Seattle filmmaker Karl Krogstad took a stab at pornography with THE LAST BATH, but this pretentious exercise, despite some intriguing photography and occasionally interesting segments is a bust. After Hours Cinema recently resurrected it as an example of the "San Francisco avant garde", which it's not.
I had watched a quite routine action video THE LAST RIDE back in 1991 that Krogstad directed for B-minus actor Ted Pryor, and it's hard to believe it's from the same auteur.
Back in 1975, Krogstad was trying out his underground chops, and this film starts off impressively with an abstract chase sequence involving a Jaguar XK-E. Two girls attack our big-dicked hero and have flashy, soft-focus sex with him, XXX style, notable for acid trip-style distortion and musique concrete on the soundtrack.
A beautiful auburn-haired heroine is subjected to a sloppy "in your face" ejaculation in tight closeup, leading to an alarm-clock wakeup scene of the "Am I still dreaming" school.
Hero works in a dark room, with lots of sexy photos shown, and that first ejaculation played over & over. The film is largely shot MOS, with distorting voice-over adding to the confusion.
With a real dialog scene, our hero is revealed to be David, tended to by two attractive nurses, one of whom is Black. He requests a bath after dinner (apparent source of the film's stupid title).
Cast seems stoned (for real) during this lengthy troilism in the tub scene, with tarot cards another suggestive (but unresolved) motif.
The white girl Donna imagines having doggy-style sex, while the Black girl gets high on reds mixed with her wine. Violence leads to a recap montage implying suicide by jumping of a bridge (flash forwarded earlier), giving the film a corny OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE riff structure. Our hero is apparently dead (for real), leaving the nurses having lesbian sex in the bath without him.
Whether carefully storyboarded or merely slapped together, this sort of dated psychedelic exercise adds up to nothing. Its XXX cock-centric emphasis would have made the film a bit much for Underground cinema showings, while as a sex film it is a bore.
I had watched a quite routine action video THE LAST RIDE back in 1991 that Krogstad directed for B-minus actor Ted Pryor, and it's hard to believe it's from the same auteur.
Back in 1975, Krogstad was trying out his underground chops, and this film starts off impressively with an abstract chase sequence involving a Jaguar XK-E. Two girls attack our big-dicked hero and have flashy, soft-focus sex with him, XXX style, notable for acid trip-style distortion and musique concrete on the soundtrack.
A beautiful auburn-haired heroine is subjected to a sloppy "in your face" ejaculation in tight closeup, leading to an alarm-clock wakeup scene of the "Am I still dreaming" school.
Hero works in a dark room, with lots of sexy photos shown, and that first ejaculation played over & over. The film is largely shot MOS, with distorting voice-over adding to the confusion.
With a real dialog scene, our hero is revealed to be David, tended to by two attractive nurses, one of whom is Black. He requests a bath after dinner (apparent source of the film's stupid title).
Cast seems stoned (for real) during this lengthy troilism in the tub scene, with tarot cards another suggestive (but unresolved) motif.
The white girl Donna imagines having doggy-style sex, while the Black girl gets high on reds mixed with her wine. Violence leads to a recap montage implying suicide by jumping of a bridge (flash forwarded earlier), giving the film a corny OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE riff structure. Our hero is apparently dead (for real), leaving the nurses having lesbian sex in the bath without him.
Whether carefully storyboarded or merely slapped together, this sort of dated psychedelic exercise adds up to nothing. Its XXX cock-centric emphasis would have made the film a bit much for Underground cinema showings, while as a sex film it is a bore.