As any long-time readers of this website know, we like old porn. We like it for its natural bodies, and because it generally has a discernible plot. The other night, we watched Slip Up, from 1974. The other night we watched a porn so dreadful that I didn't stay awake to see the end of it!
Slip Up, for those who care, was directed by Roberta Findlay and is distributed by Caballero Home Video. It "stars" Jamie Gillis (Dr Charles Cherrypopper), Darby Lloyd Rains (Penelope Juiceslit), Lynn Ashley (Sissy Motormouth) and a large number of other performers. I use the word "stars" loosely, as this was without a doubt, the worst porn we have ever seen. Not for its lack of plot, not for its lack of sex, but instead for its atrocious production values (or lack thereof).
We open with a figure walking down a hallway that has been spray painted with various names. This constitutes the opening credits. For big names, such as Jamie Gillis and Darby Lloyd Rains, they are easy to read. Other performers (and often the names of the characters they play) are almost impossible to read. So until we looked it up on IAFD, we had no idea who half the performers were.
We have shaky sets. We have boom mikes appearing in the top of shots. We have what are, without a doubt, the worst on-screen performances that I've ever seen. The dialogue sounded like they were reading off cue-cards. Badly. I know there are many porn performers who are in it exclusively because of their physical attributes, but many of the performers in this production are not. We know Jamie Gillis is capable of a polished performance - he trained as a legitimate actor before moving into porn. His performance in The Opening of Misty Beethoven was brilliant. Not in this. His dialogue is stilted and painful to listen to. We know Darby Lloyd Rains is capable of much more than this. Some of her performances (such as in Every Inch A Lady, or Memories Within Miss Aggie) have been brilliant. Not in this. It's like everyone kept forgetting their lines. Perhaps the script kept changing. Or they were using cue cards.
Production-wise, it reminded me of Flesh Gordon. We have a scene between Darby Lloyd Rains and Eric Edwards in a plane (apparently an homage to Misty Beethoven). To indicate it was a plane, the shot keeps cutting away to a toy plane suspended on a wire and bouncing around to simulate flight. The plane crashes, with the pilot and the stewardess on one parachute. She slips off him to her death, and he blithly waves "bye-bye", but her knee is in the shot where she landed on the floor.
The music is atrocious with the title track appearing from time to time throughout the production. Frankly they should not have bothered. It was bad on the opening credits. Repetition did not improve it.
Now to the sex. This is a porn, after all. Being used to the extreme gynaecological close-ups of most porn these days, this was astonishingly mild. In fact, at one point I wondered if this had been made as an R-rating, rather than X (although there are some erect penises, or should that be penii?). While the sex occurs, much is obscured by clothing, or seen from behind with no close-ups. So it doesn't even rate well from a porn perspective.
I've read other reviews, where the reviewer describes it as a comedy classic and a masterpiece of send-ups, but I can't help wondering whether they watched a different film. As I said in my intro, I didn't manage to stay awake long enough to see the end of the film. Definitely forgettable.
