Come Softly

NYC porn at its most typical, COME SOFTLY opens and closes with the pirated soft-rock hit title song. It concerns the "Date-a-Star" escort/prostitution service run by Eric Edwards and Helen Madigan. As "Dr. M", Edwards is a male prostitute sent out to female requesters, but by film's end he's the receptionist answering the phone, to send out more traditional female whores.

Eric and Helen also appear on a very cheap set enacting a live stage sex show called "Adam & Eve" supposedly set in a jungle. Other interesting sidelights include a scene set at Greenwich Village's Cinema Village (still in business 40 years later now), which is showing a Carol Kane movie (must be HESTER STREET), as well as an atmospheric scene near the end where Jackie Gleason's "The Honeymooners" is playing on TV (it is still played in NYC on broadcast TV 40 years on at holiday time).

Mailer, who was cranking out quickie porn features almost as quickly as the champ Shaun Costello at this time, throws in plenty of diverting content like girls masturbating in the kitchen with carrots, a little bondage, and popular NYC regulars like Vanessa del Rio and Marlene Willoughby doing their thing. It all adds up to nothing.