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The Buñuelian gag offers two very different actresses -- Nancy Welch as the schoolgirl lending her doll for a cunningulus lesson, Mimi Morgan as a wallflower with a horny streak -- before Marilyn Chambers can properly emerge from beneath the mummy wraps at the hospital. Eve to Jim and Artie Mitchell is all three, and also the promiscuous genie of ‘70s feminism, who once freed cannot be bottled up again. The disc-jockey swain (Matthew Armon) courts the timid heroine, then leads her into a car accident with jealousy and fear of a black penis (Johnny Keyes). The first half jiggles Cukor’s A Woman’s Face with occasional Lesteroid cuts, the rest pursues the Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice dilemma mid-coitus: "Have you ever thought about group sex? Sharing the wealth with our friends?" "Oh shut up and just fuck me." "Old-fashioned hang-ups" keep Chambers from enjoying the couple’s introduction to the togas-and-eyeshadow world of orgies, with the film rather boldly ditching the money shots and instead dissolving to the two driving home later on, pissed off at each other. The next bacchanalia is more to her liking, she lounges dreamily in bed afterwards while a glowering Armon silently crushes a beer can in his hand. The Mitchells’ visual shabbiness belies their provocative ideas -- a guy-on-guy snippet is inserted almost subliminally amid the humping, middle-class monogamy here is what "doth the winged life destroy" (Blake). The final group-grope includes a guest in full Scarlett O’Hara sitting by herself until some genius remembers to lift up her crinoline dress, Keyes arrives in a damson tux and scoops Chambers up. Eve gets the garden to herself, Adam is banished. With Kandi Jones, Dale Meador, Damona Martin, Cozy Edmundson, and June Richards..
--- Fernando F. Croce |