Back in the heyday of theatrical porno movies, Carlos Tobalina/Troy Benny released "Carnal Haven", starring Sharon Thorpe as a sex doctor leading Frisco denizens through exercises to improve their bedroom technique. Fully 20 years later he virtually remade the clunker as "The Love Champions", opening with an aerial shot of the Golden Gate Bridge but staged entirely inside a mansion (with luxury cars sitting outside, representing subliminally the spoils accrued to porn producers as shown in CT's stock shots) where he takes on the role as Doctor Carlos, with star Colleen Brennan (misspelled Brennen in the credits) showing the youngsters the ropes.
Lame intro premise has a judge assigning would-be couples seeking divorces to see sex therapist Brennan before final dissolution of their marriages. Joke of this awful film is that at the end one lady declares: "You didn't really save our marriage, but you made us happy!", CT's feel-good hedonistic message. Running gag is that the good doc is a lecher, but fortunately all of Tobalina's love-making to his femme patients (he insists on personally "servicing" each and every one of them) is omitted.
What's left is tedious and repetitive white-coater action (Tobalina actually wears a white coat with stethoscope dangling around his neck) supervised by Brennan and a tall, unattractive actress as a fellow therapist. Main actors are the couples Tom Byron & Danielle plus less familiar (non-stars) David Derek and Blair Castle/Brooke Fields, former assigned to Colleen while Ms. Unnamed tends to David and Lisa (perhaps our auteur's in-joke reference to the brilliant Frank & Eleanor Perry classic film, an art-house hit in the early '60s). The couples unite with their handlers for a 6 on a bed orgy to climax the lengthy first section of the film.
That leaves half an hour for an uninterrupted orgy to end the show, in which a dozen players hump non-stop on the floor, 7 of them women, with a well-photographed circular daisy chain for the femmes. This orgy is presaged at the beginning of the DVD by highlights, which play better than the tedium that follows.
So we get to see redhead Colleen, better loved in her earlier soft-core incarnation as Sharon Kelly, show us the wonders of the Inca Knot and other legendary gimmicks preciously taught to us fans by Sharon Thorpe. In the latter years of his career Tobalina didn't put much effort into his films, so it's not surprising he would merely repeat himself here, especially since young archivist/distributors with no appreciation of history or quality had not yet come along to unearth crap like his "Carnal Haven", safely gathering dust at the time in his vaults. He did remain wedded to shooting in 35mm till the bitter end, so the footage is watchable if worthless, as it takes more than format (listen carefully, you wet-behind-the-ears porno rescuers of obscure cinema) to make a movie WORTH watching.
