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Released by: After Hours Cinema
Released on: 10/14/2008
Director: L. Cooper/N/A
Cast: Alice Hammer, Fay Little, Damon Gerard, Raymond North/Keith Erickson, Nina Fause
Year: 1975/1974
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The Movies:
A weird mix of XXX sex and backwoods slasher films, Wet Wilderness is one of those unsung seventies smut film oddities that should be a bigger cult film than it is. Pairing it up with the almost as unusual Come Deadly was a great choice on the part of After Hours Cinema, who are doing a really nice job preserving some of these skuzzy little cinematic gems.
WET WILDERNESS
There's really not a whole lot to the storyline of this 1974 XXX trash film. It follows a trio of ladies and a singular dude who decide to go for a relaxing hiking trip through the serene and scenic forest. Two of the gals decide to head off in their own direction, waiting for the other girl and the dude (who happen to be mother and son) to take off so that they can spend some quality alone time together. They get naked, toy around with a still camera and pose for some pictures, and get into some hot and heavy lesbian gymnastics.
Their Sapphic lust soon turns to sheer terror, however, as a squirrely dude in yellow ski mask (with L-O-V-E written in black magic marker across the forehead for some reason) and some tacky golf pants shows up out of nowhere, brandishing a machete. He forces the girls to gobble his knob and then get back to work on one another while he stands there and pulls the pud. Once that's over with, one of the girls makes her getaway, her partner not quite so lucky, finding herself on the receiving end of his machete.
The escapee soon meets up with the mother and son and tries to convince them to get the Hell out of there but it's too little too late as our masked maniac is soon on the scene once again. This time he makes the mom go down on him while he makes his former and once again captive gal do the other dude, who just so happens to be her brother! Not content to hog mom's mouth all to himself, he then makes her blow her own son.
The chick once again takes this as a cue to run, and run she does, right into a random black dude who is, for some reason, tied to a big tree all by his lonesome. She frees him hoping he can help, but once again her timing sucks as and the rapist is threatening them both with his machete. He makes her go down on the black guy before making mom jump in and help out. After a bit of that, he gets bored to he kills the black dude and tries to get back in on the action himself, but the wily sister has got an idea that just might save their lives…
Reprehensible in pretty much every possible way you can think of, Wet Wilderness is about as trashy as they come and if it weren't so incredibly inept, it would probably be horribly offensive. That said, as sleazy as this picture is, it's so completely bonkers that it's impossible to take any of it too seriously. None of the actresses look all that frightened of our horribly dressed maniac and the gore scenes are really little more than a few dashes of obviously fake blood. The combination of hardcore sex and menacing violence will no doubt rub the easily upset the wrong way, but seriously, this is a ridiculously enjoyable film for all the wrong reasons and the cast of nobodies seem to be having a good time with the material, either hamming it up or delivering incredibly terrible performances (it's really hard to say). Throw in plenty of verbal abuse courtesy of the masked rapist, copious amounts of grisly incest and generally odd, seedy vibe and you've got yourself a hell of a film.
Wet Wilderness is a twisted movie, sure, there can be no doubt about that, but it's pretty tough to get offended by a movie that looks like it was made by a bunch of horny, albeit stupid, teenage boys.
COME DEADLY
Considerably less manic but still pretty entertaining is the second feature which begins with a group of young men and women working on their upcoming stage production of William Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew. Unbeknownst to our burgeoning cast, however, is that directly above them in the theater's loft one of their own is being raped by a dude in a black hippie hat. Once he's had his way, he strangles the poor girl.
Enter a few cops, who seem rather perplexed by this case which they think may be related to a few similar attacks that have happened recently. One of the cops decides he can best catch the maniac by going undercover and posing as one of the stage actors, and before you know it, he and two of the actresses in the cast are going at it like jack rabbits. Shortly after he does the horizontal bop with one of the girls, the maniac shows up and strangles the poor thing. More upset than ever before, our hero decides he can trap the killer by using one of the pretty, young actresses as bait. He leaves her sitting all alone, out in plain view where the killer can definitely see her, and he waits…
Awkwardly overacted from start to finish, this creaky murder mystery isn't exactly an edge of your seat thriller but it is a fun little movie with a couple of interesting cast members. Look for Keith Erickson and pretty blonde Nina Fause in the cast, both quasi-recognizable adult film stars of the era here playing members of the theater group being held in the grip of fear by our hat loving antagonist. The picture moves along at a good pace and while it isn't as sleazy or nasty as the first feature, it's still rough enough to matter and goofy enough to entertain. Those unaccustomed to seventies era grooming habits might be a little bit put off by the copious amount of the hair down there on display but the girls are reasonably cute.
