Alex Perry/Perrella, a stylish pornographer who recently reinvented himself as a horror movie director, went over-the-top with REBECCA, a 1992 super-production even touted as the most beautiful porn film ever made. That silly hyperbole aside, it does represent one of those serious attempts to legitimize the genre, an exercise in futility.
Besides the operation of Gresham's Law, which has so solidly flooded the XXX marketplace with popular (and cheap) junk in recent decades, the notion that the Adult Cinema fans want a high-falutin' movie is fallacious. One can always find a mainstream (or underground) product to satisfy one's literary bent; porn fans want stimulating masturbation fodder, period.
Recruiting some American talent (prolific helmer Scotty Fox did the exemplary camera-work, which puts his own Chatsworth videos to shame), Perry set out to create a XXX Victorian melodrama, minus the mocking or facetious tone of typical porn (including for example the lion's share of Fox's output). I think he succeeded, but why? Is this a case of ego-tripping or mere money laundering (the usual reason for big-budget porn to be created)?.
Christoph Clark is perfectly cast as the villain of the piece, a decadent womanizer who repeatedly degrades and humiliates his lovely wife, title character Rebecca (played by Euro superstar Anita Rinaldi). His behavior is so outlandishly reprehensible that the viewer may take it to be nearly satirical, but via a final reel reveal it all makes perfect sense in retrospect.
Clark flaunts his mistress Jolanda (delightfully played in uninhibited fashion by Simona Valli). The beautiful Pussy Kat is a sexy maid, also getting down on occasion.
MAJOR SPOILERS:
Principal plot line concerns Clark's seeming jealousy about his wife's clinging to memories of an old flame, a riding instructor long since dead. Gerry Pike, quite good in a dual role, plays not only the instructor in flashback but the family's young groom, who we finally find out is the instructor's son.
Key twist, presented with a straight face but more pertinent to a D.W. Griffith silent film than modern porn, is that Clark has been behaving badly all along to drive Rinaldi away from him. He turns out to be amazingly selfless -knowing he's to die soon from a wasting condition (his coughing is the key hint throughout) he doesn't want wifey to be heartbroken. This rather touching sentiment is WAY out of place in a XXX movie, but packs a punch for the patient, open-minded viewer.
That begs the central question: if Perry and company were so serious about their craft (and they appear to be, given the high quality of the finished product), why did they do porn on this occasion? At 93 minutes, the major amount of running time devolves into the typical XXX set-ups, so the quality story values are ultimately lost anyway.
It's an inevitable stumbling block for ambitious pornographers: respectability is impossible, and it's nearly impossible to serve two masters: making a quality FILM and delivering the XXX goods. The fans have spoken loudly and repeatedly -they like overextended, endless sex scenes and are more than willing to overlook story lapses or more typically the absence of any story whatsoever.
Kudos to Fox's photography, Sal Lawrence's costumes and Perry's direction of the small cast. IMDb credits a co-director "Alex Williams" but the print I watched gives Perry solo credit, listing a "Ron Williams" (more famous under the name Eric Rochat) merely as co-writer.
Besides the operation of Gresham's Law, which has so solidly flooded the XXX marketplace with popular (and cheap) junk in recent decades, the notion that the Adult Cinema fans want a high-falutin' movie is fallacious. One can always find a mainstream (or underground) product to satisfy one's literary bent; porn fans want stimulating masturbation fodder, period.
Recruiting some American talent (prolific helmer Scotty Fox did the exemplary camera-work, which puts his own Chatsworth videos to shame), Perry set out to create a XXX Victorian melodrama, minus the mocking or facetious tone of typical porn (including for example the lion's share of Fox's output). I think he succeeded, but why? Is this a case of ego-tripping or mere money laundering (the usual reason for big-budget porn to be created)?.
Christoph Clark is perfectly cast as the villain of the piece, a decadent womanizer who repeatedly degrades and humiliates his lovely wife, title character Rebecca (played by Euro superstar Anita Rinaldi). His behavior is so outlandishly reprehensible that the viewer may take it to be nearly satirical, but via a final reel reveal it all makes perfect sense in retrospect.
Clark flaunts his mistress Jolanda (delightfully played in uninhibited fashion by Simona Valli). The beautiful Pussy Kat is a sexy maid, also getting down on occasion.
MAJOR SPOILERS:
Principal plot line concerns Clark's seeming jealousy about his wife's clinging to memories of an old flame, a riding instructor long since dead. Gerry Pike, quite good in a dual role, plays not only the instructor in flashback but the family's young groom, who we finally find out is the instructor's son.
Key twist, presented with a straight face but more pertinent to a D.W. Griffith silent film than modern porn, is that Clark has been behaving badly all along to drive Rinaldi away from him. He turns out to be amazingly selfless -knowing he's to die soon from a wasting condition (his coughing is the key hint throughout) he doesn't want wifey to be heartbroken. This rather touching sentiment is WAY out of place in a XXX movie, but packs a punch for the patient, open-minded viewer.
That begs the central question: if Perry and company were so serious about their craft (and they appear to be, given the high quality of the finished product), why did they do porn on this occasion? At 93 minutes, the major amount of running time devolves into the typical XXX set-ups, so the quality story values are ultimately lost anyway.
It's an inevitable stumbling block for ambitious pornographers: respectability is impossible, and it's nearly impossible to serve two masters: making a quality FILM and delivering the XXX goods. The fans have spoken loudly and repeatedly -they like overextended, endless sex scenes and are more than willing to overlook story lapses or more typically the absence of any story whatsoever.
Kudos to Fox's photography, Sal Lawrence's costumes and Perry's direction of the small cast. IMDb credits a co-director "Alex Williams" but the print I watched gives Perry solo credit, listing a "Ron Williams" (more famous under the name Eric Rochat) merely as co-writer.