"...delightful! ...affectionate! ...amusing!"
Los Angeles Times, by Kevin Thomas
| Ted Bonnitt's delightful documentary "Mau Mau Sex Sex" on sexploitation pioneers 84-year-old Dan Sonney and 76-year-old David Friedman, who for 28 years had their own mini-studio on Cordova Street, off old Film Row on Vermont Avenue near Washington Boulevard, once the home of film exchanges and theater equipment suppliers. Sonney was the son of an Italian immigrant coal-miner-turned-lawman-turned-showman once he nabbed a famous criminal. The rehabilitated criminal toured with the elder Sonney, who then cast the famous criminal in a film in which the ex-con played himself. Friedman, who was rising through the ranks of Paramount's PR department when he decided to team up with Sonney, credits his partner's father with inventing the exploitation film. The cheapies were made outside the constraints of the mainstream industry and dealt with such lurid topics as prostitution, venereal disease, drugs and child brides. The pictures tended to promise more than they delivered but were trashy fun anyway. (The documentary's title comes from a serious documentary on the Mau Maus, narrated by Chet Huntley, no less, that Sonney bought and, with crude additional scenes, turned into a sexploitation release.) Sonney and Friedman were eventually to become major producers of sexploitation pictures of the '60s and '70s, having started with nudist movies, then moved on to "roughies" with their sadomasochistic aura, and increasingly sexier items. But the films were rendered obsolete by the advent of hard-core pictures and the video revolution, although the partners' titles are being resurrected on cassettes. Feminists have viewed such films as degrading to women, but Sonney and Friedman refuse to take themselves or their vast output seriously. They are hearty, good-humored men without apologies; Sonney has been married 61 years and has four daughters; Friedman has been married 47 years to Carol, a woman with an astringent wit and an independent cast of mind. In the years she and Friedman lived in Los Angeles, she created her own sense of identity and was a devoted supporter of the Los Angeles Zoo. Some years ago the Friedmans returned to their native South, and Friedman got into the carnival business that attracted him in his teens. Bonnitt's film is affectionate, with amusing asides, but a bit hazy on chronology and geography. You don't have to know about Sonney and Friedman to enjoy "Mau Mau Sex Sex," but it helps. March 30, 2000 |
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