"Voices of Desire" (1972) d/ Chuck Vincent

While on the subject of Sandra Peabody/Cassell a few reviews back, you may recall my remark that her engaging and tragic turn as Mari Collingwood in Wes Craven's Last House on the Left (1972) probably stands as the classiest production she ever acted in, when you look at some of the sweaty softcore sexploitation she left behind, in comparison. Some stuffy moralistic drapes would include tonight's review in the latter column, the first feature from prolific porn director Chuck Vincent (as Mark Ubell here), a grainy, scratchy, choppily-edited documentation of the former actress' assets shot the same year as Last House, available directly from those exemplary film folks at Something Weird.


Anna (Sandra Peabody, as Liyda Cassell) derives masturbatory manna from a bunch of grapes while she fellates a banana.
We meet a shaken Anna Reed(Peabody) as she relates her unbelievable story to a city detective, flashing back to the first time she heard those mysterious voices, breathing heavily on a pay phone, no less. Talk about getting your dime's worth. The walk home isn't any less strange, with mismatched foley footsteps, whispered beckons and brief images of a guy wearing a hangman's noose as a neck tie and a chick getting c.t.f.o.ed cut in for good measure. At home, her magazine time is interrupted by the pesky voices, who, combined with footage of a pair of average-looking folk copulating on a black backdrop, possess one of her hands that strips her naked so she can writhe around in bed with a bunch of grapes in her crotch as she gives a nearby banana a blowjob while awkwardly rolling an apple around on her ass.


You're so tiny and adorable. Can I put you in my pocket?
As she tries to duck out on her horny inner voices, she's drawn instead to their house of origin, where, after drinking a glass of the house wine, she goes into erotic spasms, and gets stripped and shrimped on camera by a couple of greaseballs by black candlelight. Her gross hippie piggies get a thorough once over while an orchestra plays and psychedelic lights flash. A groovy simulated threesome follows, with a brief lesbian sequence and obligatory orgy scene hard on it's heels, then the house's occupants all menace her with butcher knives, followed by a red-tinted fake romp with some dude with a mustache. There's always at least one in these movies, isn't there? She escapes to tell the tale to the detective, who tries to put it all into perspective for her, then is influenced once again to run (she runs like a gimp with a dump in her panties, for the record) back to the house, as a romantic piano plays in the background. Makes sense.


"After I pop my cookies on your belly, will you wear my Mood Ring, baby?"
Make no mistakes, Chuck Vincent's work in adult films is distinctive, with an experimental, arthouse feel unlike many of his straight forward porn peers of the era, and his unmistakable flair is evident here, with the use of classical pieces in the soundtrack, sprawling, picturesque exteriors shot guerilla and filled with magnificent metropolitan architecture, and weird insert shots. It doesn't hurt having a little sweetie like Sandra Peabody to focus your lens upon, either. If light fiddle-fodder for the raincoat crowd was the only kind of gig that the pixie-esque Peabody/Cassell was getting offered, no one could blame her for walking away when she did, for more fulfilling climes. Overall, Voices is a curious piece of vintage forty-deuce sexploitation, worthy of a pair of Wops on the scale, and definitely worth checking out if you're an admirer of Sandra (who isn't?).


While you're in a walkies kinda mood, cupcake, Scranton's only one hundred twenty-eight miles away. Just sayin'.

"Teenage Hitchhikers" (1975) d/ Gerri Sedley

Once upon a time, before the advent of interstate serial killers, teenage girls often took to the roadside, flashed some cleavage, and flipped up a thumb to get where they were going. Of course, the unwritten hitchhiking commandment was something like, "Gas, grass, or ass. Nobody rides for free.", so every excursion was a potential adventure waiting to jump off. In tonight's review, we document the madcap hijinks of a pair of hippie chicks, Sandra Peabody/Cassel, who you'll remember as the sweet young thing who gets her chest stiletto-autographed like a high school desk by Krug Stilo, in Wes Craven's seminal shocker, Last House on the Left (1972), and Chris Jordan, who broke into movies four years earlier in a production called Piss Orgy (1971), as they set out to do just that.


"Just look at that halitose halibut...and there's a fish in there, too."
We follow the misadventures of a perky pair of  hippie ride-thumbers named Bird (Sandra Peabody) and Mouse (Chris Jordan, as Kathie Christopher) as they hitchhike their way towards liberation, sexual freedom, and total independence, finding fleshy fun and tumbling into titillating trouble along the way. They get picked up by a camperful of  zooted dirt merchants, and when it looks like they have designs on jackrolling the girls, they sing a rancid hippie folk song instead, and proposition them to a life of groupiedom. The girls splash around in a stream, and Bird catches a trout with her panties. At a roadside diner, they get topless and embarrassingly go-go dance off beat in their drawers for food, which they don't even get, and rightfully so, they're horrible dancers.


This particular Bird (Sandra Peabody) is fogging up my spotting scope.
Before the end credits roll, these two take turns balling a bald-headed travelling salesman, interrupt a crazed, escaped rapist as he's about to force his way onto a chick in a backwoods meadow (sheesh, there was a whole lotta raping going on in movies back then) by stripping down themselves and critiquing his form(!) before okie-doking his ass and tying him to a tree. A wealthy lesbian also succeeds in sapphically seducing the hitch-sisters before the whole zany affair comes to a head at a far out hippie orgy, with thrusting bodies strewn about the pad like mad, Dad. In the end, we see them hitching a ride once again, but when a male driver stops to give them a lift, they run to their convertible, and speed off, giving him a playful bird. Oh, those teenage hitchhikers.


Though the groovy hippie orgy is semi-simulated, bouncy nipples like these will surely leave you stimulated. 
This would be the last film appearance for the sweetly sexy Sandra Peabody/Cassel, who walked away from the industry to produce children's television and teach drama, after having scored seedy credits in things like Love-In 1972 (1971), Voices of Desire (1972), and Filthiest Show in Town (1973). Getting tortured/raped/murdered by David Hess turned out to be her high water mark, cinematically speaking. Chris Jordan, who was once married to porn star Eric Edwards (who scores an uncredited cameo in the hippie orgy scene, by the way) also co-starred with Peabody in 1973's Massage Parlor Hookers, and banged out (ahem) soft and hardcore work up until the mid-seventies in movies like NY sexploitation king Joe Sarno's Confessions of a Young American Housewife (1974) and Misty (1976), before passing away in 1990. Claire Wilbur, you'll recall seeing in Radley Metzger's Score (1974). On the scale Hitchhikers thumbs it's way towards a pair of Wops, worth a look if you dig this sort of thing.


"We've got our own transportation now, so, like, down with you, maaaaaan!"