Us Reviewing Things

The "to be watched" pile tossed us another classic this week - The Resurrection of Eve, another Mitchell Brothers (Behind the Green Door, Autobiography of a Flea etc) classic from 1973. Although it was made the year after Behind the Green Door, and also stars Marilyn Chambers and Johnny Keyes, this is a very different film. Where Behind the Green Door was one long orgy scene set over one night, Eve is an ambitious attempt to tell a woman's (Eve's) life story. Well, the parts involving sex anyway.

We start with Eve aged 12 (but looking very much 18+, played by Nancy Weich) being taken advantage of by a friend of the family (let's call him Old Uncle Touchy shall we?). This is a scene that could never be made today and to be honest, could be left out without really impacting the story too much. Uncle Touchy (Dale Meador, the creepy uncle from Autobiography of a Flea, also in Behind the Green Door) demonstrates French kissing on Eve's rag doll (creepy) then on Eve. He demonstrates cunnilingus on the rag doll (creepier) then on Eve. He uses the doll to demonstrate fellatio (waaaay creepy) and gets Eve to start going down on him before Eve's mother walks in and throws him out of the house. We then jump forward several years...

Frank (Matthew Arnon) is a successful DJ. He is going steady with Kandi (Kandi Jones) until he goes to interview Johny Keyes the famous boxer (actually Johnny Keyes can really box... he was a pro boxer in the army before going into porn) and meets a friend of his called Eve (at this point played by Mimi Morgan). He dumps Kandi (proving himself to be a fickle bastard) and hooks up with Eve who is a shy and somewhat conservative girl (though not too conservative to fuck him vigorously on the first date of course) and apparently supposed to be quite plain. For my money though Mimi is the best looking girl in the film so that bit doesn't quite work for me.

Frank and Eve are blissfully happy and get engaged but Frank keeps having dark thoughts about Eve fucking her friend Johny and wondering how he could ever compete with a black man. Eventually it gets so bad that he accused her of having an affair (proving himself to be a jealous bastard). She storms off and while driving through the rain has a near-fatal car accident in which her entire face is horribly disfigured and needs to be re-built. Re-built it is (into Marilyn Chambers) and she is transformed from plain Eve (though actually attractive) into beautiful Eve (Marilyn is no slouch in the looks department, but I prefer Mimi). She obviously had more damaged than just her face because the crash also leaves her a good few inches taller and with bigger breasts. Frank is overcome with remorse and begs new Eve to forgive him (proving himself to be an inconsistent bastard). She does and they are happily married.

Their bliss lasts until he meets Pam, a new intern at the radio station and tries to sleep with her (proving himself to be a philandering bastard) but she refuses him as he is a married man. He decides that he isn't getting enough variety so he pressures Eve into attending a swingers party (proving himself to be a manipulative bastard). Eve hates it but agrees to go to another to keep Frank happy. After a couple of parties, Eve really starts to get into the swing of things (so to speak) and starts to cut loose. Frank, while quite happy to fuck other women, finds that he can't stand to see Eve fucked by other men (proving himself to be a hypocritical bastard) so he tries to get them out of the party scene. Eve, on the other hand, is loving it and doesn't want to stop. Finally, after meeting her old friend Johnny at an orgy and finally fucking him (in front of Frank) she has a screaming orgasm (her first for the film), dumps Frank and sets out on her own as a sexually liberated woman. Frank remains just a bastard.

This is real golden age porn. It had a real story with real characters. OK, the story was very 70's free love, sexual liberation, pre-AIDS stuff, but nonetheless it was a story. And was well done too. The sex fitted with the story and was done really well. The chemistry between the performers was exactly right. The orgy scenes were fantastic. It became a bit of a game trying to see which of the swingers in the orgies were also in the crowd scene in Green Door (answer - most of them). The sex is, like most classic porn, varied and not too long. Not all scenes end in anal and a facial (in fact I think there is no anal at all in this one) and if there are any facials I don't remember them. There are some cream pie finishes (but not like the ones you get now when the next 10 minutes is a closeup of her squeezing cum out of her pussy). The sound track is distinctly 70s but good 70s music. Not cheesy 70's waka waka porn music.

The sex in this film has an almost naturalistic feel. It's real people having real sex, the way normal people do. Not the highly stylised sex as performance art (Andrew Blake I'm talking to you...listen up) or the formulaic three positions, anal and facial (look at us, aren't we being dirty?) sex we get in a lot of modern porn. This sort of thing really does it for me. My favorite porn sites are things like Beautiful Agony and I Feel Myself, which have real women masturbating and my favourite porn movies are where the sex looks real.

I loved Resurrection. It's definitely a must watch for any fans of classic porn, and really should be in every-one's collection.

You can buy Resurrection of Eve here through Uncut DVDs in Australia.