The kill scenes are mild compared to the first feature and the story isn't good enough to really grip you, but if you dig that bad acting, awkward cinematography, wonky wardrobe and generally enjoyable ineptitude that seventies smut tends to offer en masse, you should have a good time with it. It's goofy, but it's a reasonably entertaining smut film.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Here's where this set has to lose some points. After Hours Cinema has cropped the films from their original 1.33.1 fullframe aspect ratio to fit nicely within the confines of a 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen presentation. The Alpha Blue Archives release of the film (contained in their The Roughies: Brute Lust boxed set) has more information on the top and the bottom of the picture. Does this cropping render the After Hours release unwatchable? Not really, no, but you're definitely going to notice it in some scenes. Going back to the image comparison, note that the masked rapist's head is slightly cut off and as such, the composition looks a little odd. Both transfers are interlaced, though After Hours' is in nicer shape with slightly better color reproduction. The Alpha Blue Archives release is also bugged in the lower right hand corner, which is fairly annoying while the After Hours release is not, though the opening titles have been altered a bit to include a new copyright. Regardless, the fact remains that this was a 16mm fullframe production and it does appear to have been composed for fullframe display and the cropping hurts the movie. Had it just been a case of tightening things up a bit here and there, it probably wouldn't have been as noticeable, but as you can see from the example provided, it does screw with the original compositions, as rough and sloppy as some of those original compositions may have been.
Come Deadly, which is also presented in 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen, was again shot on 16mm and likely intended for a full frame display and as such, it's also cropped though the compositions aren't quite as screwy as they are on the first feature. As far as the video quality itself goes, both transfers are taken from film prints. They're interlaced, an unfortunate and ongoing issue with After Hours titles, but aside from that and the cropping issues, they look pretty good. Colors are a bit faded and there's some grain and minor print damage present throughout but nothing so severe that it's much of a problem, really.
Also worth noting is that Wet Wilderness has been rescored. You can't blame After Hours for this, as the film features the unauthorized use of music from both Jaws and Psycho and it's pretty damn unlikely that Universal would have been to keen on seeing those scores reproduced on a film like this. As far as their choice in replacement tracks is concerned, the new score works fairly well, actually. It fits the tone of the movie and doesn't really feel too out of place at all. What does hurt the picture is that in order to rescore the movie, the film also had to be redubbed. The source material for this release was a film print and it was simply not possible to take the audio and separate the dialogue from the music. The dialogue has not been changed at all, but the voices are definitely different than those heard on the original version of the film and those familiar with that original version will definitely notice it. The audio for Come Deadly appears to be completely intact. Both tracks are fine, in terms of quality, even if there's a little bit of minor background hiss in a couple of spots on the second feature.
After Hours has supplied a decent collection of trailers for thirty-seven (!!!) of their vintage and modern adult hardcore and softcore DVD releases. There's a ton of material in here and while some of the trailers are of the 'handmade' variety, meaning that they've been created for DVD rather than theatrical release, given the kind of material presented on these discs, it's doubtful that many of them had theatrical trailers to begin with. This is a great little sampler collection and it's fun to check some of this stuff out.
Inside the keepcase is a booklet of liner notes from the After Hours Collector that shed as much light as anyone can realistically expect on these two fairly obscure XXX roughies and which give some very basic background information on the XXX slasher phenomena. A mini-poster reproduction of the nifty cover art is also included inside - display it on your wall and impress your mom!
The Final Word:
It's painful to have to rag on After Hours for the copping issues here, as this is other wise a very welcome and completely uncut release of two films that many of us figured would never, ever see a proper DVD release, but cropped is cropped. That said, they're doing great work by digging up these XXX oddities and releasing them with some obvious care and respect. Here's hoping future entries are in their original aspect ratios so that fans can continue to support their efforts.