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Released by: Frolic Pictures
Released on: January 14, 2013.
Director: Jared Masters
Cast: Jacqueline Guzman, Art Roberts, Kiera King
Year: 2012
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The Movie:
Jared Masters proved with 2011's Climb It, Tarzan! that not all imitation vintage sexploitation films have to suck. Granted, most of them do - in fact, almost all of them do, but note the use of the world almost there. His follow up film, 2012's 8 Reels Of Sewage (watch the trailer for A Sweet Sickness if you don't get the reference), actually manages to improve on that earlier picture and although it still doesn't feel 100% authentic, it definitely has a lot more hit than miss throughout its run time.
The story, co-written by Masters and Adam Trash, is set just as the sixties are turning into the seventies and it introduces us to a pretty young blonde woman named Belinda Brimhouse (Jacqueline Guzman). She makes her living as a film editor for sex film impresario Don Arrolls (Mystic Marlow), a fairly crass and cruel man who doesn't respect what Belinda brings to his business with her talents. When he winds up firing her from her job, she decides she has what it takes to beat Arrolls at her own game and sets out to direct a sex film of her own. The difference? Belinda has aspirations to produce more than just commercially viable smut - she wants to bring some artistic integrity to her project and produce what she considers to be a dirty movie worth watching.
As she sets out to achieve her goals, she casts the lovely Janet (Samantha Poole) as her lead but as the industry changes and sex films are becoming more and more explicit, Belinda has to come to terms with what she's really doing. As the story plays out and a hit man is hired to take her out of the picture on a permanent basis, she learns who she can and can't trust and will find out if she really has what it takes to get her movie made.
A pretty entertaining mix of effective comedy, characters study and sleaze, 8 Reels Of Sewage is, first and foremost, a really nicely shot movie. While it's shot in black and white to give it that retro look, it's not this that makes it look as slick as it does but the actual angles and compositions used. The camera sets ups do a great job of capturing everything from the more dramatic scenes of dialogue to the playful naked pillow fights filmed for the movie within the movie. A scene where a patron enjoys a cigar sitting front and center in perverts row at the local strip club frames his face between the legs of the dancing girl entertaining him, while another scene involving a nurse putting a certain patient into a straight jacket inside a hospital contrasts the darkness of the room against the light coming in from the window behind the doctor on duty in interesting ways. Lots of lovely ladies, often decked out in old timey lingerie, also help, particularly in a sequence shot peeping tom style through a keyhole.
Not all of the movie is a flawless recreation of the time period in which it is set. The fact that it is shot on video is obvious so it doesn't have that grimy, gritty film like quality that is so inherent in the movies that would have inspired it. The acting is sometimes spot on and sometimes not quite so convincing though to Guzman's credit she does at least do well in the lead. Some of the sets are more convincing than others, such as a room filled with film canisters and some editing tools, while others have some giveaways (the fake film camera might have been a cute idea but it's so fake that it just takes you out of the movie when you start to look at it too much). Over all though, the attention to detail here is pretty impressive, as is the technique. Fans of this type of movie should get a kick out of it, and at eighty minutes in length it feels about as long as it should, never overstaying its welcome.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer looks quite good for a picture shot on digital video in black and white. There's a little bit of shimmering here and there but otherwise the image is clean and it shows good contrast. Any compression artifacts that pop up are minor and outside of that there's really nothing to complain about, the movie looks quite good on DVD.
The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track, the only one on the disc, also sounds quite good. There's a lot of cool surf guitar style music used in the soundtrack and it's presented with just the right amount of volume to help emphasize certain elements of the movie. Dialogue is always easy to understand and there are no issues with any hiss or distortion.
Extras include just over three minutes of deleted scenes (some of which include some choice bonus nudity!), a trailer for the feature, and a short movie called All Who Wander. Directed by Samantha Demer and shot by masters, it's an eight minute color widescreen piece that stars Demer as a woman who wakes up one day, showers, puts on some negligee and wanders through the outskirts of a city with her dog looking for a key she needs to open a chest in her apartment. It's an interesting little quickie, a sort of artsy fantasy piece that's nicely shot and which makes nice use of color.
The Final Word:
A lot of sexploitation throwback style pictures fall flat on their face and fail to capture what made those movies so interesting. 8 Reels Of Sewage manages to avoid most of the trappings that many of its ilk fall prey to and turns out to be a well made and entertaining love letter to the sleazy softcore quickies of yesteryear.
