Daddy Doesn't Know

For mainstream folk, there's "American Beauty", Oscar-bait and not my cup of tea at all. For more adventurous film buffs we have the forgotten "Daddy Doesn't Know", a rather crude porn video that intrigues in its critique of our society's mores and the nuclear family we put on a pedestal.

Woody Long, using a pseudonym at the beginning of his career, is well-cast as the clueless dad, looking like a fish out of water without either of his famous meal tickets, Sandra Scream or Celeste, as co-star. Instead he's married to Karen Summer, an odd choice for MILF decades before that term was invented. She was 22 when this was made and Cara Lott playing her daughter was 23; both were prototypical jail-bait actresses of the early video era.

The synopsis in IMDb is quite thorough, so I will address only the final, telling reel. After we've seen sexual hi-jinks from this family, Lott visits her brother Marc Wallice and immediately seduces him, remarking that incest "is quite convenient, sweetheart". Mama Summer sees them, just smiles and shakes her head. Karen lies on a couch in her underwear, lamenting: "If their father only knew", and masturbates.

Coda has the family sitting at the dinner table, and chatter reveals that Karen is a fund-raiser for the ACLU. They have plenty of secrets and their life goes on unperturbed.

Industry heavyweights were behind the camera on this very minor video: writer- director Bruce Seven taking time out from his busy schedule churning out hundreds of dreadful bondage/fetish exercises; and producers Hal Freeman and future hall of famer John Stagliano. The production is slapdash, with the cast having trouble staying in character and not breaking up at the silliness. But its depiction of the sordid (but fun -hey, this is porn after all) underbelly of what we think of as our sweet suburban ideal is quite trenchant and well worth watching from either a prurient or scholarly angle. Serendipitous scripting names them the Osbornes, a couple of decades before Ozzy Osbourne & brood typified the inglorious world of Reality TV.