Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 121: 'Love Making U.S.A.' (1971)

The respectable narrator of a not-so-respectable documentary.

I've been seeing the title in Ed Wood filmographies for years, but until very recently, I had not actually sat all the way through director Joe Robertson's 1971 sex documentary Love Making U.S.A. Why? Well, I guess I never found the movie particularly appetizing, since I knew it simply contained recycled footage from Love Feast (1969), an earlier collaboration between Robertson and Wood. But it was always there—an itch begging to be scratched. When I saw that Something Weird Video offered a download of the film for only $5.99, I took the plunge.

My background knowledge of Lovemaking U.S.A. was minimal. Philip R. Frey's The Hunt for Ed Wood referred to it as "a 'documentary' about the porn industry. There are scenes from early porn films, as well as footage of contemporary productions." David C. Hayes' Muddled Mind: The Complete Works of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (2001) had a vivid but somewhat misleading description: "This is a very, very sad period in Wood's life. The film is a XXX hardcore porn that stars John Holmes, Joe Robertson in drag and Ed. Luckily for everyone involved, Ed isn't naked... he just conducts 'sexy' on the street interviews." Neither Frey nor Hayes had claimed to see the film, but both were seeking a print for review.

The plain title card for Love Making U.S.A. 

Then there is Something Weird Video's own description of the film, written by porn blogger Prince Pervo. Since he definitely has seen the movie, Pervo's capsule review is more accurate: "Love Making U.S.A. isn't just another porn film," he writes. The critic explains the grab bag nature of the movie. It contains, among other things: a "prehistoric stag film" called A Free Ride (1915); some behind-the-scenes footage from Tomatoes (1970) (another Robinson film) with Anna Travers; a few minutes of John Holmes making love to the strains of Ravel's Bolero; and a documentary segment shot in Griffith Park at an event called Gay-In III. Pervo notes that director-producer Joe Robertson himself appears in this segment as "a tough gay-basher who turns out to be wearing nylons and high heels." As for the Ed Wood content in Love Making U.S.A., Pervo writes: "Then — surprise! — we watch the infamous Edward D. Wood, Jr. take pictures of smut-star Casey Lorrain [sic]!" 

Viewers will remember actress Casey Larrain from her roles in two Joe Robertson sexploitation flicks, the aforementioned Love Feast (aka The Photographer or Pretty Models All in a Row) and Nympho Cycler (aka Misty) (1971), both of which costarred Ed Wood. Casey is also one of the prostitutes at Madam Penny's Thrill Establishment in Ed Wood's Take It Out in Trade (1970). When she spoke to the authors of The Cinematic Misadventures of Ed Wood (2015), Casey stated that she had only worked with Ed once for "a week and a half to two weeks" and that the footage had been spread out over several films. "I only worked with him the once," she said, "but he apparently cut that footage up and used it in all kinds of different projects."

Reader Rob Huffman shares this anecdote about his meeting with Casey Larrain:

"When I spoke with Ms. Larrain, she thought Take It Out In Trade, Nympho Cycler, and Love Feast were are all one movie. Bear in mind she was thinking back 50+ years ago. She has specific memories of a screening of dailies for Nympho Cycler, though. She said Wood was there and he was indeed the director of the film. She did two hardcore scenes with [John] Holmes before calling it quits. Her whole approach to the films was that she was a hippie who was unashamed of her nudity. She knew she was attractive, and was already modeling. It was just a gig."

I cannot confirm that Love Feast, Nympho Cycler, and Take It Out in Trade were all shot at the same time, but the footage in Love Making U.S.A. is definitely recycled from Love Feast. Those of you who have seen that 1969 sex comedy will remember that Ed Wood portrays Mr. Murphy, a drunken sot who summons young women to his home by pretending to be a fashion photographer. Casey Larrain plays Linda, the very first model to show up at Murphy's doorstep, only to be steered into his bedroom.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 109: Revealing your Ed Wood preferences

Ed Wood, surrounded by posters for his films.

