Infrasexum (1969) Reviews

• Misguided and inept ego trip is embarrassing

  lor_2016-05-31

  Pornographer Carlos Tobalina/Troy Benny switching with the times from soft-core to hardcore XXX saved the world from more narcissistic performances like this one in his debut feature, electing to perform many of the sex scenes himself. In hardcore you need the equipment and ability to do explicit sex, so Tobalina fortunately restricted his future on-screen activities to dumb cameos. He's the pointless sidekick to our middle-aged hero, whose stage name poorly parodies the great Errol Flynn. It's yet another porn film about limp-dick syndrome, that most common of maladies before Cialis and Viagra killed off that rich vein of plot lines for dummies. Our hero and his 2nd in command at his company reunited in Tobalina's later film on the subject "Marilyn and the Senator". The defects of this film are too numerous to discuss in IMDb's 1000 words, but I will attempt to hit some of the low points. Starting off, Tobalina despite making dozens of films and owning his own equipment and studio facilities, never learned the craft of lighting. Ghastly shadows are thrown all over the frame in the simplest of scenes, right from an early exposition where Flynn as Peter Alison tells his top executives including William Kirschner that they will take over running his firm, as he's going on an open- ended sabbatical. It's On the Road '60s style, dropping out to find oneself, a theme I generally love in cinema, but not in the untrustworthy hands of CT. The boys at Vinegar Syndrome who acquired DVD rights to the bulk of CT's catalog, insist on claiming his films have merit, since it's their job to sell, sell, sell. The DVD notes trumpeting fabulous footage of Las Vegas and Cal. mountains is either a bad joke or reflects their falling prey to the archivist's syndrome: falling in love with footage per se, rather than cinema. Yes, CT has second unit footage of Flynn wandering around Vegas and driving around too, but as his narration talks of him winning $200,000 at the casinos, all the relevant scenes INSIDE a gaming palace are missing - CT having apparently not shot them. His series of attempts to prove his manhood fail, with scrounger pal Carlos (the auteur) inveigling his way into Peter's confidence, to get money from him and procure girls. Nadir of their bromance comes when Tobalina actually homosexually seduces our hero, staged in shadow-play and left off screen, but embarrassing nonetheless when both men are shown zipping up their pants afterward. Of course, Peter's peter remained limp, but perhaps a butt-f*ck from the director was a possible solution to his lack of sex problem. Full frontal nudity of actresses is the film's draw, if one were able to travel back in time to 1969 and watch it in a cinema, but CT completely wastes the great star (not starlet as Vinegar schmoes call her) Marsha Jordan in a brief role as Peter's abandoned wife. If one wants genuinely nice scenery and full-fledged major roles for Marsha shot a year later merely watch Don Davis's films "Marsha the Erotic Housewife" and the underwhelming "The Golden Box". Along the way, CT jumps on the bandwagon of attempting to portray the hippie phenomenon on film. He has a nightclub scene that is far from that goal, depicting folks doing the frug to a house band not synced properly to the soundtrack playing Hugh Masekela's decidedly not hippie hit "Grazing in the Grass". The intrepid duo later go to a park and get some documentary footage of folks hanging out, not interesting at all as a period artifact, but apparently justifying CT's opening credits boast of "1000 extras" on screen. An idiotic subplot involving a kidnapped girl used to lure moneybags Peter to get mugged and tortured by two crooks reveals Tobalina's inability to make hay of the exploitation genre pioneered by H.G. Lewis. We get some stupid gore (the girl's intestines being waved around) and completely inept action footage of Peter killing the baddies. As with Vegas, all the crucial scenes of police follow-up and our hero's exoneration are missing, with quick narration substituted. Though a nubile model finally gives him a hard-on, Peter finally finds meaning in life by sublimating as an artist, though his work as shown here is crap. But this merely reflects the crap that our artist in residence Carlos Tobalina cranked out over a 20-year porn career.

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• Inept sexploitation thriller from Vinegar Syndrome

  Leofwine_draca2017-02-02

  Vinegar Syndrome have been doing a grand job over the last decade of bringing out the rarest of rare sexploitation movies, polishing them and releasing them on high quality DVD and Blu-ray. What a pity, then, that so many of these films don't deserve all of the attention; they remain obscure for a reason and INFRASEXUM is no exception. When the film's lead - an old moustachioed actor - hides under the silly pseudonym Eroff Lynn then you know you're in trouble. The film was directed, written by, and co-stars a guy called Carlos Tobalina who appears to have little talent behind the camera. At one point a lengthy lesbian interlude is interrupted by the massive shadow of the cameraman on a wall behind the actresses! Incredible to believe it wasn't picked up. It's essentially a road movie, as Lynn's character discovers his impotence and goes on a road trip to Vegas, leaving behind his voluptuous wife. What follows is tortuous rather than exciting. There's some travelogue footage of the main character visiting Las Vegas and the surrounding desert and a random interlude at a music festival in the park lending some naturalism to the proceedings. The narration is extraordinarily dull. Some cod psychiatry is thrown in to make you laugh. A string of sex scenes are quite explicit and seemingly take place for real at times, but titillating it isn't. A random and inept gore murder apes the films of H.G. Lewis, but the subsequent action scene is ridiculously bad. If your idea of artistry is having the cameraman burrowing his head into a woman's breasts then perhaps you might like this one.

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