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One had a lanky blonde young guy suffering from a sudden bout of asthmatic asphyxiation during an early morning jog being let in by a lonely house wife. Then there was a particularly supercharged episode of a couple of female CEOs of global conglomerates who run into each other in a ladies room. The more adventurous one had intrepid travelers off into the deepest jungles of the Amazon, the red plains of Mars or the castles of gothic Transylvania. The most common of all, which deserves a sub-genre of its own, is the ‘utility and services’ sector- the nurses, bell boys, waiters, cops, maids, pizza delivery boys, plumbers, telephone repairmen, piano teachers, psychiatrists etc.

As the awkward tableaus of common-place are staged, one is aware that the suburban/corporate/intergalactic reality is having a febrile slip into fantasy. The cardinal rule is, after all, it must end in sex- one-on-one, orgies, leather, fellatio, curtain rings, underwater, soft, hard, vegetables whatever.

Why is it that one can smack into the middle of a graveyard scene as the grieving wife weeps on the shoulders of a hulk of a driver fully aware that ones’ late-night channel surfing and eternal vigilance has been rewarded? One is aware that it is just a matter of a few minutes of the voluptuous newly widowed going though the motions of drunk misery (“He was such a nice man that even though he couldn’t satisfy many of my desires I still loved him”) as the raw-slab-of-ham driver tries to pull sensitivity (It’s all going to fine lady), that the couple will be on the porch faking it moans-groans-an-all while a saxophone fakes it on the soundtrack. A porno has a personality, an identity, a texture and effluvium of its own, something that is difficult to fake- a seedy lowbrow outrageous soap opera like an evil mastermind has decided to begin his quest for world domination by releasing his diabolical ‘carnal desires gas’ at Balaji Studios. It is not surprising then that when even the best of the directors have wanted to dabble in porn they’ve turned to the professionals- Coen Brothers in ‘The Big Lebowski’ (featuring Asia Carrera), P.T. Anderson in ‘Boogie Nights’ (featuring Nina Hartley, Ron Jeremy among others) and to a lesser extent, Joel Schumacher in ‘8mm’.

But it was B-film Meister Paul Bartel, with minimum fuss and funds and a whole lot of perversity, who successfully channeled ‘pornograde’ into a laugh out loud, biting, dirty little satire on the post-sex lib years with his 82’ flick ‘Eating Raoul’. Tongue was never more firmly in cheek as Bartel opens with a clumsy montage of outrageous sex, violence and fast food, as a retro News radio tone elaborates on ‘sex hunger and its instant gratification in Hollywood’. The very next scene introduces us to one half of the protagonists, an aptly named Mr. Bland, played with howling blandness by Bartel himself, a wine-salesman dealing with his customer. It is here that one may easily begin to mistake the film for one among the infamous retro ‘Taboo’ series which featured aunts having extremely good rapports with their visiting freckled nephews and the likes. The dialogue is static and full of dumb sexual innuendo, the acting plywood with a hint of theatrical sleaze, the color of the footage is one of smeared grease like the cameraman used it wipe his hands with it after lunch and cinematography is inspired home video. The result is droll genius, as if Director Bartel is trying to incite his audience to a Pavlovian hard on.

Even the absurd soap opera storyline is in place and in a genius stroke, the ‘utility and services’ sector has a major part to play. Mr. and Mrs. Bland (Warhol girl Mary Woronov bringing catty ribaldry to the common housewife), examples of a kind of uber-middle class, are arriving at dead ends- they stay in a building populated by hookers where the rent is always on the increase. Mr. B has just been fired from his job while Mrs. B collects minimum wage as a nutritionist and their prospects of fulfilling their dreams of opening a little hotel seem to be on the dim. They live a sexless existence- he going to bed with a man-sized stuffed bottle of wine while she cuddles into soft toys. But what troubles them most is the erosion of the uptight rigorous bourgeois values that they have stood for. (Look what sexual liberation brought us!) The only way out, they learn accidentally, is serial murder and who better to knock off than the swingers who have corroded their precious values and what better weapon to use than a frying pan. But the question is as the Blands’ argue; does one use it for cooking later? They advertise themselves as kinky swingers Naughty Nancy and Cunning Carla in the local paper and as clients line up in search of sexual depravity and before Ms. Bland can lose her purity, the frying pan takes care of it all. Just when the ploy begins to pay in hard cash, enter Raoul, the everyMexican utility guy straight from Mills-n-Boons pornoland- dashing, pulp-eloquent, ambitious and burning with la vida loca latino desire. He strikes up a deal with the Blands and even has his lecherous eye on susceptible dear Ms. B while poor ol’ Mr. B teams up with the single-mother dominatrix upstairs for some burlesque tit-for-tat. And as for the grand delirious denouement at the swinger’s orgy there’s a whole lotta tit, tat, horny rich bastards, blow-up dolls and all that before the climax when scheming Raoul gets his just dues with black suburban relish that would make Roald Dahl smirk.

‘Eating Raoul’ is an unashamed B film and a severely flawed one at that but like the best of the B films (check Sam Raimi’s first ‘Evil Dead’) its very short-comings seem to work in its favor and endear it to the audience. What turns B-movie into a phenomenon is purely the director’s vision and Paul Bartel shows no lack of it. He is kicking up the muck here and he kicks it sky high and he kicks like a horny pimpled kid spray painting obscenities on a church window. Here is a film that is pure kitsch but wears it on the sleeve like a badge of honor. The droll social satire is taking no prisoners as it gets everyone in its fetid cross-hairs- the rich, the poor, the middle-class, the migrants, the swingers, the religious, the authorities, the media… but at the same time there is no bitterness. The film goes down easy as a joke well meant and easily taken. With his absurd premise, bad film stock and pittance budget, Bartel improvised a movie that was as smart and intelligent as it was perverse and low-brow like he imbued a bizarre sense of earnestness and oddball charm into that part of the porn film that one is used to losing in fast-forward.

It’s not necessarily a hard on but it’s a helluva lot of fun after you have lost it.

(images- Cinemotion, Project KTFP, Big Lobe)