Shot immediately after Joe Sarno's MARCY in late 1968 with the same trio of leading actresses, Victor Petrashevic's LOVE ME...PLEASE! is an erotically stimulating porn film.
Linda Boyce is fairly spectacular in a once-in-a-career role as Bebe, virtually on-screen for the entire movie. As the narrator ominously states to bookend the film, she represents just one, typical lonely soul in the huge metropolis who (not unlike the solitary, male viewer watching at an Adult Cinema in 1969 when the picture was released) needs love.
Except for one "talkie" scene with her psychiatrist (Dr. Lang, played by an uncredited actress who resembles Shirley Knight), Boyce voices over her role in an MOS-shot Silent Movie format. This turns out to be an asset, because by film's end the director has created a one-on-one rapport between Boyce and the viewer which is highly conducive to the film's prime directive, inducing masturbation.
Storyline is purely functional as a springboard to sex. Weary after a day of unsuccessful job hunting, Bebe is sitting watching the ducks at a pond in Central Park when a guy lights her cigarette and she takes him to her apartment for sex.
They go through many positions in a lengthy (over 9 minutes long) simulated sex scene ending with some poor dubbing of a snatch of dialog as he sneaks out après-sex. IMDb credits pic's camera operator João Fernandes with the role; he was later to become porn's pre-eminent cinematographer working on all of Gerard Damiano's classics.
Bebe visits shrink Dr. Lang, pouring out her hang-ups (since childhood) in a tearful bravura performance. Since this is direct-sound, it creates a stand-alone 1-act drama of some substance, surrounded by the Silent porn sequences that make up the rest of the picture.
Back home Boyce masturbates in an 8-minute scene in front of her mirror, clearly inspired by Anne Heywood's classic self-pleasuring sequence in THE FOX (the big sex hit released nine months before this film was shot), minus Anne's doorknob prop. It's another tour de force, most impressive placed directly after Linda's "yes, I CAN act!" demonstration with the psychiatrist.
Back on the streets she answers a modeling ad, cueing a fashion shoot clearly riffing on Antonioni's influential BLOW-UP. Instead of David Hemmings, the photographer (Glenn Fodor, listed comically as "Clark Kent" in the credits) looks like Corin Redgrave, and he too gets some hot & heavy sex on the studio floor with Bebe, this time featuring her full frontally nude.
She's poorly dubbed yelling (with no lip movements, of course): "Shoot it Mr. Cameraman, shoot me!", meant to sound sexy but for me just a hoot, in presaging the usual mindless doggerel enunciated by '70s Channel J/35 cable access star Robin Byrd to fill the time between her guests stripping nightly.
It's Christmas time (1968), with the Salvation Army out in full force on Manhattan streets ringing their bells for donations as Bebe bumps into pal Jenny, played by Uta Erickson. Opening credits call Erickson "Anti Jane" playing the role of "Ante", but voice-over establishes her repeatedly as Jenny.
Unfortunately Uta, who was the star of the film MARCY co-starring Boyce shot right before this one in Autumn 1968, has merely a bit part here. After a few seconds she disappears (back only fleetingly during a climactic final reel orgy), bequeathing Bebe her boyfriend John (1-shot John Gunter).
Back in her apartment Bebe treats John to a striptease/belly dance to Middle Eastern music on the record player and humps him. Her condescending voice-over overdoes it in pitying John and belittling him -losing some sympathy for Bebe, and evidently intended to discomfort the target audience (lonely guys).
After a brief (and silent this time) visit to Dr. Lang, Bebe's back on the streets window shopping, picking up lovely blonde Ilona (her MARCY co-star Sheila Britt).
Their lesbian sex scene has an interesting motif of a chimes & candles knick knack (looks like a Rube Goldberg mini-Passover Menorah). The tryst is interrupted by a fantasy orgy bringing back her recent male lovers plus briefly a full-frontally nude Uta, with the main motif being honey poured all over everyone and licked off sensually. Petrashevic (and his dialog collaborator, the Z-movie vet Kent Bateman) cannot resist campy material, as Boyce voices-over such silly "passionate" exclamations as: "The ducks are in the water, it's boiling!".
Pic ends with the humble narrator bringing us back to Macrocosm, with views of Times Square as he states "There is no ending" and we see marquees displaying 1968 movies like FUNNY GIRL, WHERE EAGLES DARE and more appropriately THE BED AND THE BEAUTIFUL, a porn film that starred Sheila Britt.
Boyce's one-woman-show is definitely worth watching, and should prove to be a turn-on if you're a fan of softcore porn. For the record, both MARCY and LOVE ME...PLEASE! were released in Summer 1969, not years later.
