Name: I Am Curious Tahiti
Genre: Comedy
Released: 1970-11-18
Duration: 1 h 25 min
Rating: 5
Cast: Maria Tobalina, William Larrabure, Leticia Young

Almost universally reviled except by the most ardent para-cinema apologists, Carlos Tobalina spent most of his career churning out some of the most uniquely bizarre hardcore porn from the XXX golden age. Often bogging down entire films with over-long orgies or baffling, go-nowhere non-plots, Tobalina's is an anti-cinematic instinct for the ages. We've all gotta start somewhere, and in Carlos' case, that was via similarly head-scratching softcore oddities like his debut INFRASEXUM and the subsequent I AM CURIOUS... TAHITI, a film with absolutely nothing to do with Vilgot Sjoman's groundbreaking 1967 arthouse crossover beyond its slapdash (and nonsensical) title.

If there's ANY commonality here with the movie Carlos is cashing in on, it's a ham-fisted address of politics, though Tobalina starts things off in typically oblique fashion with an inscrutable 15-minute prologue about a Russian spy (Tobalina's wife, working under the stage name Maria Pia) stealing some piece of equipment that will allow her to spy on people through walls. In somewhat uncharacteristic fashion, Carlos gets hung up on the details, throwing in long explanations about how the device works and the entire process of Maria poisoning and then stealing it from its inventor, Professor Masturbetti. Once the device is in her hands, she's off to Tahiti, and the credits (almost entirely shared with Carlos' white-coater follow-up REFINEMENTS IN LOVE) roll.

Despite all this explanation, it's still unclear what Maria's trying to do once she reaches the island. She wanders around a resort and uses the device to spy on a variety of couples that allow Tobalina to address his usual fixations: there's a nun and a priest for digs at organized religion; an uncle and his niece, which allows Carlos to indulge his incest fetish; a white "Tahitian" couple that speaks in garbled English until it's revealed they're both from southern California (har har); etc. Eventually, Maria finds whatever the hell she was looking for and returns to LA, whereupon we're treated to a "satirical" phone call between the Russian ambassador and Fidel Castro.

These dollar-store DR. STRANGELOVE pretensions seem to tip Carlos' hand: if it means anything at all, I AM CURIOUS... TAHITI is, I guess, some kind of political satire. Whatever the heck it's supposed to be saying, however, remains as inscrutable as Carlos' other cinematic screeds. Rarely have I encountered a director whose interests seem so keenly aligned with my own (anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, anti-religious) and yet whose work consistently proves less appealing: Carlos constantly rails against the system, but in a manner so inchoate it seems like something out of a home-printed pamphlet you'd get handed by a weirdo at a bus terminal. In want of any coherent discourse, all we're left with is the sex, and there again TAHITI fails: none of the couplings are all that sexy (the "Tahitian" pair, both young and decently attractive, comes closest), with everything staged and shot in such haphazard fashion that its sell-by date surely passed the moment hardcore hit the scene. If it's less disorienting than something like Tobalina's later JUNGLE BLUE, which was hacked together out of outtakes and scraps from several other films seemingly at random, then that's damning with the faintest of praise. Don't let your CURIOSITY get the better of you, TAHITI is just more fodder for masochists from Tobalina's unique school of cinematic torture.

The comedy genre refers to a category of entertainment that aims to amuse and entertain audiences by using humor, wit, and comedic situations. Comedies are created with the primary intention of eliciting laughter and providing lighthearted enjoyment. They encompass a wide range of styles, tones, and themes, appealing to various tastes and audiences.

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Sexploitation comedy about a Russian female spy who uses a machine that can see through walls to spy on peoples sex lives.

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I Am Curious Tahiti

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