Wednesday, June 8, 2011

The films of Carter Stevens 1977 - 1979

Today's something I don't usually do the review of a complete movie set. This set is the third one in the Carter Stevens After Hour Cinema Grindhouse Director Series (or the fourth one if we count the soft version of Pleasure Palace / Punk Rock released previously in colaboration with Secret Key Motion Pictures). The films included this time are Double your Pleasure (1978), The Love Couch (1978) and the hard version of Pleasure Palace (1979). Once again like the two precedent volumes the movies are remastered from film elements, so the previous versions thus become obsolete. The collection is presented on two DVDs, a commentary track by Carter Stevens himself for the film Pleasure Palace is present (by cons if you already have the soft version the commentary is the same), some trailers for some of his films are in the set (Highway Hookers is the only one I have not seen yet and it looks interesting to me) and a short interview with Carter Stevens is also included.
Now the films themselves...

Double Your Pleasure (1978)
The twin sisters (Brooke and Taylor Young) are back together again two years after the success of Teenage Twins. In this film they flee in the big city after they catched their uncle (Jake Teague) while he was having an affair with his secretary (Rikki O'Neal) at the office. At the same moment they fled a large sum of money disappears from their uncle's safe too. Have they stolen the money? That's what their uncle will try to know by hiring a private detective (D. Hartman) to find them. From that time we will follow the twins during their adventures in New York. The scenario is not very developed and it's still an excuse to watch two sisters having sexual relations together. But at least this time the distribution is interesting, with among others Roger Caine, Herschel Savage, David Morris, Dave Ruby, Ron Hudd, Bobby Astyr, Merle Michaels, Samantha Fox and Jill Monroe. I enjoyed this one a lot more than Teenage Twins, but the Young sisters are not really my type.






The Love Couch (1978)
Again, a scenario that is not very complex. A sofa tells us the adventures he has lived or rather the adventures experienced on it. Despite the fact the whole looks like a loop carrier (which it isn't) the film is still interesting for the diversity of situations and an interesting distribution (not to mention that Anna Beth is involved in three of these scenes).



Pleasure Palace (1979)

Finally with this one I got exactly what I like in an adult film : a movie with sex scenes and not an excuse to present sex scenes. In this film Jimmy Stone (Eric Edwards) and Mike Green (Robert Kerman) acquires a massage parlor and everything is fine with the local authorities until Joe Goodson (Jamie Gillis), the local boss decides to take the control of their bussiness. Do Jimmy and Mike will be able to resist and retain their business? This film deserves to be compared to the productions of Radley Metzger, Anthony Spinelli or Armand Weston. An excellent film in the crime genre where Carter Stevens manages to make us forget that we watch an adult film (no more sex scenes happen for more than twenty minutes at the end of the film and surprisingly we do not realize it as we are so stuck in the story). A faultless performance by the main cast (Eric Edwards, Robert Kerman, Jamie Gillis and Serena), supported by Roger Caine, Bobby Astyr, David Pierce, Jake Teague and Joey Silvera in smaller parts. A surprise ending to a story well written by Richard Jaccoma and Carter Stevens. Certainly the masterpiece in the career of Carter Stevens.







This film is available through the website of Alternative Cinema as the first and the second volumes are.