Gums

I bought a copy of this long out-of-print movie on the old Adult Video Corporation (AVC) label for a tidy sum just to get a hold of it un-censored. The box and tape were still in very nice condition despite being manufactured long ago (in 1979).

I watched GUMS right after receiving it in the mail and was "treated" to a insane parody of JAWS featuring horny puppets, a Mermaid who blows men to death (and in one case sticks her head out of a toilet) and a Nazi lunatic played by Brother Theodore who volunteers to capture the Mermaid for oil wells instead of money. Theodore has the "Captain Quint" role in this exercise in sea-going vulgarity. Richard Bolla looks a lot like Richard Dreyfuss and carries around a blonde blow-up doll for amusement. You must see this movie to disbelieve it. Lots of underwater photography of the naked mermaid (Terri Hall) swimming around, but watch out for those lust-mad puppets! Long-delayed edit here: The 'AVC' version of the movie does not have the cartoony stuff obscuring the h/c action, of which there really isn't much of.

When penises start washing up on the beach at Great Head, Long Island, Sheriff Coxswain realizes he's up against a murderous mermaid who gives new meaning to "thar she blows" with her fatal fellatio...

This Triple X-rated riff on the previous year's JAWS has very little missionary but plenty of oral with everyone either giving or getting, even Deputy Dick who pretends to be the mermaid at one point. The "she devil" may not have a tail but she wears a little crown, has a phallic underwater lair, and knows quite a few tricks, including lethal muff-diving and popping up in toilet bowls. Add Nazis, blow-up dolls, vagina sock puppets, a claymation (?) vulture that squirts, and human sex with marionettes and you've got a sophomoric spoof you can't take your eyes off of. Which isn't always a good thing, especially when it flirts with bestiality. You don't see sh!t like this every day, that's for sure. Impossible to rate ...and beware the softcore cut.

I remember hiring this when I was 18. I remember a lone penis, washing up on shore. I also remember turning off when I got to the puppets. Is this for real? You can't be serious?. To me, this was an amateurish display of film making, with not so famous porn stars, where the real ones probably turned their back on this one. We have a killer mermaid out there with a big set of choppers, out to catch any unfortunate soul of the male species, naked, but first putting through ultimate ecstasy, before robbing them of their johnson. Gums is like a film where four parts were jammed together, devoid of sense. From what I saw, it was none erotic, yet different. May'be their was potential, but I didn't really see any future in proceeding to view this sex farce, with actor's names, I can't believe, in a film with a colorful and catchy title. I do recall the opening theme though. I would actually give it another view, if I could track the movie down, but with attaining the real video cover movie, would be miniscule. The trailer with David Argue scuba'd up, talking through a snorkel, with bubble sound effects in the background, you might say doesn't any promotional insight into the decrepit movie either.

1.5/10

Although I'm admittedly far from an expert on the genre, I believe this may be the best XXX parody ever. The story is basically "Jaws", but the shark here is replaced with a naked, deep-throating mermaid (70's porn star/ballet dancer Teri Hall) who doles out fatal hummers to any man who dares to swim naked in the surf. There's some XXX sex scenes--although only oral sex, and only Hall and her fellow 70's starlet Jody Maxwell do their own, uh, "stunt work". (The movie even parodies the fact that obvious "stunt doubles" for all the males are used by at one point having an obviously black "stunt double" for the white sheriff Maxwell is orally servicing). The good thing about this is that the sex (usually) doesn't stop the movie in it's tracks, and while the actors in this were not robbed of any Academy Awards back in 1976, they're a lot better than the talentless walking erections that usually act in porn flicks.

The best by far is the great Brother Theodore in the role of "Carl Clitoris", the Robert Shaw character. He is by far the most talented person to EVER appear in an XXX movie and his hilarious monologues are easily worth the price of admission all by themselves. For the record, his, um, "death scene" does not even use a "stunt double"--it's filmed strictly softcore, since great of talent as he was, no one really wanted to see HIM getting a bj.

They obviously spent a little money on this, even filming some of the final scenes on the open ocean (today they'd probably shoot this on video in a bathtub in somebody's San Fernando Valley condo). There's some great surreal scenes like where the mermaid somehow comes out of toilet(!) to "attack" the "Hooper" character (and his "stunt double"). And at the end of the movie the two male leads are entirely replaced by well-endowed puppets(!) in a scene that really makes me wish that ALL male porn stars would be replaced by puppets. I'd watch a lot more XXX movies if they were half as entertaining as this one.

An X-rated JAWS parody? Yeah, and it's a lot of fun, too. This appealingly goofy movie has Terri Hall as a killer mermaid; you also get to see some talking puppets, and the late, great Brother Theodore hamming up the place in the Quint role. It's all more silly than sexy, but the off-the-wall comic bits often hit the mark. Recommended for fans of weird humor.