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1/10
Bad even for soft-core
saltsan18 November 2003
This is simply a soft-core porn movie, nothing more, that I stumbled upon while researching films portraying city life. It starts out as if it's going to be an investigative piece on "depraved Los Angeles", but it quickly becomes just another skin flick of people peeping through windows at other people supposedly having sex.

There's no sync sound, bad photography, and it isn't even sexy.
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Insulting, sloppy loop carrier
lor_4 October 2011
Loop carriers are generally a cheap film format associated with hardcore porn, but BIG SIN CITY is a poorly-made example of a softcore version.

Carlos Tobalina, who was a major pornographer and theater owner back in the day, cobbled together peep show loops that date from the '50s and '60s and released them with some lame wraparound MOS footage of two sets of peeping toms in action. It's the oldest trick in the book -have somebody gaze in a window and then cut to the loop.

Making matters worse, the sniggering narration actively insults the viewer's intelligence. This is signaled early on when Frank McKay voices over: "I know what you're here for", wink/wink, nudge/nudge.

Most of the loops are not very attractive models stripping in their bedrooms or kitchens, with occasional simulated sex scenes. There's a modicum of full-frontal female nudity, this being 1970, but the loops seem to have been chosen randomly, with hardly any highlights to speak of.

Only theme is a ton of footage set at the beach, both posed models going topless and considerable filler that merely shows gals sunning themselves in their bikinis or wandering around. A novelty song entitled "Please Don't Wiggle Your Toes" is played several times, par for the course.

A segment that the AFI Catalogue had the gall to classify as "bestiality" is merely a stripper posing topless with her live snake, about as tame as you can get, but the narration tries to make innocuous (and boring) footage seem daring. Similarly, the voice-over speaks of women craving S&M but doesn't show any.

My favorite sequence showed peeping at an ultra-busty girl dancing in her kitchen who somehow resembled a combination of redhead porn star Sharon Kelly and overly-Oscared Hilary Swank. Just the oddness of her looks impressed me.

Among many low points is an endless segment about surfing -amounting to no more than stock footage of no visual value whatsoever.

Low-brow finale has some of our peepers brought to justice -one dragged to the hoosegow by a cop called in by a neighbor (after the cop gets his fill of peeping first), and another voyeur shot by a guy making love who resents being spied upon. "Insult the audience" was Tobalina's goal and he succeeds.
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