Whenever I encounter some new or unfamiliar technology, my first reaction generally is to ask, "How can I make this about Ed Wood?" If it's a video-sharing site, for example, does it have Ed Wood-related clips? If it's a social media platform, are people using it to discuss the life and career of Ed Wood? If it's a database of information, is any of that information about (or applicable to) Eddie and his films? You may remember that, about a year ago, I used the Algorithmia website to colorize some scenes from Jail Bait (1954). That's the effect doing this series has had on me. Eddie has become the prism through which I see the world.

Could 'Solo: A Star Wars Story' have been saved? Maybe not, but let's try anyway.

Alden Ehrenreich looks typically blank as Han Solo because he has no character to play.

A typical screening of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Maybe Solo: A Star Wars Story never had a shot at being good, let alone necessary or impactful, it being yet another unsolicited prequel in a franchise already lousy with exposition. But I don't think it needed to be the pointless, empty, dispiriting slog that it turned out to be. Was I a fool for thinking this thing would actually be fun?

In the wake of the film's underwhelming debut—it "only" earned $84 million at the domestic box office over the Memorial Day weekend—plenty of theories are circulating as to why Solo failed to click with audiences. Franchise fatigue? Backlash from disgruntled fanboys (many of whom are weirdly fixated on their hatred of supporting character Rose Tico, who is not in Solo)? An overcrowded marketplace? All of the above?

I can't tell you with any certainty why certain viewers stayed away from Solo. That's for the industry analysts to decide. What I can tell you is that, for me, watching Solo was almost no fun at all and that I can't imagine this thing being anyone's favorite movie unless they'd only seen three movies and the other two were snuff films. And even then it would be close.

As it happened, I was in Indiana over the Memorial Day holiday, visiting my sister and her family. We all went to see the movie at the local multiplex, and I'll testify from first-hand experience that it played to soporific silence from the entire audience. I even had to fight the urge to nod off during the film's leaden middle passages and found myself wishing I'd brought a caffeinated beverage with me into the theater. The film's timid attempts at humor fell particularly flat. I think the socially-conscious droid L3-37 was supposed to be the film's designated comic relief character, the Jar Jar of Solo: A Star Wars Story. After one of her several failed wisecracks, I exhaled loudly enough with disappointment to make my niece giggle a little. That accounted for the one (1) audible laugh during the entire screening.

Curiously, speaking of Jar Jar, Solo: A Star Wars Story made me pine for the days of George Lucas' much-mocked prequel trilogy of the late '90s and early 2000s. As gratingly stupid as it is, The Phantom Menace at least provides some eye candy: cool-looking cities, cool-looking planets, cool-looking costumes, etc. Solo, on the other hand, is almost perversely drab, underlit, and murky. The title character spends the whole film bouncing from one inhospitable world to another, and we never get a good sense of the terrain in any of these places. It's like: mud world, another mud world, rock world, desert world. Gee, thanks a bunch, movie. A Star Wars movie should seem open and airy, bursting with possibilities. Solo, in sharp contrast, feels cramped and restrictive. There's not even a hint of adventure here.

Our antagonist: a petulant twerp.

I can't comment on the characters, since Solo didn't really have any. Instead, it had placeholders where interesting, well-developed characters would otherwise be. Wide-eyed, baby-faced Alden Ehrenreich bears little resemblance to Harrison Ford, other than being a bipedal mammal. I guess he says his lines all right—it helps that the script doesn't have him say, "Would that it were so simple."—but he's the least dynamic, compelling character in the movie, and that's a problem when the movie is named after him.

Does this movie even have an antagonist? I've heard Paul Bettany's character, stripey-faced gangster Dryden Vos, described as the film's main villain. But he's such a petulant little twerp it was difficult to take him seriously. In a real Star Wars movie, he'd be the lieutenant to the actual antagonist. I'm not sure how he got those scars on his face. I think he might just be a cat owner.

Everyone else? Eh, they're fine, I suppose. It's difficult to judge them properly because the script is so clunky. So many awful lines here. "She's part of the ship now." "You're the good guy." And that idiotic scene in which Han gets his last name. It's a complete ripoff of the scene from Mike Judge's Idiocracy (2006) in which Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) finds himself being renamed "Not Sure."

