Unassuming though proficiently produced, SUGAR IN THE RAW is a decent dimestore porno effort that seems to have fallen through the cracks in the four decades since its release. 

First seen banging studly blond crime boss Jesse Adams, Sugar is a hired investigator for a criminal syndicate looking to track down a pusher who's behind on his debts. Given a lead by Adams, Sugar heads out to a secretarial interview with the guy's employer, who offers her a clue to his whereabouts in exchange for the right kind of "persuasion."

After phoning the info to her boss, Sugar gets raped by her next source, and is forced to crawl home for some Sapphic rehabilitation with her roommate. Finally tracking down her target (a still very young Mike Ranger, future star of Kirdy Stevens' TABOO), Sugar and the guy develop a fledgling romance as she begins to realize he's just down on his luck. Can their love survive the circumstances behind their meeting, or will Sugar ultimately prove her loyalty is to the mob?

While not quite as threadbare as the shot-in-a-single-house variety of storefront feature, SUGAR IN THE RAW is still only a minor step up, with minimal production values and little interest ever demonstrated in its whisper-thin plot (Ranger, Sugar's quarry, isn't even introduced until the third act, and any "information" gleaned in her investigation is a nonsensical MacGuffin simply meant to move the story along). Still, despite its abysmal failings as a thriller, the film at least contains enough hot sex to recommend as porn. The opening scene with Adams, for instance, is very well done, with good lighting and cinematography and some expert cocksmanship that places this above the level of the average grinder. Ranger similarly reveals why he would ascend to star status, not merely owing to his impressive organ but, again, an ability to make good (and photogenic) use of it. While the inconsequentiality of the plot means the film inevitably drags (particularly during the gratuitous and pretty tasteless post-rape lesbian toward the middle), the strength of the performances and the film's technical capacity still land it a notch above competition. It may not be great art, but it's pretty good porn, and sometimes that's enough.

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Sugar in the Raw

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