Hardly worthy of its video-box blurbs, touting the film's purported "rough" content, Saturday NIGHT SPECIAL emerges as a slapdash '70s production, inept and phony on all counts. I feel as if I'm in the awkward position of dredging up a forgotten junker merely to squash it, but somebody has to apply the Raid to this bug.
It's shot MOS with extremely fake dubbing of dialog, plus poor simulation of background sound helping to ruin the movie. Worse yet, all the sex scenes are shot softcore (1976??), hence no fellatio, but with generic tight-tight closeup sex inserts and money shots thrown in that don't match the action. More about that specifically later.
There are no credits displayed on screen at all, but Jamie Gillis (as Frank) and George Payne (as Kirby) are recognizable as two thugs who participate in a botched jewel robbery, not quite as stimulating as Sidney Lumet's finale BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD (which could have served as a good moniker for this clunker).
They're sent by one Mr. Norman J. Big to rob an office, disguised in cheap monster masks. Action footage is very poorly directed by "Sam Bloch", who never approaches the realism or verisimilitude of say, a Doris Wishman even.
After they too easily conk a couple of A/C repairmen on the head to impersonate them, they invade the tiny office (cheap, unconvincing set) in the diamond district, accompanied by their gun moll Vicky (a mean-spirited one-shot actress, whose stubby nipples constitute the film's sexiest attraction, during a closeup opening softcore sex scene in the back of a moving car with Gillis).
SPOILERS AHEAD:
The office manager Mr. Green pretends not to know the combo to the office safe, so he's immediately shot to death by our inept crooks. Then Frank and Vicky grab a hostage secretary, Lisa Coleman, and Gillis rapes her on a couch as Vicky holds the hapless girl down. This is apparently the film's nasty calling card, followed up by later cruelty dished out by Vicky, but has zero impact. I'm not among Gillis' legion of devoted fans, and his silent, snarling in closeup non-performance here is lousy, and very disappointing after perhaps his career highpoint a year earlier starring in Damiano's classic THE STORY OF JOANNA.
The rape scene is largely notable for Lisa's very fake blonde wig falling off half-way through. It's retrieved and she wears it for the remainder of the film, as if this production mistake had never happened.
Crooks take Lisa hostage along with her co-worker Tod (played by Jeffrey Hurst). At their hideout, there's considerable humping by a beautiful starlet in a grey wig, who goes from Kirby's to Tod's bedroom and has sex with them in succession, BUT director Bloch incompetently features two radically contrasting body doubles for her (one nearly shaved, one with full black bush) in the two sets of XXX inserts. It's pure incompetence that must have stupefied theatrical porn fans back in the day.
Vicky sadistically threatens captive Lisa Coleman with a mean pair of shears, but it's ultra-tame footage, especially by Sick Seventies standards. While the amateur crooks await a ransom from Coleman's daddy, Miss Grey Wig turns against them and helps the good guys escape, resulting in a cheapo blood bath finale.
Pirated hard rock soundtrack is probably the best thing about this desultory effort. It merely proves that if you're going to go the "porn inserts" route, it's always best to start with a viable, well-played real movie, and then just add some appropriate XXX closeups. I'm guessing the one-shot actresses here, both of whom are sexy, perhaps signed up for softcore and then were unknowingly doubled to make a salable XXX feature. I certainly couldn't identify either of them from other roles.
Evidence for the "spiced up" softcore feature theory comes from a Something Weird trailer for THE LOVE LORDS, a softcore version of Saturday NIGHT SPECIAL for which I have not found any documentation apart from the extant trailer.
It's shot MOS with extremely fake dubbing of dialog, plus poor simulation of background sound helping to ruin the movie. Worse yet, all the sex scenes are shot softcore (1976??), hence no fellatio, but with generic tight-tight closeup sex inserts and money shots thrown in that don't match the action. More about that specifically later.
There are no credits displayed on screen at all, but Jamie Gillis (as Frank) and George Payne (as Kirby) are recognizable as two thugs who participate in a botched jewel robbery, not quite as stimulating as Sidney Lumet's finale BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD (which could have served as a good moniker for this clunker).
They're sent by one Mr. Norman J. Big to rob an office, disguised in cheap monster masks. Action footage is very poorly directed by "Sam Bloch", who never approaches the realism or verisimilitude of say, a Doris Wishman even.
After they too easily conk a couple of A/C repairmen on the head to impersonate them, they invade the tiny office (cheap, unconvincing set) in the diamond district, accompanied by their gun moll Vicky (a mean-spirited one-shot actress, whose stubby nipples constitute the film's sexiest attraction, during a closeup opening softcore sex scene in the back of a moving car with Gillis).
SPOILERS AHEAD:
The office manager Mr. Green pretends not to know the combo to the office safe, so he's immediately shot to death by our inept crooks. Then Frank and Vicky grab a hostage secretary, Lisa Coleman, and Gillis rapes her on a couch as Vicky holds the hapless girl down. This is apparently the film's nasty calling card, followed up by later cruelty dished out by Vicky, but has zero impact. I'm not among Gillis' legion of devoted fans, and his silent, snarling in closeup non-performance here is lousy, and very disappointing after perhaps his career highpoint a year earlier starring in Damiano's classic THE STORY OF JOANNA.
The rape scene is largely notable for Lisa's very fake blonde wig falling off half-way through. It's retrieved and she wears it for the remainder of the film, as if this production mistake had never happened.
Crooks take Lisa hostage along with her co-worker Tod (played by Jeffrey Hurst). At their hideout, there's considerable humping by a beautiful starlet in a grey wig, who goes from Kirby's to Tod's bedroom and has sex with them in succession, BUT director Bloch incompetently features two radically contrasting body doubles for her (one nearly shaved, one with full black bush) in the two sets of XXX inserts. It's pure incompetence that must have stupefied theatrical porn fans back in the day.
Vicky sadistically threatens captive Lisa Coleman with a mean pair of shears, but it's ultra-tame footage, especially by Sick Seventies standards. While the amateur crooks await a ransom from Coleman's daddy, Miss Grey Wig turns against them and helps the good guys escape, resulting in a cheapo blood bath finale.
Pirated hard rock soundtrack is probably the best thing about this desultory effort. It merely proves that if you're going to go the "porn inserts" route, it's always best to start with a viable, well-played real movie, and then just add some appropriate XXX closeups. I'm guessing the one-shot actresses here, both of whom are sexy, perhaps signed up for softcore and then were unknowingly doubled to make a salable XXX feature. I certainly couldn't identify either of them from other roles.
Evidence for the "spiced up" softcore feature theory comes from a Something Weird trailer for THE LOVE LORDS, a softcore version of Saturday NIGHT SPECIAL for which I have not found any documentation apart from the extant trailer.