While we're talking about that part of the movie, let's discuss the Empire for just a moment. I've written before about how the Empire never makes the least attempt to win over the public's affections. Well, in this movie, there's actually an Empire recruiting film, and I'll be good and goddamned if it isn't seemingly inspired by a Family Guy parody. That's right: Lucasfilm is now taking cues from Fuzzy Door Productions.

A better template for this movie.

Solo even gets the little details wrong. It's a longstanding Star Wars tradition, for instance, to have weird looking bands and singers providing background music. In this movie, I think we get one lame lounge act consisting of a woman with a radio dial over her mouth (?) and a guy who's just a head in a jar. And they're off-key the whole time. Give me the Max Rebo Band or the Modal Nodes over these bozos any day!

Admittedly, I have never given a great deal of thought to what Han and Chewie were like before joining up with Luke and the Rebellion. But, if I'd had to guess, I probably would've said their lives were something like The Dukes of Hazzard.  You know, "making their way the only way they know how. That's just a little bit more than the law will allow." Han and Chewie would be like Bo and Luke. The Millennium Falcon is their General Lee. And Jabba the Hutt (absent from Solo) is their Boss Hogg. I guess that makes Lando their version of, uh, Cooter or something. Look, it's not a one-to-one comparison.

But the way I see it, young Han Solo is a hotshot smuggler and pilot. He digs himself. He thinks he's too much. He has a badass ship. He has a badass sidekick. He has a badass blaster. And he's a handsome, athletic, quick-witted dude who is constantly outsmarting both the gangsters and the Empire. To him, every Stormtrooper might as well be Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane, i.e. a dope who couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. Han's life is a series of daring escapades and narrow escapes, and that's the way he likes it. In other words, it's a goddamned adventure. The movie starts out with this narration: "It is a lawless time." To which I would have added: "And Han wouldn't have it any other way."

Above all, I thought sure young Han would be a womanizer, a galactic Don Juan constantly seducing ladies (plus occasional aliens and droids) wherever he goes. But no. Solo: A Star Wars Movie gives him a steady girlfriend, Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke), at the beginning of the movie, and Han remains stupidly loyal to her throughout the film. He's so earnest and wholesome, he might as well be a Boy Scout. I was certain there would be at least one scene in which Han is chased by a jealous husband, but Solo definitely isn't that kind of movie.

Instead, Solo wants to be basically a filmed FAQ about its title character. How did Han get his last name? How did he meet Chewbacca? How did he get his famous blaster? I would have structured it around a different question entirely: How did Han get his cynical attitude?

Another good role model for this film.

Let me elaborate. By the time we meet him in A New Hope, Han Solo is a selfish, sarcastic guy who keeps the world at arm's length. I think he does this as a defense mechanism. If he walls himself off emotionally, he can't truly get hurt. My version of his origin story would have explained how exactly he got that way.

Like I said before, my version of young Han Solo is a cocky, arrogant hotshot. But he's still a boy at heart. My script for Solo: A Star Wars Story, then, would be about Han's journey from boyhood into manhood. I would have kept the character of Qi'ra, as well as that of Han's quasi-mentor Beckett (Woody Harrelson), but their roles would have been different. Or, rather, their functions would have been different.

The first part of my Solo movie is about Han being a smuggler and having a grand old time at doing it. But then, he runs afoul of Beckett's gang somehow. Even this, though, seems like yet another lucky break for Han. Beckett has actually heard of Han, he says, and thinks that Han and Chewie would be good additions to the squad. Seeing as how the only alternative is having his head blown off, Han says yes.

Beckett's plan is to rip off some big time warlord, someone like Dryden Vos but not such a prep school punk. (And ixnay on those Garfield stripes on his face.) They have an operative on the inside: the warlord's beautiful mistress Qi'ra. Immediately, Han has the hots for Qi'ra, and soon she and Han are sneaking kisses whenever possible. It's possible that this is the first time Han Solo has ever actually been in love. Normally, he's the "find 'em, fuck 'em, forget 'em" type, but Qi'ra is different.

