Bright Lights Journal
Three for the Shower:
These icky movies will make you feel dirty
| Mau Mau Sex Sex Mau Mau Sex Sex is not icky because it's badly made — it's not — but because its subject may be a bit too blue for most tastes. We have here a straightforward documentary from filmmakers Eddie Muller and Ted Bonnitt on the life and careers of Dan Sonney and David Friedman, two aged purveyors of exploitation movies of the 1950s and '60s. These guys are still dear friends, full of respect and admiration for each other. Friedman is more gregarious, a bargain-basement P. T. Barnum whose job titles ranged from carny ("The carnival was the birthplace of exploitation," he notes) to PR man for Paramount. Sonney became a loyal husband and father to four daughters. His stated opposition to smoking and drinking, and the casual domestic moments with his kids and spouse, are a bit protracted. We get that they're normal, whatever that is. Mau Mau Sex Sex's chief asset is its historic tracing of the exploitation genres. We are given scenes from Forbidden Adventure (1937), which featured topless Cambodian women romancing gorillas. We're treated to decomposing footage of nudist camp films of the early 1960s with their friendly, smiling, genital-free glimpses of fun and frolic. These "nudie cuties" gave way to "roughies," with scenes of women bound, gagged, and flogged. Blood Feast (1963) required the vital organs of virgins who conveniently went bare-breasted for the camera. The Citizen Kane of roughies was The Defilers (1965), all about two men who lock a woman in a basement to psychologically and physically abuse her. By all evidence, the roughies are not as far removed from polite society as we may imagine. The Defilers looks like American Psycho or Boxing Helena without big-studio backing, but it shows an even closer resemblance to The Collector, a major Oscar-nominated A-list feature also released in 1965. Sonney and Friedman's queasy movies flew under the radar of the Production Code, getting by on vague promises of "education" and "moral guidance." The Golden Age of exploitation movies was the late 1960s, when 750 theaters nationwide were part of a pipeline of cinematic sewage. Mau Mau Sex Sex offers a look at some of them through its generous portion of breast-bobbling trailers. We see highlights from The Ramrodder, Thar She Blows, and Space Thing, which manages to look even cheaper than Plan 9 From Outer Space. The ancestral link between these classics of a kind and the mainstreamed porn in the early 1970s such as Deep Throat, The Devil and Miss Jones, and Behind the Green Door, is worth further research. What do these two auteurs have to say for themselves as they near the end of their lives? Sonney is uninterested in revising history to make his movies appear good or socially redeeming. To his credit, he offers no self-seriousness or Grey Gardensdocumentary weirdness. He seems very much a content man who has made peace with his legacy. Friedman comes off more as a gleeful, cigar-chomping scheister, ready still with an eye-twinkling fast quip. Both make no apologies for their unexpurgated celebration of the straight male gaze. |
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