A Couple of Trouble

Lustful Addiction (1969)

** (out of 4)

Director Phillips became known for his softcore films coming out of San Francisco back in the true grindhouse days. I've heard a lot about him but this here was my first sampling of his sexploitation filmography. The film tells the story of a drug addict hooker who doesn't mind sleeping with her dealer just to get a discount. Her desperate addiction to drugs might just cost her a true love relationship with a clean guy. I've seen countless sexploitation films throughout my life from various studios but the majority of them have come from Something Weird and their big catalogue of titles. I must admit that this film is better than the majority of those due to the direction of Phillips but in the end this can't save the film all together. The best thing going for the film is its direction and cinematography, which really makes this stand out compared to others like it. The low-budget film doesn't feature any spoken words but instead just narration, which is the biggest problem as the dialogue being spoken is quite horrid. It sounds like the narrator is trying to be some sort of Bob Dylan with its poetic use of words but they all come off quite bad and at times laughable. The cinematography is very good throughout and the use of B&W really makes for a seedy looking picture that is able to pull the depression of the the character. The film doesn't have any credits so I'm not sure what the main actresses name is but she does a pretty good job in her role. She's very easy on the eyes as well so that's certainly not a bad thing. The film is also very bleak, dark and depressing but I found the softcore scenes very erotic. I normally don't find these sexploitation films to be that sexy but I thought this one was and that includes an extremely hot scene with our woman hooking up with another female stripper. In the end the movie eventually just runs too long, even at 70-minutes, and doesn't have enough going for it to make it a total success but it's certainly better than a lot of others out there.

I've seen almost all of Nick Millard's movies, at least the ones that have been preserved since their original release decades ago, and "A Couple of Trouble" is one that hints at what might have been had he got a foothold in mainstream cinema instead of his actual career as a marginal pornographer and later maker of low-budget horror.

Justine D'Ore projects a fashion model persona in the lead role of heroin-addicted Jean, sort of a poor man's Jean Shrimpton, who likewise had an unsuccessful movie career, starring only in genius documentary maker Peter Watkins' fiction film "Privilege" in 1967.

This film's Jean and the rest of the cast act only in pantomime, as Nick shoots MOS, with no dialog or background sound. The femme narrator recites an extremely pretentious voice-over, telling us what's happening with constant reference to the evils of drug-taking and the drug dealers.

Kitchen-sink black & white filmmaking literally begins at Jean's kitching near her kitchen sink, idly smoking cigarettes and waiting for the Man, to buy her fix and shoot up heroin. The evil dealer is cast as a guy who looks like a typical college student, not conveying the role at all.

An unsuccessful cinematic device has Nick randomly intercutting mainly negative images of monkey in a zoo cage, indicating how trapped the protagonists are, or more literally (according to the foolish/charlatan wag named "42nd St. Pete" who made a marginal living resurrecting vintage porn loops and features for specialty distributors Seduction Cinema in New Jersey and Something Weird Video on the Left Coast) the monkey on the back of our addicted characters.

Nick's minimal story has Jean falling in love with Tad, played by a familiar looking sandy-haired, cleft-chinned young Troy Donahue type and getting him sick by shooting up heroin with her.

A daytime visit to a strip club to meet the Man for more drugs provides lousy filler as like our heroine the cheap wigged-stripper goes all nude, sporting a thick bush like Jean's.

A not so kindly but conveniently located young hooker provides Jean with another fix in exchange for Sapphic sex, with tragic results, rather poorly staged.

It's downbeat 1969 soft porn, moralistic and not entertaining. But Nick develops atmosphere and with far fewer fetishes on view (what spoils most of his niche porn) he displays a visual sense of style on a near-zero budget that would have been interesting to develop in a mainstream project.

Eclectic musical score varies from trio jazz to avant garde jazz to sitar music, plus a dab of hard rock and even a Donovan-style folk ballad titled "Sent from Heaven" thrown in to cover the soundtrack's dead air.

Misty Mundae, then a brief cult star for her many amateurish made-in-New Jersey lesbian videos, remade the movie in 2002 as her directorial debut, providing a reissue platform for Nick's original on the same DVD release retitled "Lustful Addiction".