Skin in the 70s (2009)
Secret Key Motion Pictures | Buy at Amazon | Review by Sinferno

SKIN IN THE 70s. The name says it all. While I personally spent much of the 70's walking around in diapers, worshiping Oscar the Grouch and trying to collect a whole Imperial Garrison of Kenner Star Wars figures the teenagers of this era were living active lives indeed. With the specter of Vietnam behind them and the Cold War replaced with the temporary thaw of detente, the halcyon days of teenage youth in the early seventies were summers filled with free-love, liberal drunken driving laws, no speed limits and those crazy retro beer cans with the litterlicious removable pull-tabs. In fact the films featured in SKIN IN THE 70s owe their very existence to another staple of the day and that was the drive-in theater. Movies like this would show and teens everywhere would pile into large, American-made cars (back in the day when those things were a selling point) coming from miles around to congregate, associate and often fornicate with one another in vault-sized back seats, experiencing a freedom, power and and a quality of youth in this era (before AIDS) that all other generations (both previous and future) would only read about in history books or see in movies like this. Whether you are old enough to remember these days firsthand or if you ever just wanted to see what an after school "coming of age" special would look like if it was directed by Joe Esterhaus these films will "cool you out, man".

BLUE SUMMER
In the first few minutes of this film, a teenage boy named Tracy outfits the family dodge van (called a bus throughout the movie) with a "Hi-fi" speaker system, a public address horn and all sorts of decals from 70's flowers to dual door decals and christens his ride as "the Meat Wagon". But as the title, copyright and every frame of the movie is all to quick to remind me, this takes place in the seventies, where there was no accounting for good taste, (nor any apparent D.O.T. citations for it either). Anyway, the young lad is quickly joined by his buddy Gene and after failing to intervene or care in the least as Gene's father beats their mother up, the two load up the Sinnebago with stolen beer then hit the road in search of adventure. And they spend the bulk of the movie chasing it too, after a brief heartfelt discussion regarding what they are going to do with their lives once they go away to college. On their sojourn up to "Stone Lake" they encounter all kinds of women along the way and have sex with each and every one of them, long drawn-out unrated escapades with authentic-looking 70's women who need a bath and a shave. If it sounds pointless and just exploitative, it is, but not in the simple formulaic way you would expect. Every time they meet a couple of ladies along they way, these two "Sleazy Riders" end up getting robbed, beaten up or otherwise jacked for some of their meager provisions or possessions by the world of hustlers and hucksters who seem to plague their trip at every turn. It is kind of an odd theme for a movie; perpetual scenes of two eager, fun-loving teenage boys having quick quasi-explicit sex with an truckload of different women followed by a moment of betrayal where the woman leaves forever and the two boys never truly end up any emotionally richer for their experiences, just somehow always in the hole (no pun intended). Yet, as you watch this film you can't help but feel that even more terrible things are going to happen to these two boys. Not because they are particularly deserving or unlikable, but because they break every moral rule of the modern teenage movie protagonist and yet at the end of the movie they are exactly where they began, rolling down the highway, worrying about a future of adult obligation and the end of summers like these, none the worse for wear. I suppose this non-objective ending is kind of a timeless metaphor for teenage sexuality/promiscuity and I understand the symbolism. Ultimately whether this movie is a subtle statement about the sheer audacity and insatiability of the teenage experience, or just another mindless cinematic excuse to show grainy footage of hairy hippie chicks gyrating about in all manner of undress all depends upon the age of the viewer, or perhaps more importantly, the era they themselves grew up in.

SOMETIME SWEET SUSAN
An anonymous attractive mute, mentally ill women with piercing eyes is being held in an institution while the hospital tries to figure out what to with her. Because her attending doctor is played by none other than 70's Porn superstar Harry Reems, you just know that the bedside manner is going to be strange in this one indeed. Through flashbacks, symbolic dream sequences and sex scenes that have very little do do with anything we eventually learn that her name is Susan, she is the victim of childhood sexual abuse and she has a multiple personality named Sandra who is such a shameless unrepentant slut that she openly propositions everyone who comes into her room, at one point even successfully bedding her attending nurse. I would like to give this movie high marks for actually trying to portray the dark ongoing struggle of a young survivor of constant rape and sexual abuse, but in this format it's unthinkably obscene in concept, if not execution. It is altogether obvious to anyone who has seen this movie (or read the liner notes) that SOMETIME like the other films in this collection are actually cut, censored versions of actual porno's from the seventies. Assuming you don't mind censored content, you still may be sickened to discover that the omissions to this cut of the film couldn't have been more glaring and obvious if you would have seen a giant scissors close onscreen now and then. Sometimes the action just halts (usually at the end of a sex scene) just so the background music doesn't get out of synch. Yeah that's right, the director didn't want to remove the continuity of the Air Supply meets ABBA soundtrack that plays every moment of this movie so the sex scenes end up in so many freeze frames I thought it might be time to clean my DVD player. Normally, I hate having the edited version to anything, (I refuse to watch ANY movie on network TV for just such a reason) but in this case, the character of Susan is so sad and pathetic despite her physical attractiveness, you feel kind of sick for enjoying her exploits onscreen in the way you otherwise would if she wasn't always portrayed with all the emotional and intellectual development of a child and perpetual victim. It's hard to know how to take this one, this version fails as both a feelgood 70's drama, as well as the hardcore porno it was designed to be, ultimately making this portrait of a mentally ill woman into a mind fuck only without all the eroticism you might expect from such a thing.

