Throughout the '60s and '70s, Carlos Tobalina ran several California adult cinemas including L.A.'s fabled Mayan Theater, shooting many of his erotic "epics" on the premises, an anonymous stretch of beach usually doubling for the exotic locations promised by poster and title, e.g. I AM CURIOUS TAHITI ! He adopted the "Troy Benny" moniker for his move into hardcore territory with 1974's SEXUAL ECSTASY OF THE MACUMBA with cult adult actress Nina Fause. Many more fornication films were to follow, most of them marked by a dispiriting listlessness in spite of the cooperation of many industry top marquee names. There were a few exceptions to the rule however, the lively SEXUAL HEIGHTS begetting my vote for Tobalina's high watermark as an adult filmmaker.
Nominal plot has a group of divorced men planning revenge on the teenage baby-sitter (radiant Tawny Pearl whose threesome with Mike Ranger and Dorothy Lemay in Kirdy Stevens' original TABOO remains firmly etched in my memory) who cost one of them (Herschel Savage, mixing charm and humor to beguiling effect) his marriage. Stocking up on booze, drugs and porno tapes - cue left-over footage from some other Tobalina shoot featuring Serena, Angel Ducharme and John Seeman - they don drag with Hersch playing maid to "husband" Jamie Gillis and "wife" Jesse Adams (the good-looking blond stud with Sharon Kane in Tom Janovich's SMALL TOWN GIRLS) with Milton Ingley (a/k/a "Michael Morrison") posing as the family chauffeur.
Inviting tasty Tawny to take care of their imaginary offspring (a doll in a cot ; she doesn't even bother to check !), they pretend to leave the house for a night on the town. In reality, they are lying in wait until each of them can get a piece of baby-sitter butt. Once the simple situation is sketched, the action rarely lets up with Tawny phoning her girlfriends for much-needed reinforcement against the boinking battalions. Busty brunette Holly McCall (the annoying waitress from Sam Weston's NOTHING TO HIDE) and lithe honey-blonde Lysa Thatcher (mesmerizing star of Howard Winters' NEON NIGHTS) each provide their own potent brand of sensuality. Cast as a pre-teen, one shot wonder Lolita Grant looks all too credibly under age however, giving her enthusiastic participation in the film's climactic group grope an alluring whiff of the forbidden that might sit uncomfortably with more politically correct viewers.
Interspersed with the movie's main thrust are a couple of John Holmes sequences with ravishing redhead Kitty Shayne (John Leslie's nosy neighbor from Jeff Fairbanks' first-rate EXPOSED) and the genre's all purpose Oriental Mai Lin. Like the "video" footage, I assumed these were loops that might have been initially intended for another of Tobalina's assembly line products until a dialog bit between Holmes and Gillis proved that the original Mr. Big was indeed very much part of this project after all. While the revenge set-up may strike some as distasteful, the harmless way it plays out in the movie itself will presumably win over any potential detractors. There's even a "true love conquers all" ending of sorts to soothe any offense this mildly subversive material may have caused.
