BY LEE PFEIFFER
No matter what you think of the porn films created in the old days, their producers had an instinct for capitalizing on the hottest trends in mainstream movies. Take for example "Sensual Encounters of Every Kind", which was released in 1978, a year after Steven Spielberg's blockbuster "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". The film was promoted with marketing materials that implied it would be a sci-fi spoof but, alas, that promising premise ended with the posters. In fact the movie only has only a dotted line link to a supernatural premise. The plot centers on an ancient necklace that has the power to make its owner sexually irresistible to those around him or her. The caveat is that it only works once and then it must be passed on to another unwitting owner. Good thing it only works once because the benefits of the necklace might well result from death by exhaustion if the sexual action were to be engaged in on a regular basis. The plot line, such as it is, consists of several humorous vignettes loosely linked by the aforementioned premise. First up is a young, wealthy and bored young beauty (Lesile Bovee) who is bemoaning her dormant love life. Fortunately, the benefits of the necklace kick in just as three hunky gardeners are working at her estate. When they start to show a communal interest in her, she resists their advances but since this is a male-oriented porn flick she quickly has a change of heart and ends up having the time of her life with all three simultaneously. The next story centers on genre legend Georgina Spelvin ("The Devil in Miss Jones") as a tutor for teenage brother and sister who are spoiled rotten and prove to be snarky and disrespectful. Adding to their bizarre sense of "family relations" is their sexual relationship with each other, which they demonstrate in front of their tutor who predictably can't resist participating. Another vignette is the broadest in terms of comedy with a U.S. senator carrying on with his sensuous secretary (Serena) when his wife returns home unexpectedly. The belabored premise might work well with Peter Sellers or David Niven as the protagonist, however, it's as flat as a pancake here- and just as erotic. The final chapter has porn veteran Jamie Gillis as the male coach of a female college athletic team who is seduced in a gym by two of his students. The film's premise of an anthology of stories connecting diverse characters around the same object could have worked. (Think "The Yellow Rolls Royce" with hardcore orgies thrown in.) However, the comedic aspects are undone by weak writing and generally poor performances with only Spelvin delivering something akin to a performance (she had Broadway training and appeared in "Funny Girl"!) On the plus side, the real raison d'etre for the film is the sex scenes and the director, Richard Kanter, at least has the instinct to generally cut the lame jokes during these scenes and manages to make them quite erotic.
Vinegar Syndrome has released the film on DVD and it boasts a pristine transfer that probably makes it look better than it did at the time of its original release. An interesting bonus is a rather garbled phone interview with porn actor Jon Martin, who appears uncredited in the film. His conversation is feature-length and he provides some interesting insights, not only about the porn industry of the era, but his own career as well. (He studied with Stella Adler and Uta Hagen, though it's doubtful those legendary acting teachers envisioned exactly how he would end up employing his talents.) In all, another winning package from Vinegar Syndrome.
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