Softcore maestro Radley Metzger (THERESE AND ISABELLE) adopted the pseudonym "Henry Paris" for a mere five hardcore endeavors, all of which – with the possible exception of the last, 1978's
MARASCHINO CHERRY – are considered true classics of their kind. It was his eminently witty spin on "Pygmalion",
THE OPENING OF MISTY BEETHOVEN (1976), that would singlehandedly assure his everlasting reputation as one of the most adroit and intelligent filmmakers in adult. Two years prior, Metzger was just dipping his toe into the water when he made THE PRIVATE AFTERNOONS OF PAMELA MANN, a sophisticated comedy of bad manners, wowing genre critics and audiences alike.
An unnamed private eye (played by veteran performer Eric Edwards) receives a phone call from worried businessman Mr. Mann (Alan Marlow, the womanizer reincarnated in female form in Roberta Findlay's ANGEL #9) who suspects that his wife Pamela (gorgeous Barbara Bourbon, the violated farmer's wife from David Fleetwood's
A DIRTY WESTERN) may be fooling around on him. Trailing the sexy socialite, Edwards uncovers all sorts of naughtiness. Having got the idea from a dinner conversation about Gerard Damiano's box office blast
DEEP THROAT, very much the scandal du jour at the time, she obviously wants to see whether she can perform Linda Lovelace's "Look, ma, no gag reflex" party trick by picking up a stranger (the massively endowed Marc Stevens, an early bisexual performer) near the Brooklyn bridge and going down on him right there and then. She supplies social rehabilitation services for happy hooker Klute (legendary adult actress Georgina Spelvin) in one of the all time Sapphic encounters and drags off a moral reformer running for mayor (beefy Sonny Landham, ironically cast in retrospect considering the political upheaval he would cause in later life) for a quickie mere moments prior to his addressing a women's group. A drawn-out garage rape sequence (missing from VCA's recent DVD release) by a pair of propaganda-spouting revolutionaries (perennial bad boy Jamie Gillis and Darby Lloyd Rains, who would rejoin forces with Metzger on
NAKED CAME THE STRANGER) might seem somewhat out of place due to its – admittedly cartoonish – brutality, until the director turns the tables by the last act revelation that Pamela's "rapists" are actually her domestics and part of the whole set-up. The couple have in fact constructed these elaborate games to spice up their marriage, hiring a series of good looking detectives to capture their escapades on film, Pamela's seduction of the investigator (who subsequently refuses all remuneration as he has "failed" in his assignment) forever the final movement of their association.
By Nodriesrespect