Las Vegas Erotica

Someone should write a book about Ray Dennis Steckler's bizarre "directing" style, which, after his first few movies, basically amounted to stringing together random footage with the barest pretense of a story. Nowhere was he worse at this than in his latter-day pornos, which he churned out at a voluminous clip (his full filmography is still being written) and with zero regard for quality.

LAS VEGAS EROTICA is one such exercise in anti-sexual tedium. Composed of outtakes from various other Steckler films (including BLACK GARTERS) as well as, apparently, whatever other spare negative the director had lying around, it goes beyond plotless to senseless, with no thru-line or anything at all to alleviate the boredom. Frequent Steckler muse Carolyn Brandt contributes vocal talent (as she did for a number of Ray's pornos) and is by far the best thing about the movie - her sultry purr is the closest the film ever comes to being sexy, and it's a shame her abilities remained otherwise wasted, victim of her ex-lover's ineptitude.

Bewilderingly, Steckler throws in someone who looks nothing like Brandt for the wraparound, plastering Carolyn's narration over MOS images of a raven-haired woman (called Raven, in fact) with a '60s-style bob. For anyone who knows what Brandt looks like, it's a disorienting combination, and even for those who don't it will read as confusing given the woman rolling around like a beaver loop girl looks like she has narrating a film as the last thing on her mind. Raven tells us she's about to take us on a tour of Las Vegas' erotic highlights, and I'd say cue stock footage, but we're already knee deep.

The film that follows is roughly divided into thirds, with the first encompassing a random roller skating girl (some weird fetish of Ray's) spying on a black couple along with a boring three-way inside a German restaurant. The 2nd - and probably most entertaining - section is a long orgy at a pool house featuring Rhonda Jo Petty. None of the action is inspired here either, but at least the bodies are more attractive and brightly lit. The cast goofs around in between the boffing, which is by turns cute and kind of annoying (the goofing and the boffing). The final section is more garbage I was barely paying attention to, with a boring lesbian tryst and finally "Raven" bringing a male visitor off in Steckler's trademark POV style.

It's hard to even critique the "direction" of a film like this, as the very term presumes an intentionality that's clearly absent here. The footage is acceptably lit (again, the pool house section is best) and the participants have proficient (if mechanical) sex, but divorced from any pretense of humanity they're just bodies fornicating on screen. Again, if the film has any merit, it's Brandt's sultry rumble, and Steckler puts it to good use as always. Beyond that, however, the film is garbage - hacked together from abandoned scraps and not even capable of fulfilling its sole function as facilitator of orgasm. Unless you're such a hopeless Steckler completist you know what you're getting yourself into, avoid it like the plague.