The frequent team of director Carlos Tobalina and actor William Margold combined for this forgotten clunker, starting off as an unbelievably lame expose of a corrupt televangelist and ending up as an idiotic incest exploitation film. It was issued on DVD by Caballero Video several years back and now resurfaced unnecessarily as one of Vinegar Syndrome's innumerable Troy Benny (aka Tobalina) titles.
I'm reviewing the Caballero edition, mainly because my newly bought Vinegar reissue won't play (only its co-feature on the DVD starts and tracks). After the typically pompous credit announcement by CT that organized religions operate tax-free, we are treated to dull and "seen it a million times before" footage of Margold as the TV reverend, preaching to his flock and performing two faith healing "miracles" on a blind man and a crippled girl. Soon after we see that these two unfortunates are just shills that earn $300 a pop to pretend at various locations for the rev's religious road show. The audience attending his revival meeting consists of stock footage of folks in an auditorium in '50s not '80s garb, footage also used in other Tobalina films reissued by VS.
At a meeting he is cynical about his defrauding the public, and that corny material is the sum total of Tobalina's "crooked clergyman" plot.
Film in essence is about the rev's peculiar sexual habits. We are introduced in usual clumsy cross-cutting first to his sexy brunette wife (Tobalina regular Rita Ricardo, looking mighty fine and delivering quality XXX content) and elder daughter Dora (I assumed it was Lynx Canon from the opening billing but IMDb contradicts this, making it an open question), each masturbating.
As for the rev, he frequents the brothel of madam Blanche (Lina Spencer) where for $300 a pop (amazing coincidence) he is provided a prostitute bound and gagged for him to flagellate with his limp dick (sort of Margold's version of the old rubber-hose treatment), lash her with a real whip, harangue with dirty talk and idiotic religious pronouncements, getting a blow job, and then giving the girl a facial. He rubs three hundred-dollar bills in the cum and throws it at her neck disdainfully. This inane ritual is repeated several times in the film to set up the well-telegraphed and stupid "trick" (pun intended) ending.
Gimmick is familiar to fans of the creative (I'm being facetious) duo: limp-dick syndrome, married to new gimmick of Margold emphatically disdaining the woman's private parts ("A woman's vagina is the center of all sins" he proclaims) so he avoids having sex with these women, to use Bill Clinton's turn of phrase. A b.j. will suffice, along with lashes (and cheap makeup effects to represent bloody welts) from his cat o' nine tails.
Neglected by Bill as a result, his wife goes to a shrink for some New Age style group therapy, an excuse for boring orgy scenes in which she gets it on with other patients and the quack doctor himself. Meanwhile old daughter Dora has a sex orgy of her own by a swimming pool -this is the scene where she looked like 2nd billed Lynx Canon to me.
The younger daughter Lucy (again her credit in IMDb doesn't seem correct to me - more research needed) wants to break out on her own and improbably gets an interview at Blanche's whorehouse, dressed up in hooker gear, dark glasses and platinum blonde wig -unrecognizable. Since in the just-previous scene we've heard horny Margold asking for a young prostitute next time it's no spoiler what will happen next.
Yes, Lucy is reluctantly hired by Blanche even though the girl is quite uncooperative - won't listen to Blanche's insistence that she be made over once again. She is duly offered up to Margold who pays an exorbitant sum for her services, but the girl balks when she sees it's daddy (he doesn't recognize her). Both Blanche and later Margold up the ante, reaching $7,000 for the young girl to be laid -an enormous sum for this 1980s movie (add a zero in today's dollars).
Since she won't do it, Margold sends his two goons (who we've seen kill a snooping reporter on his orders back in the opening reel) to grab the girl, and she is served up to him bound & gagged. Latter is an important point, since she can't explain she's his daughter while he lays good old BDSM on the hapless kid.
At this point the lameness that is consonant with a Tobalina film reaches full flower, because contradicting all the groundwork that has been laid before, Margold suddenly changes his tune 180 degrees and decides on the spot the girl's vagina may be okay to sample (beyond the procreation need that had him humping his wife so long ago) as "innocent flesh to be purified". So he has sex with his daughter, money shot on her posterior after giving it to the girl doggy-style. He pays her $7,000, but when untied, Lucy proclaims: "I love you - you don't have to pay me". Margold, amazingly overacting in his pulling faces, expresses horror at the revelation of who the girl is - freeze frame and head for the exits.
If not for the poorly identified sexual performances (mainly masturbation with dildos) by the actress playing elder daughter plus Rita Ricardo, "Lust Inferno" would have zero to offer. In total, it botches up several genres.
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