The Disco Dolls in Hot Skin

Like many others, I saw this as a midnight art house rescreening. Naturally, one is hesitant to sit through two hours of bad 70s porn without being able to fast-forward, and with the potential lack of good scenes to fast-forward to.

But as it turns out, Hot Skin in 3D deserves more credit than that. I suppose this is the one pornographic film I've ever noticed playing at art houses for a reason. Rightfully, it's not a really fantastic movie-going experience. Too bad, there goes my dream of yuppies and soccer moms at the Angelika suddenly realizing pornography is suitable as mainstream entertainment.

The film has more campy plot than even most 70's porn. In fact, it's much closer to a real plot than any other porn film I've ever seen, although I'm not much of an expert. But compared to Behind the Green Door, Deep Throat, and Debbie Does Dallas, you can actually watch this movie without forgetting where the story's going. I'd really rather see this on the big screen than even The Devil in Miss Jones. As an often amusing campy B-flick and hardcore porno rolled into one, it's a good introduction to 70's porn. This film is actually an average campy B-movie even if you ignore the sex, although the sex itself is integral to the hilarity of the feature.

The film has some cool scenes designed for 3-D amusement, although not a great many of them. Unfortunately, it seems 3-D technology in 1977 was pitiful, and was hardly really 3-D at all. If you really try to pretend it's 3-D, you can get a little effect out of it, but it's more akin to watching a 3-D movie without the glasses.

Also, beware that this really isn't a John Holmes film. This was at the start of his career, so he's just a sex-extra in the movie for about a minute or two, in one group scene. His name does appears on the beginning credits [JOHN "THE WAD" HOLMES, which got quite a laugh], which may indicate he had achieved some fame shortly after the making of this film that the producers thought to take advantage of. Also, the film is often promoted as if he's the star. That's very misleading.

I saw this as a reissued film at a midnite showing in NYC and the full house was laughing hysterically. As a campy film this is worthwhile, but sexually there is not much to recommend, except Lesllie Bovee, who was always hot.

I find it hard to believe that I am the only person in Denver to comment on this movie, considering it's three week run at the mayan. I found it altogether hilarious (with the exception of "hairy balls who?"). Maybe if it wasn't two hours long, I would of been more amused afterwards.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit I have now seen BOTH of the 3-D 1970's hardcore porn movies (the other being "Hard Candy") that are currently making the rounds at the midnight movies. This is definitely the "best" of the two ("best" obviously being a very relative term here).

As a sex movie this isn't great. Only the lead, Serena, and, to a lesser extent, Leslee Bovee are partucularly attractive, and at times I actually felt sorry for the poor male actors who had to maintain arousal while being serviced by some of these skanks, I mean, girls. But if you want a porno for the sex, you're better off watching it at home with one hand on the fast-forward button and the other covered with Jergen's lotion than going to a midnight movie. The "comedy", unfortunately, is even worse than the sex--the "Harry Balls who?" joke wasn't funny the first time, and after about the twentieth time. . .

What I did like about this movie is that it contained two transgressive murder scenes. The second was more gory, but the first was more disturbing (albeit very silly)--the villain "Harry Balls" drowns an unfortunate woman in a big bowl of soup while having anal sex with her! Now I know some people claim you shouldn't mix real sex and fake violence because people might confuse the two (and you might have some kind of soup-dunking/anal-sex copycat murder). But to me that's like saying you shouldn't drink cold beer in a hot tub because you might start bathing in cold beer and/or drinking hot tub water. Even when they're in the same scene, real sex and fake violence are enjoyable, but for COMPLETE DIFFERENT REASONS. Besides, for me at least, I always get uncomfortable in movies where people are constantly having sex, but no one is getting killed or dying--it's like nature is out of balance or something. But if that's too weird for you, consider this: porno actors are typically terrible and their characters are very annoying, so any excuse to get rid of them after they "do their thing" is certainly justifiable.

Anyway, I wouldn't recommend this either as a porn film or a "comedy", but it might be worth seeing at a midnight movie (provided you sneak in without paying).

Aw, yes just one of the many eye straining "Deep Vision" 3-D skin flicks from the mid to late Seventies. Hot Skin is the hard version and Disco Dolls In Hot Skin is the medium version and Blonde Emanuel is the soft core re-release. The 3-D was produced through a special (as in Olympics) lens that was supposed to create an anaglyphic (that cost effective old red and blue type) stereo image by using a prism beam splitter built into the lens attachment. What you get in effect is pretty much non-3-D because there is no way to control the separation of the two images. So you get a right image in one color and a left image in another color and another slightly right image in yet another color and so forth an so on. I'm not even sure if one could even turn a print into a watchable 2-D version (in some sequences there's as many as six images in varies colors on top of the normal color!) let alone fix the 3-D. There really isn't any plot to get in the way of the action - in fact mid way through the bit of vague plot is just dropped altogether. A product of its time, worth only a watch in a theater at midnight or with a lot of friends while drinking.