"Deep Throat"(1972)d/Gerard Damiano

Tonight we're putting the X back into X-mas here at the Wop,by covering the granddaddy of vintage porn flicks,a glorified feature-length departure from the standard "loop" of the day,produced by made members of the Columbo crime family for roughly twenty-five grand in Miami and New York over six days in January of 1972.Actual box-office returns on the controversial ground breaker may never be known for sure,though the film has easily earned over a hundred million worldwide,and possibly,much more than that,as its Mafia-controlled release ushered in a brief upper middle class flirtation with pornography in the mid-seventies.Its "star",Linda Lovelace,wrote four(!) different biographies,claiming her appearance in the film liberated her as a woman in the earlier books,then crying rape in the latter two,claiming she was forced to perform several of the explicit sex acts within the movie with her abusive psycho husband Chuck Traynor holding loaded guns to her head.I wouldn't rule it out of the realm of possibility,as Lovelace displays some pretty obvious bruising on her body throughout the film,which was deemed obscene in New York,of all places.The moustachioed Harry Reems was convicted and later acquitted of obscenity charges due to his contributions to Throat,which was banned in certain areas,and played daily for sixteen years straight at one theater in Portland,Oregon,of all places.
Whether you see the late Lovelace,who died in 2002 from injuries after crashing her car into a cement post,as a victim or an opportunist,the most famous porn star of them all is the only thing worth looking at in this entry,by a long shot.Everyone else in the movie is frighteningly hideous enough to make the average porn enthusiast swear off the stuff forever,ferchrissakes.From a technical standpoint,the movie sucks,pardon the pun,with shadows and reflections of cameramen completely visible in shots,flubbed lines and porno cliche' jokes,and a supporting cast ugly enough to make people in Kansas City jealous.Linda,on the other hand,is a veritable porn pioneer;shaving her pussy,doing onscreen anal,and her titular fellatial skills at a time when none of these things were commonplace in adult movies.She,alone,is worth the price of admission.

"So when will your son Joe be coming home,Mrs. Dirt?"
The inventively named "Linda"(Lovelace playing "herself")is experiencing sexual frustration,during an era of sexual freedom and female empowerment,that reaches truly epic proportions.She confides her boudoir dilemma to her homely friend,Helen(Dolly Sharp),asking her how to harness that most elusive animal,the female orgasm(back when there was only one type.Let's all have a hearty belly-laugh at the dated material.Wuh-Hah hah haaaaah.).Her unattractive skeezoid galpal does what any good friend would do in such a situation,and schedules a good old fashioned fuckfest,but after some spirited ham-slamming and yap-ramming...and cigarette smoking(sex and cigs have an eternal bond that your humble N would never ever try to break),Linda is still at square one,bereaft of the quim earthquake your collective mothers are forever scratching at my bedroom window for.Helen then suggests a visit to Dr. Young(Harry Reems),who,upon examination of the young woman,surmises that her problem lies in a rare birth defect,indeed.Linda's clitoris is not underneath a skin hood atop her vaginal orifice,but down the back of her throat instead.She lashes out at the doctor."What if your balls were in your ear?",to which he replies,"Well,I suppose I'd hear myself coming."Wocka wocka.Who wrote this dialogue anyway,Fozzie Bear?

That fingertip is one of the smaller things Linda stuffs in her yap here.
Dr.Young,in between constantly putting the blocks to his nurse(Carol Connors), estimates that it'll take a custard cannon no less than nine inches in length to reach her female joy buzzer,and wouldn't you know it,he just happens to be packing that sort of weaponry in his own pants.With Young's tutelage,she hones her fellatio skills to a razor edge on the doctor's mustard missile and finally has that orgasm that she's been looking for,complete with bells,whistles,and possibly the single worst title song in movie history.Deeep throat,don't row the boat,don't get your goat,that's all she wrote(great lyrics)as vocalized by a bobcat with his nuts slammed in a beartrap.Riz Ortolani obviously didn't work on the soundtrack.Linda,freed from the binds of her sexual prison,offers to marry the doctor,who instead hires her as a physio-therapist(translation:whore to suck and fuck all his male patients),documenting her carnal progress along the way.A whole lotta fucking follows before the end titles promise,"The End,and Deep Throat to you all" at the sixty-one minute mark.Move over,Spartacus.

As sexy as smoking is,it can't negate that bouffant hairdon't.Or that curtain.
Lovelace,who fucked and sucked a dog on camera a year earlier in the aptly titled loop,Dog Fucker(1971)and later taught Sammy Davis,Jr.(!) how to deep throat her husband(!!) at a drunken Playboy mansion party(both of these factoids are so skeevy,I'm getting itchy just typing them),went on to star in the softcore sequel,Deep Throat II(1974),and the exploitative Linda Lovelace for President(1976),before completely falling under the cinematic radar for keeps.The late mob-tied director had a long career in porn,with such upscale titles as The Devil in Miss Jones,The Satisfiers of Alpha Blue,Maximum Head,and Splendor in the Ass under his belt before he passed away two years ago.Reems,who was championed by celebs like Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty,apart from his legendary porn career,also provided the hardcore inserts in 1970's Bacchanale,was an extra in Klute,starred in 1973's 42nd Street staple,Forced Entry,and shared the spotlight with Chesty Morgan in 1974's Deadly Weapons.Carol Connors,who also enjoyed a lengthy career in fuck flicks such as Erotic Adventures of Candy and Candy Goes to Hollywood,was also an extra on an episode of CHiPS and in 1982's The Concrete Jungle which starred Tracey Bregman and Camille Keaton.Throat really isn't much to look at these days,but for its historical importance and lead "actress" colorful career,it merits two wops on the ratings scale.