Beckett tells Han he has potential but that he has only been a small time operator up to now. And so, Han serves an apprenticeship under the more experienced crook, learning the ropes. In the end, the heist goes off successfully, and the warlord is killed, but it turns out Beckett has really only been using Han the whole time and plans to kill him and take his share of the money. Beckett tells Han, "It's a shame, too, kid. Because I was really beginning to like you. In fact..." Han shoots him at this point and casually kicks Beckett's body into a ravine, where it's eaten by animals. This is a key moment when Han starts to become more callous.

But the real moment of change for Han comes when he realizes that Qi'ra, too, was only in this for herself. She needed money to buy her way out of being a kept woman. Now she has it, and she doesn't need Han anymore. This has not been foreshadowed in any way throughout the movie, so the moment should feel like a real gut punch to the audience. We've come to know and like Qi'ra, and it's devastating to watch her dump Han. But she's not been a goody-goody either. She's more like a character out of film noir. I see Han as being analogous to the private eyes from those movies, e.g. Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. The film, then, would be about how Han lets some dame play him for a chump and how he learns a tough life lesson along the way. That's classic Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett-type stuff.

My movie ends with Han and Chewie in some shithole cantina halfway across the galaxy. Based on the way he's talking, we can see he's already started to develop the cynical persona of the Han we knew from the older movies. Suddenly, a strange emissary (Greedo?) walks up to Han and offers him a business card. It's from Jabba the Hutt. Han looks intrigued. Smash cut to end credits.

So, yeah, that's my take on Solo: A Star Wars Story. The TLDR version is this: Solo should have been Dukes of Hazzard in Outer Space. Just imagine this but with spaceships.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: Remembering "Jail Bait: The Director's Cut" (1994)

Dolores Fuller scolds Clancy Malone on the VHS cover of Jail Bait.

This sticker was a common sight in the 1990s.

Ed Wood's notoriety from having been named the worst director of all time in The Golden Turkey Awards in 1980 was wearing off just a little by the end of the decade. But his posthumous career would come roaring back in the 1990s, thanks to two major developments: the publication of Rudolph Grey's oral history Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992) and the premiere of Tim Burton's star-studded biopic Ed Wood (1994).

Suddenly, Eddie  was "hot" again, and his comeback happened to coincide with a general resurgence of public interest in all things considered "camp" and "kitsch." This was back when the internet was still fairly primitive, so consumers were much more reliant on physical media, including compact discs and videotapes. This was, therefore, a golden age of reissues. Lots of old albums and movies suddenly came back into prominence and started appearing in spiffy new editions on store shelves. Yesterday's disposable junk was today's marketable "collectors' item."

Leading the charge was a Los Angeles-based reissue label called Rhino Records. Now a part of the Warner Music Group behemoth, Rhino started in 1973 as a quirky, brick-and-mortar record retailer. Within a few years, Rhino was releasing records of its own (generally novelty numbers), and by the 1980s, it was a thriving reissue label with a wide variety of products. It was only natural that they would transition into marketing video tapes as well, again specializing in kitsch and nostalgia.

Some Rhino VHS tapes.

The work of Edward D. Wood, Jr. seemed tailor-made for a company like Rhino. As I remember it, Rhino Video was the preeminent distributor of Eddie's movies in the 1990s during the heyday of Nightmare of Ecstasy and the Burton film. The first VHS editions of Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), Glen or Glenda (1953), Night of the Ghouls (1959), and Bride of the Monster (1955) that I ever owned were all from Rhino. I even had the three-tape set with the pink faux-angora box. I still have it, in fact.

Rhino also released some titles that Eddie had merely written rather than directed. The Violent Years, for instance, was marketed as part of the company's Teenage Theater series, hosted by 1950s glamour girl Mamie Van Doren. Much to Steve Apostolof's chagrin, Orgy of the Dead bore a garish pink and green sticker marking it as part of "The Ed Wood Collection." Meanwhile, Joe Robertson's Love Feast was regurgitated by Rhino as Pretty Models All in a Row, complete with doctored credits fraudulently suggesting that Ed Wood himself had directed it! And, while we're talking about Wood-related films, let's not forget that Rhino bankrolled its own quirky, humorous documentary about Eddie: Look Back in Angora (1994), directed by Ted Newsom.

