When our last dive into the to-be-watched pile turned up Bordello - The House of the Rising Sun from 1983, we didn't hold out much hope for it. Our experiences with 80s porn to date have not been that good. The last 80s porn we watched was Panty Raid which was a singularly awful film. However, we gritted our teeth, lowered our expectations and popped it into the player. I have to say, we were pleasantly surprised.
Bordello is set, obviously, in a Bordello. In New Orleans. Since The Animals' 1964 hit "House of The Rising Sun", every bordello in every film set in New Orleans is called The House Of The Rising Sun. The song by the way is much, much older than The Animals version. They got it from an old 1940s Lead Belly recording and before him it was a traditional folk song going way, way back. Everyone assumes it's about a New Orleans brothel but historians have been searching for the historical House of the Rising Sun for years (yes... government grants to go looking for brothels) and have come up pretty much empty handed. There have been plenty of Houses of the Rising Sun since the song became a hit but before that, the closest they can find was a French Madam back in the 1800s called Marianne LeSoleil Levant, which translates from the French as "Marianne The Rising Sun". Current theory says that the song isn't about a brothel at all but about the the old Orleans Parish Women's Prison, the entrance to which was decorated with a rising sun design. There you go... porn and education all at once.
Anyway, history aside, we join the story as Caz Wilcox arrives in New Orleans on a greyhound bus, having left her gambler husband Cary (played by Jerry Butler, who was also in the aforementioned abysmal Panty Raid) and travelled back to New Orleans to take up her old job at the House of the Rising Sun. Caz, by the way, is played by Beth Broderick who had a very short porn career, having non sex roles (a pity because she is gorgeous... we never even get to see her naked) in only two films before going on to become a mainstream actress whose credits include Aunt Zelda in Sabrina the teenage Witch. After being welcomed back by the staff (except for the jealous Belle La Belle, played by Taija Rae) she goes upstairs to see the ancient madam, Gloria, who welcomes her long lost favorite back, hands Caz her 49% stake in the business and promptly dies.
The house is an old style New Orleans brothel. It has a small clientel of regulars (including the local sheriff), Jazz piano plays in the reception area. It is everything you would expect an old style New Orleans Brothel to be. It's the sort of place where men who were brought there by their fathers as teenagers to loose their virginity bring their own sons to loose theirs (our first sex scene and quite well done, too). All is good with the business for a while until a representitive from the majority stakeholder - the mysterious Transworld International - arrives to tell them that thay aren't making enough profit. They will have to modernise.
After some initial surprise at the type of business he has been sent to manage, Transworld's representative, the odious Harold Greene (Steve Lockwood), does his research and decides that the current trends in adult entertainment mean they will have to offer "fantasy sessions" so out goes the Jazz Piano, out goes the old style lingerie and in come the neon signs, costumes and jukeboxes. Naturally, out go the regular clients, most of the workers (except Belle who tries to suck up to the new management) and most of the profits.
To make matters worse Caz's no-good husband comes back claiming to be a reformed man. Has he turned over a new leaf or is he still just a smooth talking con-man?
During all this, sex happens. Some rather good sex as it happens. We have some scenes between the workers and some of the regulars (including one of Amber Lynn's first on screen scenes... this is only her third film from what I can work out). A very young Buck Adams was almost unrecognisable playing Billy Joe. A rather funny scene between De-Ahna and Greene that ends up with him handcuffed to a wall wearing ladies' underwear and being set upon by some clients looking for transvestite action - De-Ahna's parting gift to the new management.
Things go from bad to worse for Caz as her husband abandons her again (for Belle) and her business is about to collapse. Just as all seems lost and she is about to hand her 49% over to Transworld, an old client, Mr Bartell comes back and is horrified to see what has become of the place. As it happens, he is the mysterious owner of Transworld who had purchased a 51% stake from Gloria years ago to make sure the place never changed. He promptly sacks Greene and hands over 100% of the business to Caz.
This was a surprisingly good movie. There was a plot. The location in a brothel meant there was plenty of scope for sex scenes that actually fit with the plot. The women were attractive. It was pre-silicone so all the boobs were natural. The sex was well done, shot imaginatively and without recourse to too many gynecological closeups, trash talking, gratuitous anal or any of the things that plague modern porn. As with all old porn, if you like your girls fully shaved then this isn't the movie for you. It was the 80s. All the hair was big back then. Even the hair down there.
So there you go. 80s porn that is actually worth watching. Apparently, the director Chuck Vincent made a whole lot of really good porn in the late 70s and early 80s before moving to making R-rated sexploitation comedies. This was apparently his last hardcore feature. We will have to look for some of his other films.