SUMMER SCHOOL TEACHERS
Three teachers move to a California High school that desperately needs their sexy help. You know the school must really be bad, because many of the "kids" who go there are played by people in their mid to late twenties. How very sad. Along these this trio of beautiful teachers enrich the lives of the youth in many, many unexpected ways. The photography teacher tells her students to go out and take a picture of the most explicit thing they can find. The woman's athletic instructor teaches the girls about the complete equality of the sexes by starting up a full contact football team. The physics instructor teaches her mastery of "chemistry" of another sort by seducing a teenage boy from her class. I suppose it would be the most awesome film ever if it was based on planet earth, with just a hint of reality. Any one of these teachers and their resulting mental illness might have made an interesting, appalling film, but in this work, no one seems to notice or care, how messed up everything is and there is absolutely no sense to be made of it, unless you like mindless good times as depicted in a R rated sex comedy. I suppose calling it a "comedy" is perhaps the most shocking realization of all to you, but the liner notes say it's true so you know it must be so. There were some laughs here, but only because the film was so anachronistic compared to modern sensibilities and preferences, featuring gambits, quips and remarks you will only see in a true seventies film that was actually back in the filmed in the day. For example a black girl catches a Football and compares herself to OJ Simpson. One of the teachers sprawls out naked on an animal skin blanket after making love and quires rhetorically, (as only a teacher could do) wondering aloud "Why fur turns her on so much?" And then there is the touching scene where the grizzled old Men's football coach explains "how you can ALWAYS tell a faggot by the way a man's hands look". For me this is where the real moments of shock value and humor came from and I couldn't believe that an R rated sex romp without any historical accuracy, emotional depth or social commentary to speak of made me realize how insane the seventies must of been. Any modern teacher that would explore such progressive, avant-garde modes, manners and methods of teaching in this film would find themselves embracing the era again in more ways than one, as they would be eligible for parole about 2070.

TEENAGE DIVORCE
It is only fitting that this is the last movie of the final disk of the box set. Though it is the oldest film in the set, it is something of a swan song for the seventies itself and the conventions of free love, good times and the whole hippie subculture based on hedonism and good vibes. While no one really dies or ends up in prison, raped or physically disfigured at the end, it is obvious to anyone who views it that the world had moved on forever, at least for the protagonists in this film. TEENAGE is about three young twenty somethings, each one who has just gotten divorced from their first love. There is Josie who was married to the biggest square in the world, a man who didn't even like sex (even when this boxed set should have taught everyone by now that hippie women are quite proficient at it if nothing else). There was Leonard a kid who looked like Bo Duke wearing a John Holmes mustache, and then there's Ken, a strange Asian boy played by none other than STAR TREK's Capt. Sulu, George Takei (I don't know WHY his marriage didn't work out). Basically the best way to describe this film is to say it is just like Three's Company with the following changes: there are two guys instead of two girls; it takes place in San Diego instead of Santa Monica and their wacky neighbor isn't a sleaze-hound named Larry, his name is Bartholomew and he's the oversexed gay guy trying to screw either one of the male leads. Throw in the fact that they partake in orgies, smoke dope and Josie and Leonard screw a lot and you don't have to wonder why their landlord Mr Furley/Mrs. McAllister threatens them with eviction at every turn. The film quality in this one is the poorest of the set, looking in places like the trio were visited by an animated dancing worm, proving once and for all that hindsight isn't always 20/20 after all. I guess the underlying theme of this film is that while certain aspects of seventies sub-culture were indeed filled with creating peace and love, it often let to all manner of shattered friendships and broken hearts; making pieces of another kind. And then again, maybe I should stop looking for higher meaning; themes in films where the female protagonist screams rape me during sex just because she thinks "it would be a kink".

 

Sinferno Says...
Yucko/Neato Factor: If you are nostalgic for a time long ago when drive-in's served so much more than oil changes and hamburgers this might do nicely. One finger penalty for releasing cut porn films and calling it a new product. That pisses me off, "Dude". 70's porno's should be like the hair-dos of the same era: flowing, excessive, obnoxious and deliciously uncut.
Production Values: The quality of 70's youth culture was encapsulated well in this box set. It's too bad the film stock of the day couldn't keep up (as usual). Cheap but so damned authentic you can almost smell the incense.
Realism: The action is so authentically 70's, so different from today it often distracts from all the fun horseplay and edited sex going on.
Value for Price: $17.99 is exceptional for four unrated movies from twenty years ago as compared to other similar box sets, provided you think the premise is far out, man.
Plot: But with a name like SKIN IN THE 70s you won't mind all the holes in the plots which linger, burn and stink like so many cigarette burns in a the pleather seat cushion of a movie house of the day. Authenticity isn't always intelligent.