There's more short n' curlies under the trademark Wop than a barbershop floor in East Orange,New Jersey.

"The Brown Bunny"(2004)d/Vincent Gallo

Leave your arthouse pretense at the main gate,droogies,there's only one real reason anybody paid to see tonight's entry(and with a domestic box-office gross of just over three hundred sixty-six thousand dollars,there weren't many of us,I'd wager),and that's to see popular young actress Chloe Sevigny take an on-screen throat yogurt squirt in the yap in the name of movie-making.You can sugarcoat it any old way you please after the fact,but it is what it is.At Cannes,audiences booed and walked out on the presentation,leaving Sevigny pouring tears and Gallo backpedalling.Roger Ebert called it one of the worst movies ever made(spurring on the obligatory "fat pig with the physique of a slave trader" rebuttal from Gallo) then retracted his verdict,giving the film his usual thumb's up after being recut.I'm reviewing it here at the Wop as a "cult film",using a great deal of creative license in calling a handful of people getting their jollies off of an oral payoff a "cult fan base".Still,Ebert vollied from Vince's vitriolic venom,"One day I'll be thin,but Vince Gallo will still have directed The Brown Bunny".Ouch.
Though Gallo has run the gamut on the definition of artist thus far,playing in a post-punk band with Basquiyat,acting in films like Goodfellas,The Funeral,and Arizona Dream,leaving a successful career as a painter behind in the nineties,and helming fare like Buffalo 66 with the delicious Christina Ricci,Bunny will always stand as a huge 16 mm misstep,despite the championing of coffeehouse intellectuals who swear there's a movie in there somewhere,even as Gallo himself laughs at and not with.

Ever hear of concepts like soap and water,Gallo?
After a motorcycle race in New Hampshire,unwashed scumbag Bud Gray(Vince Gallo)takes it upon himself to drive across the country for a future race in California.He convinces a gas station attendant named Violet(Anna Vareschi)to accompany him on his non-adventure,but when they stop at her crib to grab clothes,he drives the fuck off instead.Haunted by memories of an ex named Daisy(Chloe Sevigny),he stops off at her parents' house and sees the former lover's titular brown bunny.He then stops off at a pet store to inquire about the life expectancy of rabbits.At a rest stop on the highway,he bumps into a frazzled woman named Lilly(former model Cheryl Tiegs,so weatherbeaten here,she looks like she could turn into a piece of driftwood that reads "Six Must Die" or a gold doubloon in any frame.)who he makes out with and consoles for whatever reason,before bursting into tears himself,and cutting out on her,as well.He weeps and drives.Drives and weeps.I didn't catch too many showers on his agenda either.He stops off to race his motorcycle on the salt flats of Utah before pitstopping in Las Vegas where he drives around the budget whores several times.He picks up one of the prostitutes and pays her to eat McDonald's with him before dumping her back off on the street from whence she came.Glued to the edge of your seat yet?That's okay,neither was I...

Dustbowl crotch rocket scene,you're under arrest for impersonating an action sequence.
He drops his motorcycle off in Los Angeles,then stops by Daisy's abandoned crib,leaving a note on the door after sitting in his truck and waxing nostalgically about kissing her in the past.After checking into a fleabag motel,he is soon joined by Daisy,who continually traipses off to the bathroom to fire up some crack rock,before Bud drudges up old infidelity issues,which naturally lead to the scuz initiating the cracked out girl in an impromptu dick sucking.He fires off his testi-kids in her mouth,she swallows,then they lie in bed,where Bud continues to assault his former lover's integrity for a multi-cock indiscretion she committed at a party under his very nose.She argues it all transpired due to her pot smoking,but when Bud brings up her pregnancy at the time,and subsequent fetus' death because of the incident,she refreshes his memory about his presence at the party,and non-action during the rape,which she had passed out prior to,and explains that she choked to death while unconscious afterwards.He wakes up alone in the motel the next morning,the entire evening being a product of his own imagination.He does some more driving.Zzzzzzzzz...whoa,is that the time already?

Save some of that crack for those of us who had to painfully endure this self-indulgent crap,Sevigny.
Though your humble N can mentally spar with the best of the cineasts and "film historians" as a true connoisseur of the projected image,granted,the only two enjoyable factors of tonight's review for me,were the usage of lifetime favorite, Gordon Lightfoot's "Beautiful" in the soundtrack,and Sevigny's celluloid suckage.As far as blowjobs go,it's pretty good,lots of filthy banter exchange between the ahem...actors,before Vincenzo delivers the salty devastation to Chloe's uvula.If this sounds remotely palatable(sorry) to any woprophiles out there,then hunt down a copy,or better yet,download it illegally and spare yourselves the somewhat steep dvd cost that B-Dub had to endure in viddying this crapsterpiece for himself.I've documented a few of my sexual conquests on digital video myself,and as narcissistic as I am,I still wouldn't ask theatergoers to pay a cover to bear witness to my erotic exploits.Not yet,anyway.One wop,and without the aforementioned key factors,you'd be keeping Uwe and Rob company in the shithouse,Vince.Just sayin'.

So that's how you blow up a hot air balloon.