That Burning Sensation

THAT BURNING SENSATION is novelty porno, trying harder to be funny than to arouse in the sexual arena. As such, it's for the slob end of the porn audience.

Same company also made a film I plan to catch soon, WAY DOWN DEEP. Both feature Marlene Willoughby and have been reissued as part of Something Weird's Dragon Art Theatre series.

The alternate title SEXERCISE CLINIC is more accurate, as we witness three case histories of people who have lost their sex drive after indulging their penchant for extremely fetishistic sex. Frank Marks heads up a clinic where various techniques including group therapy (talk only -not sexual therapy) sessions are used to cure folk and bring back their normal sexual impulses.

Willoughby is quite amusing introduced making love in a tent one morning while the sounds of nature (birds chirping, etc.) abound on the soundtrack. We discover this is a controlled environment inside the clinic. Her problem turns out to be really weird (a subsidiary of Something Weird), as she became addicted to humping Wall Street types in their offices after hours wearing a paper bag over her head! Reminiscent of Murray Langston, the Unknown Comic of yore, she's a good sport and I suspect Marlene fans will enjoy her nonsensical bits.

A second patient Kelly (actress unidentified) has a food fetish, talking dirty about food and having a flashback three-way atop a 10-foot long hero sandwich, with the posterior guy shoving lettuce and tomatoes into her vagina. This sloppy sex is pretty much a make-or-break test of whether the viewer will want to sit through this lousy film.

Third patient is a young pizza pie chef working at Famous Ray's in Manhattan (we actually see the facade of the real-life place, doubtful that they granted permission). Very cheap set has a fake aluminum foil-fronted pizza oven as he humps a young girl, letting his pizzas "comically" burn up in a smoky finish. Completing the film's fetish, when she gives him a blow job she uses chewing motions on his cock.

Supposedly humorous finale shows up the quack doctor with none of the patients the slightest bit cured, all reverting to their previous bad habits. Marlene is given one good line: "That's not my bag".

All told this is typical of the stupidity that resulted back in the day when pornographers tried to vary the formula a bit, just for novelty's sake. As Steve Martin would say, comedy isn't pretty.