http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/
- Nicholas Sheffo
