Canadian filmmaker Ted Leversuch truly embarrasses himself with this "no effort, zero result" made in the U.S.A. precursor to his acceptable SEX AND THE LONELY WOMAN, related in name only. (Though titled Part II, this feature is actually a reissue/retitled version of THE PERFECT ARRANGEMENT, shot in 1970.) After suffering through it courtesy of a badly truncated print issued by Something Weird Video, I now realize why pornmeisters usually used fake monikers or left their credits blank on these junkers.
I'm no Leversuch hater -I enjoyed the nudist camp epic HAVE FIGURE, WILL TRAVEL he worked on early in his career, but there is no excuse for this travesty. One can readily infer that only the minimum was delivered, in terms of budget, casting and execution, to qualify for the lowliest of playdates.
Played up heavily on the shill-oriented liner notes for the video box is star Barbara Mills, lovely as ever. The only value of the entire film is less than a minute of full-frontal-nudity by her, and I would rather have watched her in a 2-minute segment of a peep show reel than this sad excuse for a feature.
She's a horny housewife, whose gay blade film producer (Freudian slip time, anyone?) hubby neglects her and maintains an open marriage -she is free to get down with any guy she wants, while he dallies with male playmates.
Final reels of this endeavor are devoted to a kidnapping subplot, which is so badly scripted, acted and directed as to put the film beyond ineptness into downright camp. The gang-rape of Mills by the 3 thugs is 100% dull, not even titillating to the rough trade segment of the audience. In fact, once it becomes clear that Mills won't be disrobing anymore, there's no reason to keep watching this garbage.
Casting is beyond poor, as the TV scriptwriter romantic leading role is filled by nondescript Sergio Regules, who is apparently dubbed in English in his scenes with Mills. Her husband, Art Jenoff, is a terrible actor (who died in 1970, prior to the film's initial release), and the trio of thugs (plus some cops) probably never heard of Stella Adler. Only other female in the cast is stuck with a nothing role as Mills' black maid. Even in the crummiest of 1-day wonder skin flicks the fans used to get to see 3 or 4 women au naturel, but not here.
Truly insulting is the fact that there are huge jump cuts throughout the SWV edition, and except for one rather desultory sequence with Regules (after he unconvincingly plays hard to get over & over) each time a sex scene begins the film jumps away to a new scene. I felt cheated -even when I'm consuming as lousy a film as this I deserve to have the naughty bits left intact. Beware!
