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Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
Released on: May 8th, 2018.
Director: Zachary Youngblood, Curt McDowell
Cast: Cindy Carver, Rene Lovins, Jeff Lyle, Lili Marlene, Karen Sweet
Year: 1983
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The Movie:
Co-directed by Zachary Youngblood (of Confessions Of A Teenage Peanut Butter Freak fame) and an uncredited Curt McDowell (the man who gave us Thundercrack!), 1983's Little Showoffs is an odd duck when compared to most other adult films made around the same time. It's more on the experimental side of things, less plot based really than just a series of sexy vignettes strung together but filmed in dreamy, almost surreal ways.
The first segment - Music Master - starts off as a lesbian scene between Cindy Carver and Renee Lovins set in a nightclub complete with smoke machines and disco balls. Once the girls have sufficiently warmed one another up, it turns into a three-way with the involvement of Jeff Lyle.
From there, lovely Lili Marlene gets it on with Mark Monroe in the second segment, entitled Pick-Up. Here she basically just picks up a biker guy at a scenic harbor location and, after they head back to an apartment, screws him in the bathroom - not much more to it all than that, but it's nicely shot and Marlene looks great.
Segment number three is Little Egypt and it stars Karen Sweet and Peter Sheppard. It has the most unique opening 'title' of the three in that it shows some sand falling from the top to the bottom of the screen, under which are some hieroglyphics style images and letters that spell out the title. Bonus points for creativity there! It also features some neat miniatures that recreate an Egyptian temple and some nice set decorations that recreate the interior. Both performers are dressed, at least to start with, in Egyptian garb.
In scene number four, Communion, we voyage into a convent where Liza Windsor and David Habib go at it. Before David gets involved, Lisa masturbates in bed under the cross on her wall. She then writes in her journal as he enters her room through the window. Before you know it, they're going at it while a priest and a nun peep in on them.
Museum Piece, the fifth vignette, features Betsy Boudoir and Hank Heathcliff in a scene that, you guessed it, takes place inside a museum. She appears naked, showing off her body, while some smoke comes up around her as a sort of intro. Then we get to the story - which sees her come into the museum out of the rain where a few people are looking at different artifacts on display. She and Hank make eye contact and soon enough, she's blowing him. He takes her to a back room where she's chained up in lingerie and we cut back and forth between her in bondage and her getting ravished by her new friend on a bed.
The sixth and final sequence is Teacher's Pet and it stars Patti Perrier and Steve Milestone in what is the most conventional of the stories. Some crude animation spells out the title in chalk on a blackboard before we see Steve heading over to Patti's place for a little tutoring. After some tea and some small talk she takes it out of his pants and goes to town on him. After the oral warm up, they head to the bedroom and get naked (look for a guest appearance from a cameraman here - the forth wall is intentionally broken!).
In addition to the sex and story scenes, the movie cuts back and forth to black and white interview bits with the various performers, giving this some context and attempting to create some personality for them. It sort of works, even if it also breaks up the scenes sometimes when they appear. Regardless, overall this is a pretty interesting and entertaining early eighties porno film. It's got some artistic ambition and it tries something a bit different - mostly succeeding at it.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Little Showoffs arrives on standard definition DVD in a 1.33.1 fullframe transfer taken from a new 2k scan of “35mm negative.†The film looks quite good even if there is some minor print damage evident throughout - mostly just small specks rather than big scratches or anything, but it's there. Great colors, good depth and texture, strong black levels - no complaints really. The natural amount of film grain is handled well and there are no obvious compression artifacts or edge enhancement issues to note.
The film gets the Dolby Digital Mono treatment. Clarity is just fine and balance is good. There are no problems with any hiss or distortion. Dialogue is clean, crisp and clear. There are no alternate language options or subtitles provided.
Extras start off with an audio interview with writer/director Zachary Youngblood moderated by Casey Scott. They talk about who was responsible for the 'disappearance' of most of his movies in the early nineties, which is why they've been hard to see since then. He then speaks about meeting and working with McDowell, where the ideas behind Little Showoffs came from, who did what behind the scenes on the picture, the involvement of the different performers - professional and amateur alike - the interview segments and how they tie into the 'fantasy' sequences, the involvement of a 'stunt cock' in various scenes not just in this feature but some of his other work, some of the sets and locations used and quite a bit more. The interview runs sixty-eight minutes and plays over the film much like an audio commentary would.
Additionally, the disc includes an audio interview with director/script supervisor Molly Seagrim again moderated by Scott that also begins with a discussion of Curt McDowell's work in film, meeting him for the first time and what he was like to work with (she describes him as 'quite a charmer'). From there the topic covers her involvement on the film, but she notes that she'd stopped keeping a journal while working on this film so she doesn't have as much material to pull from. She talks about Youngblood's work on the film, how making movies ceased to be fun at one point, drama surrounding McDowell later in their partnership with him and plenty more. This interview also runs over the film like an audio commentary and it lasts roughly sixty-one minutes.
Aside from that, we also get two different theatrical trailers for the feature (one as Little Showoffs and the other under the alternate title of Without Shame), menus and chapter selection
The Final Word:
Vinegar Syndrome's DVD release of Women At Play and Good Girls Bad Girls presents two entertaining and well-made mid-eighties adult features in very nice shape. If the features themselves aren't all time classics, they're worth seeing for fans thanks to solid direction and good casting - particularly if you've got a thing for adult films of the era.
