In keeping with our recent run of parodies of famous movies, we have another movie review for you this week, this time Sex Wars, which was released in 1985 and was billed as a Star Wars parody. It stars a bunch of people who we've seen often enough to think "Oh that face/penis/breast is familiar", it had Paul Thomas (last seen in Little Girls Blue), Robin Cannes and Richard Pacheco as the three main characters.
Basically Paul Thomas is Brinker Duo (Han Solo, the tall dude) and Richard Pacheco is Mark Starkiller (Luke Skywalker, the short dude) and Robin Cannes is Princess Layme. Geddit, geddit... see what they did with Leia? At least the short dude wasn't as whiny as Luke Skywalker was. Now, I confess, I'm not nearly as much of a Star Wars tragic as Dave is, but I really struggled with this. Apart from the character names and the fact that there were two guys and one girl, there wasn't much to relate it to Star Wars. Each sex scene was cut with shots of volcanoes erupting and lava flowing. Production-wise it reminded me of Flesh Gordon in the shaky sets and we had a heated discussion about whether the exterior shots of the space ship were made from Lego building blocks (I think it was, Dave doesn't).
Anyway, Brinker and Mark end up in Lil's bar (yes, it's a Cantina scene) where a wide variety of alien life meet to watch (and participate in) sex shows. Most of them looked, frankly, like refugees from an 80s nightclub. Lots of coloured, big hair, lots of weird eye makeup, lots of bright, odd clothing. In fact, I think I remember seeing people like that in my early clubbing days. Actually there was one "alien" which was well done - a woman with bright green body paint, and eyes on both breasts as well as her face, so her breasts were continually exposed so they could see too. Anyway, there was a sex show with a woman in gold lame (fortunately bearing no resemblance to a naked Sy Snootles) and two men, one of whom was wearing black vinyl underpants which zipped right the way round from front to back. Those underpants aren't going to end well - I could just imagine pubes, or worse, penises, getting caught in the zipper. He also bore a startling resemblance to Freddie Mercury in his leather-man days. But I don't think Freddie ever wore black vinyl zip up underpants in any of his videos (it's a good bet he wore them in private though).
Here's where we noticed cheap production values/continuity errors creeping in. The whole bar scene, which featured Miss Lil singing, had shots repeated at various points, so we'd see the big blue giant of a bartender in exactly the same pose on more than one occasion. Or the guy with Marty Feldman eyes laughing, cut in over and over. Or the same bit of the sex show repeated over and over.
Anyway, Princess Layme gets to Lil's where she's looking for a pilot or two (cue our heroes) to fly her spaceship (I don't know why she couldn't fly it herself; perhaps the Women's Lib movement hadn't made it to porn at that point, or it was taking a holiday or something) to some star system where ships disappear, never to return. She wants to go there to find her sister, Princess Orgasma (Laurie Smith). Our valiant heroes refuse on the grounds that she is crazy, but she lures them to her ship with a promise of brandy "the real French stuff". The brandy arrives in a square bottle that looked suspiciously like a bottle of Cointreau. It even had the Cointreau label on it. One very obvious plot device of getting them shit-faced drunk later and they are all aboard the spaceship on the way to rescue Orgasma.
Princess Layme has two flunkies, Lieutenant Buns and Lieutenant Snatch (Cindy Carver and Ashley Welles) who strike artistic poses in very revealing costumes while twiddling knobs, peering at dials and other things to make the ship fly. Again, the same two or three shots of these two are randomly cut in over and over (I suspect Mr Director was running out of footage and needed to pad things a little...), while Layme lays Brinker and Mark. Frankly, given the amount of brandy they are supposed to have consumed, I'm astonished that they are capable of erections, let alone screwing her for the 10 or so minutes that the scene ran for.
This odd grouping land wherever it was they were going and are invited/captured by Lord Balthazar (Howard Darkley) who looks like a really weird cross between the tin man and the Wizard of Oz from the 1939 MGM film. Balthazar is a weird freako who captures those who inadvertently or otherwise land on his misbegotten planet, and converts them into mindless sex slaves for his viewing pleasure. Princess Orgasma has been converted for the same purposes.
Lots of sex ensues, including some incestuous girl-girl stuff between Layme and Orgasma. I'm going to skip most of the rest as it was, frankly, boring. There is a token robot - 4D, there are bits which look a bit like a Dr Who set from the 1970s. Balthazar's palace collapses and all the sex slaves escape to an orgy back on the ship (including a token appearance from a young Mike Horner).
Back at the cantina there is another huge musical number finale including another orgy between bar patrons. Remember the sex show from earlier? Well lots of that got cut in again to make the finale longer. Very cheap, Mr Director, very cheap. The end.
I guess this was done to cash in on Return of the Jedi (which was released in 1983), but seriously, the Star Wars references were so badly done that I can't see how this could by any stretch of the imagination be considered a parody. It wasn't even funny. Porn Wars was done much better (although it wasn't funny on purpose). Actually, Sex Wars was funny, but only because it was so awful. Give this one a miss.
