Jeanie's Magic Box (1972)

As a big fan of _lor's reviews, which I think provide a valuable chronicle of some of the lower dregs of American pornography, it's rare that I feel the need to offer up a corrective. However, he gives JEANIE'S MAGIC BOX an oddly unfair shake. While little to write home about – the film is, admittedly, a pretty by-the-numbers storefront programmer – JEANIE is nevertheless a goofy and amiable enough sex flick, hardly meriting the oddly specific savaging he gives it on account of its male cast.

The film's threadbare plot finds a professor (played by a young guy in a silly gray wig affecting a ridiculous German accent) somehow conjuring a genie via his experimentations. Though granted presumably infinite power over reality through his wishes, the professor nevertheless wants the only thing Genie can't give him – some time alone with her. To compensate, she summons a host of beautiful women from the past and future, each of whom the professor turns away. So much the better for his bumbling assistants, who have gotten into another of the professor's experiments and are now each sporting indefatigable hard-ons

While profoundly idiotic, JEANIE is still at least loopy enough to be entertaining. Both assistants' performances, while consistently grating, are nevertheless trainwreck-captivating in their deliriously non-PC affectation of mental retardation, and the performers are all game and deliver some surprisingly arousing sexual encounters. Unlike _lor, I thought it was nice to see some decent looking male woodsmen for a change. There's only so much John Seeman one can take.

To top it off, the soundtrack (unfortunately scrubbed in the AHC release – sadly the only version that appears to be available at this time) is also great, featuring a number of excellent purloined tracks: "Those Were the Days," "Aquarius," "The Fool on the Hill," "Lady Godiva," "You've Had Better Times," "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" (in a nice cover by Linda Ronstadt), and The 101 Strings Orchestra's "Love at First Sight."

By no means a masterpiece, JEANIE nevertheless delivers solid sex, a good (stolen) score, and enough loopy weirdness to make for a decent time-killer. Probably shot over the course of a fun weekend by a bunch of silly film school grads, it seems unfair to fault it for featuring young bodies or a youthful sense of vigor.