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Released by: Alpha Blue Archives
Released on: September 1st, 2014.
Director: Edward D. Wood Jr.
Cast: Louis Wolf, Alice Friedland
Year: 1971
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The Movie:
One of the last films Ed Wood would direct before passing away, The Young Marrieds, not surprisingly, follows a couple made up of Ben (Louis Wolf) and Ginny (Alice Friedland), recently joined in holy wedlock. Ben, however, spends as much time at nudie bars and seedy dives as he does at home, hoping to get some attention from a stripper or a willing hitchhiker even though his wife is a hottie. And he does, he plays around. Why? Well, she may be a hottie on the outside but between the sheets, she's as cold as ice. Ginny doesn't want to get it on, no matter how much Ben wants it, even though she tells him she would if he paid more attention to her.
He doesn't completely give up on her, however. One day he buys a camera and decides to take some risqué pictures of his comely better half. At first she resists but soon finds that she not only enjoys posing for his camera but she gets quite excited by it. Ginny, it would seem, likes to be watched - and according to the narrator, 'she's still in competition with the fantasy dancer in Ben's mind.' Ben even figures out how to use the timer so he can get in on the action. This experiment opens up a whole new world of kinky fun for the couple, as she discovers her dominant side and Ben agrees to be her slave for the evening! Ben, however, has another use in mind for those photos. It seems he's in some financial trouble. From there, they wind up involved with group sex and swinging, at which point Ginny exclaims 'What are you doing? God… if it isn't a lesbian it's a sex maniac!' After the orgy, it just sort of ends.
Basically unseen for forty plus years, this fifty-two minute grinder is amusing enough. Wood's trademark wacky dialogue is pretty plentiful here and we get some meandering narration overtop in some sort of attempt to string all of this into a cohesive hole. It's not deep, mind you, and it's as primitive on a technical level as his other voyages into smut films but yeah, it has that tone, that weird sense of earnestness so it that makes the films that Wood directed so fascinating to so many. There's a pretty nifty strip tease at the beginning that's fun to watch and we get to watch some characters drive around in a dune buggy! One picture that our loving couple has hanging over their bedroom magically reappears over a bar at the swingers party in the later part of the movie.
Many will be less impressed with Wood's wonky direction, however, than they will be by the presence of lovely Alice Friedman, a popular nudie magazine model in her day and a seriously voluptuous cutie. While she flirted with the mainstream with a role in John Cassavetes' The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie in 1976, most of her work is dirty-movie related, be it hardcore, softcore or general drive-in/exploitation stuff. She plays the female lead here and is quite fetching, a pretty blonde with a nice smile and ample curves. She might not win any awards for her performance but she looks great and it's easy to see why she'd be cast here.
The scenes of the couple in action are fairly clinical, lots of emphasis on the old in and out and more oral shenanigans than you might expect, but the set dressing and production values are goofy enough to stand out. There's definitely some understandable cult appeal here, even if the story is pretty thin and as it is with any of Wood's output, there's the director's weird personal touch to appreciate.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The Young Marrieds is presented in 1.33.1 fullframe as intended and the transfer, taken from what we can guess is a well-used theatrical print, looks okay given the age and obscurity of the picture. Detail is mediocre but you can't realistically expect much more than that and while print damage is all over the place, this is certainly pretty watchable. The color reproduction isn't bad and the picture is stable.
The English language Dolby Digital Mono sound mix is on par with the video presentation - it won't blow you away but it'll do. Some hiss and background noise is omnipresent but that's to be expected.
Extras are not Ed Wood related but all focus on the extracurricular activities of The Young Marrieds' leading lady starting with a forty-seven minute film called Kiss My Analyst. The premise is simple enough - a woman in a shrink's office tells us how her journey into drug use found her having lesbian sex and then participating in an orgy after partying it up at friend's house (that friend is Friedland) and smoking some reefer. The film then shifts back and forth to the session in the shrink's office to the 'flashbacks' that show her and a few others in action. It turns out her friend's boyfriend put something in her drink and then, when the three discover they're being watched (and by Monica Gayle, no less), it turns into a four way. It ends very suddenly in the office, the dialogue cut off, but it's nice to see Friedland represented here in this cheap softcore effort.
The second bonus film is Analyze Your Sex, a forty-seven minute piece. It starts with a couple (Friedland and some dude) screwing on a dirty mattress surrounded by a bunch of boxes. From there we head into a psychiatrist's office where she's talking about the incident. He tells her to recreate the scene to make herself the aggressor, and through the magic of the movies, we then see her play things out in her mind, her way. Oddly enough her fantasy doesn't involve a cleaner mattress, she really just has the dude in a nicer outfit for a few seconds until he drops trou and they get it on. From here we see a more sex! Witness a couple in a bedroom who play around with a big blue candle, first from the shrink's point of view and then from her more rugged, dominant point of view where the man wears a collar and the woman feeds him… something. From there, the shrink tells her that he makes love just like she does, and when she asks him to show her, he responds with “Well, in a word… of course!†and then they screw to the sounds of some elevator music.
The third bonus feature is The Adventures Of Flash Beaver, an amazingly awful sixty-three minute Superman knock off that's about on par with Bat Pussy in terms of quality and production values. The audio on this is pretty bad which makes it tough to follow but the story revolves around a woman (Friedland credited as Brandy O'Toole!) who works an office job but who is in all actuality a sexy superhero named Flash Beaver. While at the office, her telepathy lets her hear a couple having difficulties in the bedroom. From there, she heads off as Flash Beaver to help that couple by interrupting their intercourse to join in and show the lady in question some moves. The lady just looks through a magazine while he man goes to town on Flash though. From there we see a couple making out in a park, and they start screwing. Flash shows up because they're having trouble, he can't get it in and she's complaining. Flash, however, is happy to lend a helping hand, or orifice as the case may be. After that we get a weird fake commercial (in an attempt to make the movie play out like a movie would on TV) for a female deodorant called Stench-away capable of taking the scent away from a can of sardines! Flash helps out another couple in need, the man is less than happy to see her and accuses her of barging into their private house. Flash talks them into letting her help them, however, and they have a three way in which the ladies use a strap-on. As the movie comes to a close, Flash hears her alter-ego's co-worker Jimmy going at it alone with some help from a men's magazine. Flash shows up to help Jimmy out and they screw. The end! F. Stop Fitzgerald is credited as the gaffer on this one, while Skip Flylow was the DP and Gerry Edwards is credited as the director. Fine work by all involved.
That's not all though, the disc also includes a nice little vintage loop in which Ms. Friedland, sporting a long black wig, strips and struts for the camera on top of an abandoned car. There are also a couple of really quick clips of her in action taken from other movies. Rounding out the extras is a static menu offering feature selection and a Retro-Starlets promo reel (basically an advertisement for other Alpha Blue Archives offerings from decades past).
The Final Word:
Whether you're interested in this one for the director or interested in it for the presence of lovely Alice Friedland, it's great to finally get the chance to see The Young Marrieds. While it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect from Wood lensed smut, that's not a bad thing and the fact that includes a wealth of Friedland related bonus material really makes this one that her fan base will appreciate.
