Reviewed by SexHerald Staff
There is a montage of a rising starlet on the podium of an AVN Awards show. She’s all-smiles as she gives her abbreviated speech and tightly holds one of the most prestigious awards in the adult industry to her and walks off the stage. Then we’re taken to a segment of the film where an interviewer holds the mic to her and asks, “Have you heard of Deep Throat?” She prettily smiles at the camera and shakes her blonde head “No,” giving off an aura of a rootless profession only fueled by the Marilyn Monroe’s of the world.
Au contraire. Inside Deep Throat – a through-and-through documentary of the legendary Deep Throat that made the late Linda Lovelace a porn icon and Harry Reems a symbol of social reform – reveals a great deal of the history of the adult industry. It was extremely sad to see that little was known of the film Deep Throat by the adult industry before the re-release of the original film in May. Inside Deep Throat by Universal Studios, with a MPAA rating of NC-17 for certain questionable graphic scenes, depicted the original filmmakers and its stars as unfortunate victims who were caught in the maelstrom of the social and sexual revolution of the late 60s and the 70s, which was primordial in the evolution and the success of the adult industry today.
Some of the bonus features include words of wisdom of popular and/or famous mainstream people from various points of the liberal arts spectrum, including Erica Jong, a writer; Bill Maher, social commentator; Hugh Hefner, the 80+-year-old mogul of the Playboy empire, a symbol in his own right; and Wes Craven, the creator of the teeny-bopper-horror film series, Scream. There’s even a mini-interview of Annie Sprinkle, former lover of the director of Deep Throat, Gerard Damiano. And in the tradition of humor makes the world go round, the DVD includes a section entitled “Harry Reems’ Athletic Club,’ started by Harry Reems fanatics, which was absolutely hilarious if not somewhat bizarre.
The film did not receive the full five-star rating because the documentary had a pervading sense of unanswered questions, the best example being, “Where did all the money go?” especially when the snippets of interviews had people stressing the lucrative nature of Deep Throat. The narrator and the selected scenes merely touched upon the turmoil and the darkness that surrounded the parties involved with the film and drew too many parallels of the current administration to the Nixon era (albeit subtly) instead of emphasizing the trauma of the obscenity trials and the deep impact it had on the filmmakers and actors. There appears to be lots of lost footage from the documentary that didn’t quite make the cut but may have proved vital to the full understanding of an era in terms of the adult industry and as to why makers and actors of Deep Throat disenfranchised themselves from the infamy it stirred in the 70s and came out of it nigh penniless. The entire thing was too chipper for its own good.
Regardless, people who are first learning of the legend that is Deep Throat without dipping their feet into something that may be too seedy for the current administration will find in Inside Deep Throat a delightfully educational experience, which are in stores September 20, 2005. For more information, check out the story on Deep Throat and October’s After Hours featuring Harry Reems.
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