Wow! Such a good movie.

Simply Perfect

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

While hardly shocking by standards today, the adult film 'Deep Throat' caused a stir when released in 1972 and this informative documentary recounts its notoriety as well as the subsequent careers of its director and stars. A few amusing bits aside, 'Deep Throat' is not a particularly well-made movie and the documentary benefits from acknowledging this with 'Deep Throat' director Gerard Damiano even agreeing. The source of fascination then becomes the fact the film has made so much money and was so widely seen despite being so amateurish. Reasons thrown up include its banning increasing demand, its graphic depiction of fellatio and the influence the movie had on adult films to come. We might never know the exact reason, but the documentary does a good job prodding. For a 90-minute doco though, 'Inside Deep Throat' is incredibly busy and explores a few too many avenues at once. Harry Reams is a fascinating subject (almost jailed for acting in the film when he was an eleventh hour casting decision, paid a mere $250), but it feels like more attention should have been thrown Linda Lovelace's way. The doco is also a little bloated with tons of interviews involving people such as John Waters and Larry Flynt, who were never involved with the actual film. Wes Craven makes for an interesting subject though as he started in porn himself, which he terms an "entry level job". Or at least it was back then. 'Inside Deep Throat' acutely reminds us of how much times have changed in addition to posing the expected freedom of expression questions.

Out of all the X-rated films that could have taken on such a place in the history of the world, it's ridiculous that "Deep Throat" is the one to rise up as the title synonymous with boundary pushing in society. It isn't good by almost any standards! Getting that off my chest, I was pleasantly shocked by how rich in all ways "Inside Deep Throat" is. This cannonball of a nonfiction movie should be watched by some of those teen girls who think that porn is the place for them. I'm not a prude, just a concerned adult who thinks the legal age for performing in porn should be 21 and not merely 18. The lives that would be saved, for lack of a better term, make this a sensible modifying of the laws regarding adult entertainment. (William Margold, who's spent many years writing, producing and performing in the world of X said virtually the same thing a while back.)The lives of the late Chuck, Linda, Gerard and still alive Harry are like four bumper cars that all crashed together in a curious stroke of fate and the fallout is still being felt today. The overwhelming reason is money. Chuck abused and pimped Linda, Harry had his freedom threatened for receiving a pittance to star in the film and Gerard almost had his life ended for being in the way of mob thugs that realized giving him a tiny piece of "Deep Throat" profits would cost them millions.And what millions there were! No one will know the true total, due to such unbridled greed that led to skimming, threats and people disappearing forever. Not until "The Blair Witch Project" came along had another entity in film been such a money tree. The latter became popular from a silly internet based hype, "Deep Throat" because certain officials wouldn't just let it pass with a natural cinematic demise. Some people, such as Joseph McCarthy's right hand man, Roy Cohn, were worse criminals in the damage they caused to society, but felt a need to grandstand against the hippie era and this film was the bastard child of the love generation. Seeing Harry Reems debate Cohn on TV is one of the great moments in this exploration into the human need to feel superior. Superior to maybe just their own image in society's funhouse mirrors of public versus private lives.

Deep Throat was filmed in less than six days at a cost of $25k. At the time, pornography was far from the mainstream and the easiest way to see sex was in sex education films and understandably there was moral outrage over this film. Despite bans and protests, the film went on to gross in excess of $600,000,000 and be one of the most profitable films ever made. This documentary looks back at how the film came about and the impact it had on society as it grew in success. However it also looks at the personal costs and benefits of those who were directly involved, from the stars to the director.This film opens in an energetic fashion with lots of editing, cool music and animated effects, I like this style but I did wonder how the hell it was going to keep it up for 90 minutes or indeed how I was going to keep up with it. Fortunately the film only uses this approach until the title card and from then on it is comparatively more traditional, but still quite pacey. The story itself is interesting but perhaps is stronger for the link it makes to the wider impact of pornography on society as well as the impact on those involved in the specific film itself. It is not 100% successful at this because it seems to want to have its feet in several different camps. As a result it fudges the bits on modern society and relies heavily on Norman Mailer telling us how porn is different not because it is all about money and how the interest in artistic expression has been lost – which is all very good while he says it in his unique, booming style but not when you think about 1970's pornography and wonder how much artistic creativity was involved versus the desire to make whacking material.Despite this fudge though the film is mostly interesting and well structured, with contributions cutting over each other to good effect. In terms of bias though, it is clear that we are not on the side of the moral crusaders here. We get chances to hear them speak, which is fair enough if you take it as read that the film is not meant to be a debate of the right and wrong of pornography so much as it is a discussion starter on the subject. Hopper's narration is solid and the couple of celebrities who pop up are wisely hardly used in favour of those who were directly involved.Overall this is an interesting documentary that is lively and interesting. Not the place to come to for a debate on the morality of pornography but it does a reasonable job of looking at the impact the film had at the time and, to some degree, the wider impact it had on society. However the potted focus on the film itself makes for an interesting and accessible film.

Paul Thomas Anderson's indie opus chronicling the porn industry from the early Seventies into the Nineties was influenced by many sources; the life story of John Holmes being among them. But for curiosity seekers and cineastes looking for a little more extensive take on the "temperature" of the times, politically, culturally and sexually, one needn't look much farther than this surprisingly entertaining doc produced by CELLULOID CLOSET makers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, in association with Imagine honcho Brian Grazer.An amazing collection of the surviving players embroiled in the DEEP THROAT saga have been assembled here; most importantly the film's writer/director, Gerard Damiano, the male lead, Harry Reems, and posthumously, the star of the notorious porn film herself, Linda Lovelace. Fusing a story that is shot through with a blending of urban legend, and the darker truths about both the worlds of porn and politics, INSIDE outlines the mammoth sex-quake set off by the creation, production and release of a movie that amped up the pace and focus of the Sexual Revolution, and also intensified the government's focus on issues of obscenity, freedom of speech and who decides what can and cannot be seen by the general public. One of the funniest ironies of the whole tale, is the film's sly and subtle suggestion that the hyperventilated efforts of the religious Right contributed about as much to porn's explosion into a multi-billion dollar industry as their combatants did in trying to make sure that the First Amendment wasn't trampled into oblivion.Besides Damiano, Reems and several other crew members behind the filming of THROAT, a lot of the usual (and unusual) suspects are on hand to provide their own wry and trenchant commentary on the movie and the era, including Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, John Waters, Dick Cavett, Hugh Hefner, Al Goldstein, Camille Paglia, Susan Brownmiller, and leading porn legends Georgina Spelvin and Andrea True. Also on hand are a few of the religious-minded bluenoses who did their best to curtail DEEP THROAT'S distribution and destroy the lives of its creators, especially Reems, whose life was virtually devastated by the controversy's outcome. Especially poignant are brief but telling interviews with friends and relatives of the late Lovelace, who proclaimed more than once that she was forced into making the movie by her sexual slavemaster/Svengali of a husband, the now-deceased Chuck Trainor. By no means the complete overview of this tumultuous era of sex, drugs and rock-'n'-roll from Times Square to a dingy theater in Louisiana, INSIDE DEEP THROAT does provide a little more revealing (and definitely more titillating) peek into what it was all about than the more- slickly produced BOOGIE NIGHTS. However, prudes and pornophobes should beware: a complete examination of history's most profitable and provocative independent movie, wouldn't be complete with some explicit clips showing what made it so famous, and they are definitely in there.