Peek-A-Boo

Peek-A-Boo (1972)

** (out of 4)

Also known as A WORLD OF PEEPING TOMS, this porno is made up like a documentary as a camera crew goes around finding perverts and asking them a few questions. These perverts are basically spying on others having sex and after the interview the camera then looks down on the sex.

This here is yet another ultra low-budget porn film that was probably shot over a matter of days. The first act that we see features the twosome of Rene Bond and Ric Lutze. Look, I'm a die-hard Bond fan and would watch anything that she was involved in but this film is one of those where her and her boyfriend just shot one scene and then went on with their lives. They honestly don't appear for too long but their scene was the best in the film.

For the most part this is a decent movie as long as you aren't expecting too much. The key is that it clocks in just over fifty-minutes so it doesn't overstay its welcome but I think most people will be getting bored once Bond is out. The rest of the cast aren't all that special, the movie is poorly filmed and I'd argue that some of the people are those who you just don't really want to be watching having sex.

Save for 10 minutes of the usual Ric Lutze/Rene Bond fornication footage, WORLD OF PEEPING TOMS is among the weaker programmers resuscitated by Something Weird, appearing on Vol. 20 of its Dragon Art Theatre series. Bond completists will have to watch it, silicone-enhanced boobs and all.

Format attempts to achieve a documentary, cinema-verite feel, with man on the street interviews with perverts. Or at least non-actors simulating perverts of the peeper persuasion. Most don't want to be on camera, though some like the attention, but it's all patently phony and certainly not entertaining the way the likes of Tom Poston, Louis Nye, etc. portrayed, tongue-in-cheek, average Joes on the old Steve Allen show.

The anonymous pornographer tries to innovate with some first person "bouncy" camera-work as we vicariously watch "what the peeper saw", but this technique is ludicrously poor. Entire film identifies the viewer with the peeper, something film buffs are used to from the work of Alfred Hitchcock and of course Michael Powell (both Brit geniuses -coincidentally?), and the intended insult is well-taken.

Even accepting its own premises and goals, this film fails miserably, because it is so shoddily made. Most scenes, including the very lengthy sex footage, are shown without music, though a tiny bit of muzak creeps in once in awhile and is arbitrarily turned off suddenly at will. At one point we're treated to a muzak cover imitating Jimi Hendrix's cover of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" -whew!

The dialog, even by seasoned pros Rene & Ric, is inane, and cast tends to giggle for no other reason than they might have been high. One very long segment in the middle of the film is strictly softcore sex -nothing wrong with the old simulated approach, but it doesn't fit into a hardcore porn film. No attempt is made to hide the closeups where the "passionate" sex is shown with the man's penis clearly missing its mark. This segment is interrupted by the "filmmaker" butting in and asking the duo "do you mind people watching you have sex?". Taken aback, they rightly respond that they don't care, except they don't like to be INTERRUPTED.

Meant-to-be-amusing sudden ending involving a loquacious peeper who likes to hang out on rooftops is really crummy. It seems to be a recurring motif of these 1-day-wonders to include a shoddy finish (see for example SCHOOL FOR DEAD GIRLS), as if to give the audience the finger after subjecting them to unmitigated garbage. I guess the journeymen non-filmmakers who ground this stuff out without ever achieving a "name" for themselves were a pretty frustrated, bitter bunch, who needed somebody to look down on, even though collectively those somebodies were providing them with a living.