One of Rhino's strangest yet least heralded Wood releases from this era was a 1994 "director's cut" of Eddie's turgid 1954 crime drama Jail Bait. Even though it was made during Eddie's golden age and features many of his regulars (Timothy Farrell, Dolores Fuller, Lyle Talbot, Mona McKinnon, Bud Osborne, and Conrad Brooks), not to mention future Hercules star Steve Reeves, Jail Bait has never been as loved as its siblings. It lacks the cross-dressing of Glenda and the sci-fi/horror elements of Bride and Plan 9. It also lacks the commanding screen presence of Bela Lugosi, though Herbert Rawlinson makes a valiant effort, wheezing through his final screen role. For all these reasons, fascinating though it is, Jail Bait just isn't as instantly fun as the other Wood films of the 1950s.
 

Rhino's 1994 version of Jail Bait.

Another problem with Jail Bait, at least for many modern viewers, is that it contains a two-and-a-half-minute blackface sequence lifted wholesale from Ron Ormond's Yes Sir, Mr. Bones (1951). Performed by Cotton Watts and his wife Chick, this comedic routine presents African-Americans as being slow-witted, cowardly, and animal-like. Since the movie's plot revolves around a nighttime robbery of a theater, this footage is supposed to represent a show being staged at the doomed venue.

Rhino's 1994 edition excises the Ormond footage almost entirely -- leaving only a shot of a theater audience and a curtain closing -- and replaces it with a rather tame burlesque routine by Evelyn West (1921-2004), a legendary cabaret performer of the 1940s, '50s, and '60s. (Thanks to Ed Wood superfan Milton Knight for making the initial identification!) My learned colleague Greg Dziawer is currently researching both Cotton Watts and Evelyn West, and he'll have much more to say about both of them in the near future.

Rhino, meanwhile, is vague about how this supposed "director's cut" was assembled, since Ed Wood himself had been dead for nearly 16 years by then. The explanatory notes on the back cover of the VHS tape were penned by Kansas City-based film distributor Wade Williams, who has occasionally claimed to hold a copyright on Ed Wood's 1950s films. You can see from this passage that Williams is playing into Ed's campy "so bad, it's good" image from The Golden Turkey Awards, even mentioning that book by name. Williams openly admits that the Evelyn West footage was "not included with the original release of the picture" but was "discovered when the long-lost narrative was unearthed." It is not identified or credited in any way, but a title card says "FOLLIES THEATRE, LOS ANGELES." And Evelyn West did appear in a 1947 film called A Night at the Follies, directed by W. Merle Connell.

Williams also says Jail Bait was "filmed entirely on location in the underbelly of 1950's Hollywood," which is patently untrue. It was, in fact, shot at various places in Los Angeles County, California. A bar scene, for instance, was shot at the Hunters Inn in Temple City. A robbery was filmed at the Monterey Theatre in Monterey Park. (The film was also previewed there, according to Rudolph Grey.) And a scene at a police station was shot in Alhambra, where cast member Mona McKinnon lived at the time. Lyle Talbot remembered filming the climactic swimming pool scene at a motel on Sunset Boulevard. Much of the film appears to have been shot -- like Eddie's other movies of this period -- on a sound stage. Cast member Theodora Thurman recalled working on "a small set."

Anyway, here are Williams' notes:

Wade Williams describes Jail Bait.

Other than the Cotton Watts sequence, the biggest difference between the 1994 version of Jail Bait and all other versions is the title sequence. In most currently-available prints of the film, the credits roll over some wobbly footage of a police car driving down a street at night. In the Rhino version, however, the credits appear as a series of grainy still images. Apparently the "negative" that Williams "unearthed" was in poor shape, and this part of the movie wasn't quite salvageable.

