Shape-Up for Sensational Sex

Pumped out at the height of the '80s workout craze, SHAPE UP FOR SENSATIONAL SEX is a bizarre amalgam, somewhere between legitimate exercise video and porn flick. Unfortunately, it doesn't lean heavily enough in either direction to satisfy fans of those genres, but for connoisseurs of bizarre vanity projects, it should provide a solid evening's entertainment.

Opening with an introduction straight out of a legitimate exercise video - suggesting porn only if you recognize handsome genre B-player Nick Niter or his female companion as they jog in scanty workout clothes - the film's scene is set by narration from Gail Palmer, giving a ludicrous spiel about the importance of physical fitness in regards to sex. With expectations thus primed for legitimate kinesthetic discourse, the film promptly faceplants, cutting to footage of Palmer and her workout squad on a chintzy set running through a basic '80s cardio routine. Zero information is provided about form or range of motion - natch - which, combined with leering cinematography that seems far more interested in ogling the dancers than showing proper technique, pretty quickly gives away the game as porn. Not that there had been any doubt, it's just that the film goes through a baffling amount of effort trying to replicate the look and feel of an exercise video when it seems to have no interest in actually being one. It's puzzling.

Unfortunately, once the fornication starts, it becomes clear SHAPE UP doesn't work much better as a sex flick, either. Interspersing the workout segments (with titles like Arms, Abdomen & Rib-Cage, Hamstring Stretch, etc.) with sex sequences purporting to show these parts in motion, any linkage drawn is tenuous at best, with the sex segments seeming like standard erotica. The lightness of these segments does suggest they're being targeted at the couple's market - no loud screaming and moaning, for instance - but unfortunately, this often comes coupled with a lack of visibility that's disappointing by the genre's standards. Most of the scenes seem reticent even to get around to penetration, and the film as a whole progresses slowly, not featuring a visible climax until the halfway mark, then piling them on at the end. In this regard, SHAPE almost treats the video as one extended build-up, and there's a case to be made given its director that it marks an interesting and non-standard approach to pornographic sexuality. I'll leave it to female viewers to chime in whether they feel it represents a more feminine point of view - perhaps the film is successful on its own terms but merely different from the expectations I'm bringing. For this reviewer, however, it didn't really work as erotica: the scenes feel more pro forma than anything, as if dropped in because a sex scene was needed, delivered by reliable pros who are nonetheless strictly running through the motions.

Much has been made of credited director Palmer's dubious authorship throughout her career - ex-paramour Harry Mohney has stated he was happy to let her have credit for films actually directed by him or others (chiefly Bob Chinn) to counter accusations of sexism and draw additional publicity. Whatever the case, Palmer's career as, if little else, a female "presenter" in XXX is unique and worth noting, and SHAPE UP, her only movie not produced under the aegis of Caribbean Films, is a bizarre swan song, allowing the charming personality to present one last - and very minor - project. If it's not that good or successful, it's nevertheless a fittingly bizarre capstone for a career spanning everything from race riot provocation (HOT SUMMER IN THE CITY) to daffy adaptations of Voltaire (EROTIC ADVENTURES OF CANDY). After a string of hits like those, anyone deserves a cool-down, and Palmer achieves it with this low-key, though no less bizarre, hardcore workout tape.