If Claude Lelouch (influential A MAN AND A WOMAN director) had ended up cranking out porn videos, he might have tackled BEDTIME TALES. Fortunately for us (and the folks at the Cinematheque Francaise), this fruitless project was assigned to assembly-line porn auteur Ron Sullivan/Henri Pachard instead.
Video covers 5 different time periods ranging forward from 1915 until 1985, as disconnected vignettes portray different morays peculiar to each era. In other words, a highly pretentious presentation of what is really the standard "string together several sex skits" structure of literally tens of thousands of porn films & videos since 1970.
Pachelbel's familiar Canon plays during the 1915 segment, in which Colleen Brennan has sex with young Tom Byron and then also lesbo style with his sister Cher Delight/Kathlyn Moore, making for a promising period-costume piece. Unlike the current porn craze for stepfathers/stepmothers and step-siblings, this vignette does not shy away from presenting incest between Moore & Byron during their 3-some.
Following in 1925 we have a typical Hollywood orgy with flappers, starring John Leslie and Joanna Storm, with Pachard emphasizing decadence. The 1935 segment inexplicably has dominant Karen Summer seducing her Black maid Lady Stephanie -purely arbitrary as to time and context.
Video's star Ginger Lynn pops up in 1955 as the girl friend to a virginal ball player (played by obscure Gary Wright), with Ginger deciding to have coach Paul Thomas pop her cherry. Wright doesn't miss out entirely, getting a hand-job from teacher Honey Wilder, as this episode is clearly locked in the cradle-robbing mode.
Thankfully not as long as a Lelouch time-warp epic, video jumps ahead all the way to 1985 for its finale, all about role-playing and reliable supporting player (never a star) Shaun Michelle being introduced to anal sex.
Passable for the early video era (when basically anything starring Ginger Lynn could please her ever-growing fan base) I suspect BEDTIME TALES would have been greeted with sneers of "high-hatting" had it needed to justify its existence as a theatrical film.
