Resurrection of Eve (1973)
** (out of 4)
The Mitchell Brothers follow-up to their BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR is certainly more ambitious in terms of a story but that doesn't mean we're going to get a good film. In the movie we meet Eve, a shy woman who suffers a horrible car crash that leaves her face mutilated. We then meet Eve after the wreck when her rather lousy boyfriend tries to "resurrect" her sexuality by making her join a club of swingers. When I read reviews calling the story to this film excellent and more thought provoking than most adult movies it's probably a good idea to highlight the "adult movie" thing. The reason I say this is that the story here is extremely well when compared to any movie with the exception of those bump 'n grind flicks scattered throughout this golden age of porn. With that said, I'll give this film credit for trying to tell a decent story but in the end the story is just downright stupid and it's hard to believe those just wanting sex would be entertained by this and those wanting some sort of story are going to be disappointed as well. The film has three different women playing Eve: Nancy Welch as the teenager, Mimi Morgan as the pre-wreck and then Marilyn Chambers as the post-wreck. I'm really not sure what the entire point of this was unless star Chambers didn't want to appear in every scene in the film. The teenage thing kicks our film off as the 12-year-old Eve gets sex lessons from her white trash stepfather in a sequence that is so corny that you can overlook the ugly subject matter and just laugh. I'm not sure laughter is what they were going for but the situation is just so corny, the dialogue so bad and the acting so silly that I couldn't help but laugh. Chambers is going to be the main reason people watch this thing and she's certainly extremely beautiful and the performances isn't that bad either. The story being told here never really makes much sense outside of the lousy boyfriend wanting her to open up for some wilder sex. The majority of the running time features less than explicit sex scenes with only brief shots of the hardcore footage. These scenes are often filmed in a way where we see very little, which would give me the thought that your typical bump 'n grind crowd wouldn't enjoy this. The more graphic stuff happens towards the end when the orgy stuff begins to happen but by then I was already yawning and checking my watch to see how much more there was.