The "director's cut" of Jail Bait didn't have much of a shelf life beyond this 1994 release. Subsequent DVD releases of the movie have reverted to the Cotton Watts footage and are generally sharper in picture quality than Rhino's version, complete with fully-restored opening credits. The 1994 version, however, was included on a 2007 double-disc set called The Ed Wood Collection: A Salute to Incompetence from a company called Passport.

It is from that collection that I gleaned the following clip, to show you how the Evelyn West footage was incorporated into Jail Bait. The burlesque footage seems to have been shot without sound, so some borrowed music has been dubbed in. Curiously, the last minute of this routine takes its audio directly from the Cotton Watts blackface footage! (It kicks in at about the 1:42 mark.) If you listen carefully, you can even hear the audience laughing. Enjoy!

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Loop Orbit, Part Eight by Greg Dziawer

John Holmes and a buddy in the 1974 loop Pier Passion.

The essential shape of Edward D. Wood Jr’s involvement in the murky world of 8mm porn loops of the 1970’s runs as follows:

- Ed wrote subtitles, per anecdote in Rudolph Grey’s Nightmare of Ecstasy, for 8mm porn loops produced by Noel Bloom, son of Ed’s boss in his work as a magazine staffer. For a variety of imprints run by Bernie Bloom from the late ‘60s through the mid-'70s and beyond, Ed wrote short stories, texts accompanying pictorials, articles, editorials, photo captions. Any and everything, and he wrote at a pace equaling the total output of the other three or four writers on staff at any given time.

Beyond subtitling the loops, I believe Ed also wrote box-cover summaries (aggregated into catalog inserts included with individual loops). The general consensus among Woodologists remains that Ed “made” the first 19 Swedish Erotica loops. Those quotes are mine, loosely Ed-tributing to him the status as creative principle (i.e. director/writer/editor/cinematographer?) of those loops, and by reasonable inference, hundreds of others across dozens of other loop series. 

- Ed worked for Bernie and Noel Bloom for the better part of the last decade of his life, right up until the summer before he passed, in December of 1978. He left behind a hand-written resume which listed over 700 “short picture subjects” from 1971 through 1973. Some pages list a total number of minutes in the upper corner, and those totals correspond to the number of loops listed for that year times eight, as in eight minutes (the approximate length of the typical loop). 

- Ed worked in the field of loops, in other words, without a doubt. But in what capacity? That remains uncertain. In the hopes that the truth will reveal itself to me, I continue transcribing the subtitles of Bloom-family loops. As the pair comes close on the heels of the fabled first 19 Swedish Erotica loops, we’re focusing this week on the two-parter Pier Passion, starring none other than John Holmes. 

PIER PASSION

Swedish Erotica Loop #20 circa 1974

Credits: 

Art Director: Hilary Louis

Set Decorator: Davis Marsh

Script Supervisor: Carl Albert

Technical Coordinator: Jamie Wright

Casting: Stephanie George

Produced and Directed by Don A. Sweet and M.P. Ronaldo 

Two blondes on the pier, walking into and away from the camera as the credits conclude.

Blonde 1 (in tight black shorts and top): LET’S PLAY SOME GAMES…

John Holmes happens to be walking the pier, with his buddy. 

John: HEY, LOOK AT THAT!

He’s referring to the girls, who are playing a game, and they know it. 

Blonde 1: THESE TWO GUYS ARE WATCHING US. 

The girls approach the guys. 

John: HI, THERE!

The couples immediately pair off, John’s buddy walking off with Blonde 1, the two never to be seen again in this pair of loops. It’s a shame, as she’s played by the awesome Saundra/Brigitte, who appeared in a small number of Bloom-family loops for a short period of time circa 1973-1974.  

John: SEE YOU LATER.

John and his girl walk into the camera, as we dissolve to an overhead shot of a mattress lying right on the floor, on a shag rug. The foot of the bed is adorned with a fuzzy red blanket, and the back wall of the room behind the bed is entirely curtained. No, we are not watching Twin Peaks. We’re on a highly characteristic set, familiar in its essentials from hundreds of other Bloom-family loops. 

