"Private Obsession" is another direct to video erotic thriller starring the queen of such things, Shannon Whirry. At least it wasn't directed by Gregory Dark, whose movies I was getting a bit tired of. No, this is by Lee Frost, who was a grindhouse stalwart in the sixties and seventies.
In this one, Whirry plays a world famous fashion model who is also a famous feminist.
Again, she plays a woman who has sex on camera with a man watching, but in this case it is against her will. She is abducted by an obsessed fan who also appears to be a surveillance hobbyist, whose equipment must have cost a fortune in 1995.
At first I thought that Whirry's acting wasn't as bad in this one as it has been in other movies. But when she gets abducted, she doesn't even seem worried about the situation. She's more curious about her new digs. The movie also doesn't play like this situation is all that unusual. In reality, wouldn't she worry that she might be murdered, or forced to stay in captivity for years?
Instead she curses her captor like a spoilt tourist in a French restaurant. The movie makes HER seem like the bad guy! Not, you know, the guy who ABDUCTED this young woman, and now wants to HOLD HER AGAINST HER WILL.
Unbelievable.
Apparently, some of director Lee Frost's past films had a misogynist tone, and he certainly shows that here. Whirry is introduced as a "feminist", which seems to entail her complaining about men, and is then put in her place by a man, in one scene trying to escape her cell by crawling through the doggy door.
It feels like the movie believes that Whirry's feminism - inextricably linked to her foul mouth - was aberrant behaviour, and that this obsessive criminal sociopath is doing her a favour by taking her under his wing - and into his sex dungeon - and teaching HER the proper way to behave. Um, sure, Whirry swears a lot in this movie. But she doesn't abduct anyone, nor hold them captive in a private dungeon. I'd say that's a tad worse.
To help Whirry back through the doggy door, the kidnapper gets a tub of butter to grease her up with, devoting particular attention to her breasts, which he has bared by ripping her nightshirt off. As if the situation wasn't humiliating enough.
And get this: we see the hole in the door later, and it is clearly much too small for her to ever have gotten through even only half way. She might have been able to get her head through it. That's all.
The captor turns off Whirry's water, so guess what? She considers drinking from the toilet. Yes, that's right: another stage in her humiliation is introduced.
Shannon, supposedly imprisoned in a hermetically sealed room, is actually in a room with windows. Why doesn't she just break the windows to escape? How stupid were the filmmakers, that they didn't choose a room without windows to set the movie in?
And then Whirry strips for her captor, and they have sex. This is not a spoiler - it's a softcore flick. You knew they were going to do that. Though WHY she would want to have sex with the man who abducted her is a question you probably shouldn't ponder.
The movie suggests she did this to gain the upper hand so that she can try to escape, but it certainly doesn't seem that way. Nor is there ANY attempt to make it seem like she doesn't want to have sex with this sociopath.
Whirry does, eventually, drink water from the toilet, while clips from her feminist speech are played. Oh, how the mighty have fallen? Or, look who's been put in her place, finally?
The movie then makes a belated attempt to show the silly efforts to find this poor woman, who has disappeared off the face of the earth, and is probably dead in a ditch somewhere - as far as they know. The police aren't all that interested, though - she's only a woman, and a feminist, to boot. Instead we get a private detective, and scenes of his failed investigation that play like a gag reel.
I have noticed something strange about these softcore flicks. Sure, they have a lot of nudity, and simulated sex scenes. But they rarely, if ever, show women fully naked, from head to toe. You hardly ever even see Whirry's bush. It's strange. These things are supposed to be like Playboy centrefolds come to life. Why are they reluctant to show full nudity?
I give this movie credit, though, for ending in a way I didn't expect, and for generally being ridiculous enough to be entertaining. I say check it out.
