Secrets of a Willing Wife

A comical variation on one of the oldest themes of this genre, this opens with photos of a happily married Merle Michaels and Eric Edwards, but it's buxom Rikki O'Neal, supposedly Merle's best friend, whom Eric is plunging into. Poor Merle slips on a banana skin as she returns with the shopping and you know it's not going to be her day even before she catches the pair. Having walked out, she decides to win Eric back by expanding her sexual repertoire. She's recommended by her psychiatrist to CheeChee a sort of hippie sex therapist, played by the alluring Patty Boyd who might have become a star but for her penchant for using a different name in every film. First glimpsed memorably having sex wearing an enormous hat adorned with synthetic fruit and flowers and a long dark hairpiece, her extraordinary accent adds to an entertaining performance. After completing CheeChee's individual brand of therapy, including an impromptu performance with the two Rons Jeremy and Hudd in a porno theatre and CheeChee's girls' night out, which ends in group sex in her apartment strewn with phallic symbols, Merle has gained confidence and conclusively lost all her inhibitions, thus clearing the way to win Eric back in an amusing and erotic finale.

Perhaps only a 'classic' in the looser sense of the word, this is a fun little film from the Golden Age of sex cinema. The sex scenes are pretty hot, (albeit tame by today's standards), not least the one where Arcadia Lake, for some obscure reason, cooks dinner for Eric, ruins it, and he takes her without ceremony on the floor. Merle Michaels, star of many New York sex films around the turn of the 1980s is very cute and shares some funny repartee with Rikki as they fight over Eric. The cast look as if they were enjoying themselves making this one and I liked Patty Boyd in particular as the outrageous CheeChee. The identity of Norman Gurney remains a mystery, but settings and camera angles indicate that another Joe Sarno pseudonym is a good bet.

"Norman Gurney" is the pseudonym for the filmmaker responsible for SECRETS OF A WILLING WIFE, a particularly mindless porn exercise from the genre's Golden Age. Some brain damage is evident here.

The biggest problem is the constant attempt to be funny, usually in tasteless fashion, which is simply way too difficult for the fabricators of this junk. The cumulative effect of the groaners on display here is mind-numbing.

Premise is simple enough: Hubby Eric Edwards is cheating on wifey Merle Michaels with her best friend Rikki O'Neal. After an idiotic "comically matched" editing opener, with cutting back and forth showing fruits and vegetables grocery shopper Merle has spilled on the sidewalk with sexual connotations between O'Neal's and Edwards' body parts, she arrives home to catch them in the act. She tosses her wedding ring on the floor and storms off in a huff.

I knew I was in trouble when "Gurney" ended this scene with Rikki wiping a load of fake cum off her face, which drips tellingly all over a framed photo of Michaels. Not to worry, this cum-drenched photo gimmick is repeated later in the film for the hard of hearing.

This opening scene is very poorly done, with the nonsensical goof of Rikki as Gina saying "Gina may be my best friend", meaning to say Susan (Merle's character's name) but reciting her own name by mistake, just seconds after Eric has announced their names to the audience. Full speed ahead - Eric doesn't correct her, and it's left in the print. Later on Eric has trouble over & over remembering his co-stars' names, almost a running gag eventually.

Merle goes to a shrink (another gimmick: like "Charlie's Angels" his face is never shown on screen -we just hear his voice and later (natch) see his cock) named Phil, who advises her to lose all her sexual inhibitions, in order to win back her hubby.

He refers her to Cheechee (sexy Patty Boyd), but the haphazard script instead first has Merle fantasizing a threesome with Eric, Merle in harem outfit and another girl getting it on.

Flanked by a poster for the obscure film THE FUR TRAP, Cheechee has sex with a guy, aided by some plastic fruit (don't ask me why, I sensed some Carmen Miranda connotation, but that's just me, striving to make sense out of nonsense).

Meanwhile back home is the touted scene for Arcadia Lake fans, in which she guest stars as maid Rita, sparring verbally with Edwards who hates her cooking. Their sloppy sex on the floor is certainly a highlight.

Visiting Cheechee, Merle has a lesbian threesome with her and Gloria (Crystal Day), with a cock joining in the fray out of nowhere -director "Gurney" forgot to establish the fourth person in this dumb scene.

Merle goes to a porn theater, showing "Swedish Sorority Girls" (on a double bill with "Nympho Teens") and the joke is that we hear a Swedish dialog track (actually an in-joke, because that film was another New York porn movie with English dialog and NYC talent, not Swedish at all). Tired gag of her sitting next to Ron Jeremy and his penis popping up out of the popcorn box in his lap cues uninhibited sex in public by Merle.

IMDb credits are a bit garbled, as Ron Hudd is the flash-light toting cinema usher who comes over and joins in doggy-style, leading improbably to the trio going on stage in front of the projected image, putting on an impromptu live show that the audience loves.

Girls' night out with Cheechee brings Merle to an anything-goes night club where she comically picks up Dave Ruby, latter getting the funniest lines in the movie. Cheechee is paired off with Roger Caine, and a mini-orgy ensues.

Merle returns to the shrink, pleasantly talking dirty and giving him a blow job to show what she's learned.

When she goes home to Eric, she's confronted by Nikki, who's nasty and the girls engage in trash talk. Sort of "vogue-ing", they have a showdown, ending up servicing passive Eric together (Edwards' role in this film is meager, not up to his usual acting assignments). Climax is anal sex with Merle -always a happy ending in pornoland.

Eric proposes marrying Merle a second time and film's constant Christmas theme pays off with a cheaper-than-cheap dangling cardboard Santa's sleigh crossing the heavens E.T.-style, and wobbly as all get out. A crummy finish to a crummy film, with end title "...and they lived happily (crossed out -humpingly replacing it) ever after!

Nudge/nudge, say no more.

And some are so long and full of weenie closeups, you wish they were never filmed at all! This film matches the first part of that statement. Edwards plays his best role opposite 3 girls from Debbie Does Dallas: Sherri Tart (aka Riki O'Neal), Merle Michaels, and Arcadia Lake. Michaels catches him cheating with her best friend (Tart) and wonders what she might do to bring him back to her. She sees a shrink who recommends a swinging surrogate (Patty Boyd) to help her relieve her inhibitions. Meanwhile, Edwards meets a housekeeper who is supposed to cook him dinner. He throws the burnt chicken and organic salad on the floor in a wild screwing scene that is repeated in a lot of "Best of" collections where it is considered Arcadia Lake's best part. What she has to do with the movie's plot is a mystery to me. Being Eric's real-life wife seems to bring her into a lot of films for one scene that doesn't blend in with the rest of the story. Michaels is now venturing out with Boyd and Chrystal Day to an adult theater and a swinger's bar for some group sex adventures before she unfolds her plan to bring back cheating hubby Edwards. Lake and Boyd--very hot. Tart--hot. Michaels--being thin to the point of anorexia, but always exciting--average hot.