Dames

Second only to BEVERLY HILLS EXPOSED in being relentlessly flogged on mid-80s Essex Video releases, DAMES was clearly meant to be one of the company's prestige ventures of 1985. Perhaps it was the larger decline of the adult industry that led it to sink like a stone since, but for this reviewer's money, it may just be that it's not all that good.

Structured as a series of vignettes, the film's smartest idea comes in trying to make a lot out of a little: though pitched as a big-budget feature in the trailers, the film is basically shot on a single set, re-dressed in each segment for a different time period. Narrative through-line is a series of stories related by Paul Thomas, not-quite-convincingly playing a guy in his mid-70s (admittedly a tall ask for any mid-30s actor) who's lived through six or seven decades at the same run-down bar. Currently a strip joint busted for prostitution in the opening, the place was a swinging nightclub in 1928, a bar in '44 and '54, and a discotheque in the '70s. As cop Eric Edwards hauls off hookers and johns, Thomas relates a series of anecdotes to reporter Sheri St. Clair about the brassy women that have populated the place over the years:

The 1928 segment is best, with Sharon Mitchell as a glamorous nightclub singer who catches the eye of gangster John Leslie. His advances rebuffed, he eventually comes to her rescue when she's attacked after hours by a couple thugs, and the two end up making love - though there's a surprise in store. 1944 finds a newly minted war widow giving in to her grief with a couple sailors in the restroom while kindly waitress Gina Carrera tends to paraplegic Herschel Savage in the back. In '54, Thomas himself rescues a prostitute (Karen Summer) from a sadistic vice cop while getting over a split with his wife, while in '75, closeted lesbian Tish Ambrose gets initiated into the ways of Sappho by an initially snotty disco queen (Aurora) who reveals a heart of gold. Things wrap up in present-day, where St. Clair, taking pity on Thomas as he's about to be arrested, uses her whiles to distract Edwards while the old codger makes his getaway.

Film's ostensible theme, that a "dame" is more than just a lady, but a self-possessed and strong-willed woman who knows what she wants and takes it, is shakily elaborated. It's not that the characters don't fit the bill, but rather that most of the stories just aren't that interesting. Short of Mitchell's segment, there's just not a lot of conflict animating the action, and if the film is going for subtler characterizations of inner strength (like Ambrose slowly coming into her own under the guidance of her less inhibited partner), it doesn't provide enough detail to achieve this level of nuance. It's a laudable project for writer Ron Sullivan - albeit one he undertook more successfully in the LA RONDE-like OUTLAW LADIES - but as an example of attempted feminist hardcore, it's half-baked. Proficiently though uninspiringly directed by one-timer "Krystal Bleu" (perhaps a higher-profile personality moonlighting under a pseudonym?), DAMES marks a fitting elegy for the twilight years of 35mm porn, where projects like these were destined to become as quaint a memory as Thomas' ladies of the evening.