Long before the current mindless craze for "This Ain't XXX" spoofs of TV shows, Joe Sarno was cranking out desultory porn satires in exactly the same vein. This spoof of the ground-breaking Norman Lear series is merely embarrassing.
I was slightly surprised that it had a real script, instead of the ad libs and porn-talk setups of most of Sarno's hardcore quickies. Unfortunately, it's a lousy script, poorly delivered in affected manner by the cast.
Chief culprit is Ron Jeremy as Itchy Bonkers, repetitively mimicking (with zero success) Carroll O'Connor's distinctive intonation in his classic role of Archie Bunker. What passes for a plot is Hispanic neighbors, the Sanchezes, moving in next door, so that Itchy can spout his usual racist-lite gibberish. If that's all that Sarno got out of watching the original series, it's pretty sad.
The rest of the cast is fairly random, with Shanna McCullough as Eatit Bonkers and Jacqueline Lorians as her daughter Horial looking to be the same age. Both are beautiful as always, and needlessly deliver the best performances.
Michael Knight doesn't get into the spirit of the piece as son-in-law Luke, affectionately called Dickhead (of course) by Itchy. Sarno's favorite sexual theme, incest, gets a minor nod when Dickhead easily seduces his step-mom, giving the fans a satisfying McCullough/Knight hump scene.
Basically Sarno mixes and matches his cast to eat up the lengthy (102 minutes) running time with mechanical sex. The threadbare sets are pitiful: a cheapo living room with Goodwill furniture for the Bonkers; a bare, under-dressed bedroom upstairs for humping purposes; a slapdash bar set that doesn't look like a local pub but rather somebody's downstairs rec room; and an ugly storage room with mattress for more humping behind the bar.
Rick Savage is Pablo Sanchez, with a terrible Spanish accent; he gets a couple of outdoor on the sidewalk dialog scenes, rare for these Sarno claustrophobic exercises in that usually the femme cast wanders around MOS out of doors for lame transition purposes only.
As his wife Maria, Jessica Longe is a poor imitation of Cara Lott (especially her short-cropped blonde tresses) and doesn't try for a cute voice or accent at all. This prompts Dickhead, after he delivers his money shot on her, to ask: "Are you sure you're Spanish?", to which Maria meekly replies "I'm Danish".
Biggest surprise here is little-known actress Christie/Christine Robbins as the local bartender, a tall-tall drink of water who approaches Cody Nicole in the height department. She's effective in a couple of sex scenes, with Jeremy and later Lorians.
Hurting the video is the use of the same old library rock music that appears in nearly every one of Sarno's '80s junkers. He also has his femmes, especially Shanna, overdo the moaning & groaning of passion that has become his unfortunate trademark.
At one point, after Savage has seduced Lorians, they go off to see a movie, THE HORNEYMOONERS II, naturally a cheap plug for a Sarno opus. That video is apparently lost, no great loss.
Saddest postscript is that on the recent poorly-done belated DVD release of Sarno's MARCY, he is identified on the back of the box as the director of "BALL IN THE FAMILY and HUNG JURY". After a lifetime of making movies, his 2011 posthumous salute by the current moronic video purveyors of smut is to single out two of his crummiest video efforts.