John and Blonde 2 enter the set.

John: WILD BODY!

John undresses her down to a white bra and black panties, stockings and garter. Once again, John Holmes seems to be in possession of some sort of magical power. In this case, we don’t even get a sinlge line of dialogue devoted to a come-on. It’s not needed, of course, in the purest sense of this sort of male porn fantasy. 

Blonde 2: OHH!!!!

Blonde 2: AHHH!!!!

Foreplay. John goes down, and she returns the favor. 

Blonde 2: UMMM!!!

Dissolve edits as she services John orally, in close-ups. She wears an elaborate necklace. We have not yet arrived at the colored chiffon neckscarf, perhaps the signature of the endless Swedish Erotica series. 

John: Let’s do 69!

And so they do, now five minutes into the loop and still engaged in foreplay. 

Blonde 2: UMMM!!!

John: I’M BIG. LET ME GREASE YOU UP!

A ubiquitous prop in the Bloom-family of loops, John breaks out a large jar of Vaseline and scoops his fingers into it. (See also Swedish Erotica loop #7 Park Lovers for same.)

Blonde 2: OH, THAT FEELS SOO WARM!

Guess what happens next?

Blonde 2: PUT IT IN, BUT BE GENTLE!

Blonde 2: OH!!!!

Blonde 2: AHHH! FUCK ME! FUCK ME!

The first part of Pier Passion ends without a climax (in the version reviewed here), the sex entirely vaginal, setting the stage for the follow-up all-anal finale. 

The onscreen title, as with other Holmes two-parters early on in the Swedish Erotica series:

PIER PASSION (CONTINUED FROM PART I)

Swedish Erotica loop #21 circa 1974

Although there are no credits on the version I reviewed, being a continuation of the sex scene from the first ensures it was made by the same folks. Unlike the first loop, which has an inordinate amount of narrative and sexual buildup, we begin here with a quick montage derived from the first loop, and then immediately fall into anal sex. 

Blonde 2: BE CAREFUL, IT IS GOING TO HURT.

Blonde 2: AHHH! TAKE IT OUT. 

Blonde 2: IT HURTS! IT HURTS!

This is very characteristic territory in the larger realm of Bloom-family loops. (See again Park Lovers, for near verbatim lines.)

Blonde 2: OHH!!!  

The inevitable - and in this case near-immediate - turnabout (i.e. the warped male rape-fantasy, a staple of porn then, before and since).

Blonde 2: OH, IT HURTS SOOO GOOD!

Blonde 2: PUT IT IN!

Dissolve edits…graphic anal sex close-ups. 

Blonde 2: OH, DEEPER! DEEPER!

John: ON YOUR KNEES.

Blonde 2: FUCK MY ASS!!!!

Blonde 2: AHHHH!!!

Blonde 2: OH, THAT’S GOOD!!!

The remainder consists of anal sex, John coaxing his massive tool deeper into Blonde’s 2’s ass, as she claws at the blanket in cutaways. 

Blonde 2: FUCK MY MOUTH.

John: EAT IT UP.

We finally get the money shot we were denied in part one. 

John: LET ME WASH IT OFF.

Holmes. Always the gentleman….

Don A. Sweet and M.P. Ronaldo are credited as the producer/director of numerous Swedish Erotica loops of this era (including another two-parter, Horny Dreams, Swedish Erotica loops #30 and #31). 

John Holmes’ hair is starting to get frizzy, and his body starting to mature past it’s gawky stage. This is circa 1974, Pier Passion running concurrent to series including Blazing Films and John’s Girls. The artistic tropes, the set decorations, the editing, the performers…all of it is highly consistent across these and many other series, and the credits here (though likely pseudonyms) are clues to the creative principles responsible for the larger body of loops produced by Noel Bloom.  

It is evident though – in both Holmes’ appearance and the set decorations in those loops that correspond with decorations in the Wood-directed-and-written features Necromania and The Young Marrieds – that the first 19 Swedish Erotica loops were made perhaps a year or so prior to Pier Passion. (A fellow Woodologolist has an 8mm copy of the first loop in the series, The Virgin Next Door, carrying a 1973 copyright.)

