Betty Baby

A fairly minor player in the New York XXX scene, Bill Bukowski (under the amusing alias Bo Koup) only churned out a few minor porn programmers. One of his most obscure, BETTY BABY so far doesn't seem to have popped up for rediscovery from any of the usual retro DVD releasing outfits. Circumstances may change, but considering now minor it is, it's not any great loss.

Cindy West is the Betty of the title, a low-level NYC hooker. We meet her first servicing her two pimps, Turk Turpin and an unknown bearded white dude. Frustrated with the working girl's life, Betty decides to look for love, and immediately latches onto the first person who walks by, played by Bobby Astyr. The two go back to his place and have a romantic tryst, with Betty turning back to prostitution to support his vagabond lifestyle.

Somehow (the film never specifies), Betty's new engagement with her work seems to confer the impression she's raking in the dough, so it's not long before Astyr's money-grubbing sister (Jenny Baxter) is drugging her with LSD and attempting to ply favors, both monetary and otherwise. When the sister discovers Betty isn't actually a member of the monied elite, she flies into a rage, which happens to coincide with the arrival of her two "business associates." Given there are only five people in the cast, I'll let you take a crack at who those are...

Plenty of porn is unambitious, but BETTY BABY barely even makes sense - the whole monetary component is simply confusing, suggesting the film was improv-ed on the spot (probably over the course of an afternoon) and not really thought through. Sex is serviceable though uninvolving, spackled over with numerous stock-sounding tracks from Mahavishnu Orchestra. Even for an unambitious journeyman, Mr. Bukowski has done better, and BETTY remains best consigned to the dustbin of history, another one-day wonder where the main wonder is why anyone bothered.