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Released by: After Hours Cinema
Released on: 7/26/2011
Director: Shaun Costello
Cast: Jamie Gillis, Marc Stevens, Shaun Costello, CJ Laing, Annie Sprinkle
Year: 1973, 1975
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The Movie:
Shaun Costello churned out a lot of movies before ending his career in the adult film industry and After Hours Cinema, in their ongoing quest to preserve the most obscure and esoteric fare around, has gathered together three of his mid-seventies entries on one handy DVD. The results are as so:
The Tycoon's Daughter (1973):
Our first feature stars Marc Stevens, Mary Stuart and Ashley Moore as a trio of kidnappers who abduct the hot young daughter of a wealthy man named Hugh Howard from the family's home in Chicago. They take her to a remote farm somewhere in the Midwest where they hold her for ransom and then everyone has sex. There's really not a whole lot more to this one, story wise, than that.
This one was obviously made fast, cheap and without much of a script, leaving it up to the cast to improvise things as they go along. Marc Stevens tries, you've got to give him credit for that, but has a tendency to forget characters' names throughout the film and will periodically address different characters by different monikers at random intervals. It seems pretty obvious that the other actors in the cast were aware of the mistakes that Marc was making, as there are a few shots where it looks like they're starting to laugh at him.
The film is a tough one to sit through and far from a high point in Costello's career, but what it does have going for it is Mary Stewart. An attractive and naturally sexy brunette, Stuart also popped up in a Costello's far superior film The Passions Of Carol before going on to work with Radley Metzger in his Henry Paris years on classics like Naked Came The Stranger and The Opening Of Misty Beethoven. She also has a role in Carter Stevens' amazing Rollerbabies. At any rate, it's her screen presence that'll make this one memorable for most fans - that and Stevens' hammy overacting and awkward comedic timing.
The School For Sexual Arts (1975):
The next film in this collection is the best of the bunch. In it we follow a few female art students, Candy Love, the always awesome CJ Laing and Julia Sorel, as they try to find inspiration for their studies by drawing naked men. Of course, as they get into their studies the girls wind up getting some hands on experience from the male cast members, made up of Alan Marlow, Ashley Moore, Tony Richards and in the final and inevitable orgy scene, Shaun Costello himself.
If you hadn't figured it out by now, plot isn't really a grave concern in movies like this. Costello gives us just enough of a set up in each of these three films, this third one included, that it gets the movie going so that he can then get into the sex scenes. Let's face it - it's the hardcore sex that the audiences wanted and he'd be remiss not to deliver it, and that's exactly what he does here.
CJ Laing steals the show, her penchant for vivacious sex scenes is on full display and she looks great here in one of many films she'd make with Costello in the seventies before moving to California. The rest of the cast all do perfectly fine in their roles, but Laing stands out here as the consummate professional of the bunch. Costello once again allows his cast to improvise with varying degrees of success but seems to be more interested in capturing more heat and sexual energy here than in the other two features on the DVD.
The last movie on the disc tells the story of a young girl named Kathy (Cedar Houston), an undersexed spoiled little rich bitch who gets all bent out of shape when her parents are going to be out of town at the time of her graduation. Her friend, Anita (Annie Sprinkle) decides to get as many people together as she can, gather up a few hundred bucks, and throw Kathy the graduation party she so desperately wants - but hat Anita is really up to is trying to get Kathy laid so that maybe she'll loosen up a bit. It doesn't take long for the party to get started, and once it does, it inevitably turns into an orgy where Annie gets double stuffed before having a banana eaten out of her, all in an attempt to get Kathy to do the same - and she does, in a surprising double penetration scene that basically brings the movie to a finish.
Again, there's not much of a story here but at least the improvised comedy is actually entertaining. Like a lot of Costello films, this one features a comedic phone call (the most of his work you see the more often you'll start to notice this trick) and it works rather well and allows for some of the actors to deliver some genuinely witty back and forth. The sex is steamy enough if you're into group scenes. Annie Sprinkle steals the show and the banana scene is surprisingly awesome. At one point Jamie Gillis threatens to fist Kathy but doesn't actually wind up going through with it. Costello himself pops up as one of the partygoers/orgy guys, while Jennifer Jordan and Nikki Hilton also appear.
Each of the three movies is presented in its original 1.33.1 fullframe aspect ratio and transferred from film. They haven't been fully restored so expect a fair bit of print damage and plenty of visible scratches but that doesn't really detract from the experience much. Colors are faded and black levels all over the place but if the elements are in rough shape, at least the disc is fairly well authored and not plagued by compression artifacts or edge enhancement problems.
The audio is on par with the video, in that it's rough but serviceable considering the origins of the films and the materials available to work with. Each of the three English language Dolby Digital Mono tracks has some hiss and some audible cracking in spots but most fans of this material won't mind so much.
Aside from a static menu and movie selection, there are no extra features on this disc.
The Final Word:
While a commentary or interview with Costello would have been most welcome, we didn't get that - the bright side is, we got three of the prolific pornographer's one day wonders from an age long gone, each featuring a great cast and highlighting some steamy sex and some ridiculously fun storylines. Not the best starting point if you're new to Costello's work, but fans of his films will definitely want to check this one out.