Saundra/Brigitte, although she quickly disappears from Pier Passion at the outset of the first loop, connects together a clutch of loops. She is listed on box-cover summaries or in loop subtitles under these two names, but beyond her handful of appearances in the Bloom-family loops, nothing seems to be known of her. Although they are dressed differently, and it is in no way meant to be a continuation from Pier Passion, Saundra/Brigitte does feature in a loop with the same man as here playing John’s buddy. In BLAZING FILMS loop #8 Turning Him On (also released overseas by Color Climax as Exciting Film No 936, Housewife Pranks). Saundra/Brigitte makes a glass of orange juice, and her boyfriend comes over. They retire briefly to the same curtained room as the one in Pier Passion, although the rest of the set is entirely redressed, before heading back downstairs to have sex. Subtitled sex, repeating verbatim lines from scads of other Bloom-family loops. The Color Climax version from 1977 has no subs, and is dubbed into German. 

Back to Pier Passion. It, too, would turn up in 1977 in an interesting variant. Color Climax of Copenhagen was one of the world’s largest distributors of loops, and Noel Bloom would often release Color Climax films in stateside versions (yes, Ed subtitled silent Color Climax loops). On their Expo Films label, Color Climax released Pier Passion in a re-edit, and possibly containing some new footage. The re-editing consists of paring the meeting at the pier at the start down to bare essentials, then cutting right into the sex scene. The second part of Pier Passion as released by Swedish Erotica kicks in less than halfway thru Big Backdoor Boy (Expo Film No. 82), fitting (or perhaps barely or not), given the title.  

It has been shorn of subtitles, and the audio consists of dubbed German. It’s fascinating to see a film shot silent turn dubbed into another language, especially one released silent with subtitles in its original tongue. Most intriguing, the final subtitle of the second part of Pier Passion in the 8mm subtitled Swedish Erotica release version takes on a very different meaning. The version I reviewed of part two of the Swedish Erotica loop ends with John pulling his partner up off of the bed and we fade to black. In the foreign release-version, we cut to a shower, the girl on her knees in front of John, who pees into her mouth. The camera cuts close in on her, over the course of a mere twelve seconds, and THE END graphic appears (in a characteristic font for the US Swedish Erotica loops) as we fade to black, John “washing it off” per the subtitled version. 

So what’s going on here? This kinky twist at the end would not have been all that shocking circa 1974 in a hardcore loop. In all likelihood, I surmise (especially given the style of THE END graphic) that the version of part two that I reviewed was cut somewhere along the way. (Source: Blue Vanities Peepshow Loops 1970’s Vol 15, released on VHS in 1988.) 

The credits of Pier Passion remain a mystery. I have numerous speculations about a few of the creative principles likely involved, but it would run against my loathing of reckless mis-Ed-tributions to start making claims of collaboration without at least a reasonable inference. Allow me, though, this one stretch: I know more than a few devoted Woodologists who feel strongly that Ed Wood was involved in the set decoration of Necromania and The Young Marrieds, and by reasonable inference, the myriad Bloom-family loops across dozens of series. I increasingly agree with this viewpoint. The set decorator credited on Pier Passion is Davis Marsh. Davis, of course, is Ed’s middle name. I told you it was a stretch. 

By 1974, the Bloom-family of loops were beginning to crystallize into what would remain the flagship label of the Caballero Control Corp enterprise, one of the first and most durable porn behemoths. It’s intriguing to know Ed was there, working prolifically in various capacities, but the exact nature of his work in loops still remains elusive. 

We will overview the mysterious Saundra in a future Ed Wood Wednesday, a collaborator of Ed’s in that every line of dialogue she ever “spoke” on screen may very well have been written by Ed. We’ll delve deeper into the Bloom/Color Climax collaboration. And we’ll return to the Swedish Erotica series of loops. Subtitled 8mm versions of the loops continued past the first hundred and fifty loops, all betraying the same hand of authorship. 

Edward D. Wood, Jr.