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| This week, Greg shows us how to have fun on the beach. |
As time wears on, mysterious or once-thought-lost film works involving Ed Wood continue to turn up. The 1971 erotic biker film Misty aka Nympho Cycler is a good example. Before it appeared on disc roughly a decade ago, this obscure movie was completely unknown under the latter title and barely known under the former. In Rudolph Grey's 1992 book Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr., it's listed in the "Chronology" section as an "uncompleted" film. The only quote about the film in the main body of the book comes from filmmaker Joe Robertson: "In Misty, [Ed Wood] was in a jacuzzi and all dragged out."
The film's profile stared rising with a DVD release in 2014, which Joe Blevins reviewed here. Back then, he noted that the film had turned up previously on tape in the UK in the early '80s from Dapon, the same company that released The Young Marrieds on tape at the time.
While there's been speculation that the film was directed by Joe Robertson, Casey Larrain told me last year that she recollects Ed Wood himself directing it. For what it's worth, the IMDb page for the film now agrees. Casey also recalled a scene shot at Venice Beach, with Ed directing. He had gathered a group of homeless men for the shoot. "He brought a bottle of jug wine, and we sat in a circle passing it around. Joints were being passed around. Actual marijuana!" She was certainly recollecting the the nighttime beach orgy scene from Nympho Cycler.
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| Uschi Digard in Sex Pursuits |
Could footage from this beach shoot have turned up elsewhere, and been under our noses for decades? It's not a question I would have ever thought to ask or ponder. And then, a few days ago, Charles Devlin—one of the most knowledgeable people on the planet when it comes to vintage adult films, and an amazing researcher, to boot—messaged me and asked me to take a look at the opening scene of a fairly typical low-budget film from the beginning of the hardcore era.
Titled Sex Pursuits and supposedly hailing from 1971, the cast is a vertiable who's who of West Coast adult film performers. I had actually seen this film a few years back and certainly noted a bunch of familiar actors who had also appeared in Ed's known sex film work. There's Uschi Digard, Lynn Harris, Donna Stanly and Rene Bond, to name just a few.
What I did not then notice was that the opening scene in Sex Pursuits is culled from the same beach footage that appears in Nympho Cycler. Casey Larrain appears only briefly, and the scene is largely comprised of the male/female beach sex scene on the blanket. The footage is cut differently. In fact, while we only get softcore sex bordering on hardcore in Nympho Cycler, the same scene is fully hardcore in Sex Pursuits!
The narration in Nympho Cycler notes that folks on the beach were spying on this amorous couple, but in Sex Pursuits, we actually get a few shots of voyeurs not seen in Nympho Cycler. (These moments remind me a bit of the lurking Black Ghost in Ed Wood's Night of the Ghouls.) While we're at it, it's also worth noting that Gabor Szabo's instrumental guitar version of Donovan's "Sunshine Superman" appears on the soundtrack of both films.
Sex Pursuits first appeared on DVD from Alpha Blue Archives back in 2008. Two different cuts of Nympho Cycler—one from Alpha Blue Archives, the other from After Hours Cinema—can still be purchased online. The question, now, of course is: Could there have been a hardcore cut of Misty/Nympho Cycler? If so, we can only hope it turns up!
Special thanks to Charles Devlin for spotting this connection between Misty and Sex Pursuits and sharing it with me, as well as providing some of the additional details mentioned above.