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Released by: After Hours Cinema
Released on: May 24, 2011.
Director: Various
Cast: Tina Russell, Marc Stevens, Vanessa Del Rio
Year: Various
Purchase From TLA Video
The Movie:
Born Linda Marie Mintzer, Tina Russell may have passed away at the all too young age of 32 in 1981 but she definitely left her mark on the world of seventies smut. She started off as a model in various men's magazines before eventually making the shift to hardcore and while Tina Russell is often remembered for a lot of her feature film work, like Deep Throat II, The Presidential Peepers, A Touch Of Genie and Honeymoon Suite, like a lot of other actors and actresses working in the adult film industry of the early seventies, she also made a lot of 8mm loops. It's a collection of these loops that After Hours Cinema has unearthed for this collection, aptly titled Grindhouse Hotties: Tina Russell 1970s girl Next Door, a nod to Russell's natural good looks.
Things kick off with a bang with our first loop, Nurse Tina, in which the lovely Ms. Russell shows up looking good in a nurses outfit to take care an obviously sick Mr. 10 ½, Marc Stevens. Once our nurse arrives, however, we see an immediate improvement in Stevens' condition, and before you know it she's blowing him, after which he bones her.
Girls Nite In keeps things moving in the right direction as it is basically a girl on girl love fest featuring not only Tina but also the immortally awesome Vanessa Del Rio. Never one to shy away from a good time with another gal, Del Rio is in fine form here, taking a dildo up her poop shoot and giving as good as she gets, if Tina's response to her tongue lashings are anything to go by.
The third loop in the set is the appropriately titled Cucumber which starts off with a brief bit where Tina goes shopping in the produce section of a New York City grocery store. She buys what she needs and heads home where she obviously can't say no to her primal urges - she's gotta get it on, but there's nobody around to fuck! What's a girl to do? French kiss some tropical fruit, of course! That's not going to do it though, and before you know it, that cucumber she bought in the grocery store is covered in girl slime. Awesome.
Sex Doctor is another in which Russell shares the screen with Dolly Sharp and a guy who looks like he's trying to rip off Harry Reems' schtick from Deep Throat. Tina's a patient this time around, with Dolly and the good doctor showing up to take care of Tina. Apparently what she needs to cure what ails her is a hot beef injection and some lesbian love.
Marc Stevens shows up again in Make Friends where Tina teams up with an attractive uncredited blonde woman to double team Stevens in a swanky bedroom. Dig the odd patterns on the wall paper and the groovy seventies furniture. As to the sex itself? Russell and Stevens were a good team in the first loop and do just as well here, the added blonde action just a nice icing on the cake, really.
Tina In Bondage is the edgiest loop of the bunch. Here she's basically abducted by a skuzzy looking psycho hippy type who basically ties her up and has his way with her. He draws blood by roughing her up, but the blood and the harder edged action here is obviously staged so while it's certainly kinkier than anything else in this collection, by modern standards it seems pretty harmless and is sometimes unintentionally comedic.
Sculptor finds Tina modeling for, well, a sculptor. She gets naked and he understandably gets turned on, needing to dip his wick and hey, who knew she'd be so willing to indulge him? Given the fact that this dudes sculpting project is actually a mold of Tina's twat, it shouldn't really be too surprising.
Porno Star team Tina with Harry Reems, whose moustache is rumored to have seductive powers - at least it appears to here, as Tina is really into him. Reems is his typically amusing self here, you can tell he's having a blast, and you can't fault him for that as Tina seems to be doing most of the work while he's just sort of laying back and letting her go to town on him.
Ravaged finds Tina on the receiving end of some rougher stuff again, this time courtesy of two men who show up with stockings over their faces to hide their identities. There's not much more to this one, other than that they basically just rape her - she doesn't seem too upset by any of this though, indicating that it's either poorly staged (which it is) or she's an awful actress (debatable).
In Stewardesses, Tina is, you guessed it, a stewardess. She's doing her thing on the plane, you know, just working it and looking good, and is eventually coerced into boning two hairy guys who happen to take a liking to her. Bonus points for Tina for wearing her hat for the entire loop and bonus points for the guy with the beard for sporting one of the ugliest ties ever committed to celluloid.
And while we're handing out bonus points, let's give some to the unidentified hot Spanish number who joins Tina in Latin Lady, another lesbian loop, this time with Tina the aggressor. These girls waste no time hitting the sheets and have a good time with one another and a conveniently placed glass dildo that just happens to be on hand.
All in all, this is a pretty collection of Russell starring loops, showing why she was popular in her day even if she isn't usually noted as often as she should be when seventies porno starlets are discussed. She shows here some nice enthusiasm which, coupled with her natural good looks and penchant for slutty eye shadow, definitely make her one for the books.
Video/Audio/Extras:
While After Hours is to be commended for giving these films transfers from film sources, the films do show their age through a myriad of print damage, wear and tear. The transfer is also interlaced, which is a continuing irritant. Don't go into this release expecting miracles, rather, keep your expectations in check. This is some pretty obscure material and to see it taken from film prints at all is, in itself, a minor miracle. Look past the print damage and the color fading or take it all in as part of the experience. Yeah, this stuff looks rough, but that's half the charm right there and it's not likely you're going to see completely restored versions of any of this material any time soon. The main gripe here, however, is that as these 8mm loops were absolutely shot and meant to be seen fullframe. Here they're cropped for 1.78.1 anamorphic sets, so there's definitely some picture information missing and compositions do look off because of this.
It's Dolby Digital Mono across the board, just as it should be - sort of. These were shot without sound and are presented with only the whirl of a projector overtop. So there's not really a whole lot to talk about here as far as the audio goes.
Extras are slim, limited to scene selection and a handful of trailers for other After Hours Cinema.
The Final Word:
Despite the fact that the aspect ratio is buggered up here, this is a pretty fun release. Tina Russell doesn't quite get the respect she deserves when discussing seventies porn goddesses, and hopefully this set will go some way towards correcting that.
