The Fur Affair

With four decades of hardcore pornography flooding our culture, viewers have become accustomed to the "wall-to-wall sex" approach of a lion's share of XXX movies and videos, and virtually 100% of internet offerings. THE FUR AFFAIR presages this rush to the bottom by presenting a feature film with all sex content but no penetration or ejaculation (hence soft porn).

What passes for a storyline is a red herring: this is all about the sex. An alarm clock wakes up a couple, and sexy, pale-skinned, blue-eye-shadowed Judy insists her hubby service her before going off to work.

He complies, and tedium sets in quickly as he goes through endless foreplay. She sort of gives him a tentative hand-job (through his boxer shorts, frontal male nudity being minimized in the movie), and he simulates cunnilingus. Simulated fellatio and sixty-nine follow, and when Judy rides him there is no danger of showing penetration.

This coy approach extends to their house guest Sue, a sultry, long-haired woman who masturbates on her bedpost after first coating it with Vaseline. Once again, the framing eschews explicitness, but for fans addicted to being teased this is quality soft porn. Both women, especially Sue, sport wild & woolly pubic hair, giving rise to the film's prurient title.

Closest the film comes to XXX is Sue's spreading her labia in tight closeup for the gynecologists in attendance, but she carefully does not insert any fingers or other visible objects. As a result, Something Weird issued this on video not in its various hardcore series but rather on Vol. 22 of Bucky Beaver's Double Softies.

After his boss phones and insists that our hero come to work (minimal plot has him previously mentioning that a union strike vote is being held today -something of a Freudian Slip on the part of our anonymous and most definitely non-union filmmakers), Judy and Sue are left together for a lesbian tryst. Judy shows Sue her new vibrator, but it's used for rubbing, no penetration.

The gals are interrupted by another phone call, inviting Judy over to a gal pal's home, so she brings Sue along. The expected threesome does not occur, but instead Judy does an endless dance (backed by a lengthy Carlos Santana track) for the other two women, demonstrating lots of energy but no terpsichorean skills. Judy and her hostess Diane have sex on the couch, and this interminable sequence is notable only for the cameraman generally keeping two planes of action in focus, even when Sue's long-limbed movements become spasmodic.

After Sue leaves (evidently perturbed at not getting any sapphic love), the film ends on a stag film note, with the arrival of the gas man who tells Diane he's here "to check her lines". Of course she and Judy service him, but even when they are both doing fellatio the camera angle and framing keeps things inexplicit.

Cryptic ending was a drag, as we hear someone arrive (off-screen) and announce: "That's the man, the man with the mustache". The trio freezes in shock and the audience is left to wonder what happened.

Diane, who had previously wowed me in her XXX footage and interview in the documentary "American Sexual Revolution", looks a lot like Mena Suvari here, and her beauty is about the only reason to suffer through THE FUR AFFAIR. The other two leading actresses are unattractive, and would have only made sense in casting if they were permitted to do their XXX thing. Softcore fans deserve a real storyline, wholly lacking here.

Muzak track is crummy, with snatches of novelty rock hits like "Peanut Butter" and the familiar instrumental break from The Castaways' "Liar, Liar" betraying a camp sensibility.