The Disco Dolls in Hot Skin

There's a reason one doesn't see that many 1970s XXX movies shown in 3D anymore, if ever, and Disco Girls in Hot Skin is one of the few exceptions likely ever to come out. It plays from time to time at midnight screenings around the US, and it played recently in New York city. I saw it, curious just to see not even so much what a porno would look like on a big screen (having grown up post Taxi Driver/present internet generation the theaters for XXX simply don't exist anymore in the city even if I was so inclined to go) but in 3D. And the answer: about what one should expect unless if they're expectations are too high. The film might have been shot in 3D, of that I am not sure at all yet. From the looks of things, either way, the people behind the movie did a very poor job of putting it together.

Now, I don't mean this entirely in terms of it as an actual movie, though as a 1970s hardcore porno one has to expect that it's a) repetitive and stupid and occasionally pretty boring, and b) at best, and there are some 'best-of' moments, it's completely cheesy, hilarious disco-era sex-ploitation fun. What I mean is that it's just not at all worth the 3D hype; watching it with the old-school blue and red glasses (note to those expecting a recent experience like out of Coraline or My Bloody Valentine 3D) is retarded, since the colors are already washed out of the print and by putting the glasses on you're not getting that much at all of the original images, however not very well filmed and sometimes just downright f***ing horrible the shots can get, and it's just lots of blue and red filtered together, with images appearing in double. Only a car chase, which happens for about 15 seconds, is worth any of the trouble. Lame. Simple as that.

You know who you are already if you have any desire to see this movie, or then again maybe you don't. You might think that you'll want to see it just for kicks, and if that's the case it's just OK. You should seek out actual GOOD exploitation movie-fare ala Jack Hill pictures or Death Race 2000 or even crazy biker flicks before having to venture into such bizarre and SUPER low budget territory. Some jokes like the recurring psychiatrist who just POPS right into frame (literally, I'm serious) to give advice to the one guy who can't get "it" up are pretty amazing, as are the old-school Star Trek props like the rocks thrown in the climax, and a couple of lines of dialog or just a super-duper random cutaway were funny.

Other times it just got to be what you'd KNOW going into the movie it would be, which is rampant hardcore sex of all the varieties save for man-on-man, and how this will affect you will depend on how you view pornography. I'm not disgusted by it, but it's never a turn on in the slightest so except for the guilty pleasure of being in a midnight screening of other crazed and drunken fools yelling and howling at the screen (and the laughter sometimes caused by just laughing at oneself for getting into something like this) it becomes tedious and just, well, bland, even for supposedly "classy" 1970s porno.

And save for a couple of moments of actual disco it falters on that count as well: because it's an underground porno with a couple of big names (John Holmes gets top billing but is only in one scene oddly enough), it doesn't have any real money or resources to make itself a period piece save for a couple of shots at a rinky-dink club and a couple of afros here and there. It's got the crummy disco music but nothing to make it ever in the slightest memorable. Its gimmick really rests on the 3D and since that makes one dizzy enough to fall down the stairs trying to get out of the movie theater on the way out, there's only the scatter-shot moments of sleaze that entertain. It was an experience I was glad to have once, and now never, ever again. It's for real die-hard hardcore fans only, and next time I'll know a lot better... that is until the re-release of Jaws 3D!