"Is There Sex After Death" is a tongue-in-cheek look at sex and attitudes about sex that was released in 1971. While the episodic film is X-rated and features a lot of frank nudity, it is a mostly unsexy (aside from the Sex Olympics bit) film and if you are looking for sexual gratification, you could do a lot better. Sadly, however, if you are looking for comedy, you could also do a lot better--which is REALLY sad since the film is meant to be a comedy. The narrator, Dr. Rogers (actually, Alan Abel himself) talks about a wide range of normal and bizarre sexual behaviors and occasionally shows naked people engaging in a few of these acts.
"Is There Sex After Death?" is certainly not the sort of film I usually watch or review. However, I recently saw a wonderful documentary called "Abel Raises Cain" and it is about the hilarious life of Alan Abel--the man who, along with his wife, wrote, produced and directed "Is There Sex After Death?". I was so captivated with the true stories about Abel's many practical jokes and deliberate hoaxes on the American public, I decided to find this comedy. Unfortunately, while I liked the idea of "Is There Sex After Death?", the end result was just dreadful. The biggest problems were that the film was extremely uneven and never once did the film manage to maintain any momentum. So, when on rare instances when the film DID make me laugh, these were very, very few and far between. I think much of this is because the film was so disjoint and poorly written. A well written film that makes fun of sex or attitudes about sex would have been welcomed--the dry and unfunny bits in "Is There Sex After Death?" were not.
I assume when this film debuted back in the early 70s that it must have been shocking or controversial. However, today it seems relatively tame and dated.
