Name: Distortions of Sexuality
Genre: Adult
Released: 1974-03-18
Duration: 1 h 6 min
Rating: 4.1
Cast: Susie Kwan, Pete Rickles, Karen Cist

Exceedingly dull "sexual encounter group" porn

This New York-made stab at a pseudo-documentary porn film falls flat as a pancake. For a superior treatment of the same subject, see the West Coast classic TOUCH ME made a year earlier (1971) with an all-star cast.

Filmmaker Gary Kahn tries occasionally for some real distortion, courtesy of wide angle lenses, but mainly settles for the most perfunctory direction. Though Cindy West and Marc Stevens are in the cast, the players are listless with zero animation, as the Adult Cinema fans back in the day were patiently waiting for the XXX sex footage, and nothing more.

Sepulchral organ music and other ominous soundtrack offerings befitting a creepy old horror film accompany the boring scenes of the group assembling at shrink Dr. Richard Grant's apartment to pour their hearts out: cue the flashbacks. Only funny moment in the entire picture is when Grant takes zombie Judy to his bedroom to hypnotize her, and he picks up his phone, telling a non-existent assistant "Hold all my calls", when he's at home, not the office.

First sequence has Elaine recounting to Celeste how she was raped on a stairwell by a creep (the goon overacts miserably here, in contrast to the lead players' non-acting). This typical "roughie" footage is badly directed, the ineptitude of wrong camera angles resulting in the content being strictly softcore until we see a money shot, the rapist kindly enough following porn protocol so that the camera can see the outcome.

After Celeste's unsympathetic response to this tale of woe, the group sits down together and the rest of them expound. Alice explains how she first met Herb when he was casting a sex exploitation film. This cheap-cheap flashback utilizes a crummier set and sloppier direction than most bottom-of-the-barrel porn, and Herb not surprisingly contradicts her version when it's his turn to speak. Much ado about nothing, with fake tears on Alice's face as she admits the tell-all was "liberating" for her.

Marc Stevens as Victor tells the group that his girl Celeste is afraid she's a lesbian, cueing her flashback of the time she found maid Judy masturbating with a vibrator. Reaction was a threesome with Judy by Marc & Celeste, notable only for Stevens' inability to achieve an erection despite the girls' ministrations.

In a coincidence only possible in porn films, Judy the maid is also there in the same encounter group. She asks the doc to hypnotize her, which he does in his bedroom, and then he humps her, safely using post-hypnotic suggestion so she awakes unaware that anything has transpired.

Back in the group they do a brief touching experiment (the only moments in the film that even vaguely resemble the once popular encounter group craze dating back to the '60s: see doc SANDSTONE for further elaboration of the phenomenon). An orgy results, providing the fans with a modicum of what they paid to see.

Film cuts from the montage of money shots to Dr. Grant posing for a mug shot, and helpful narrator Sgt. Donnelly explains that he's been sentenced to 10 years in prison for running an illegal encounter group.

Mike, the moronic Something Weird liner notes shill, garbles not only the character names but the actors matching them in yet another case of massive misinformation. It hardly matters, since this is one of Stevens' least interesting film appearances and Cindy West is completely wasted.

An encounter group meets in its doctor's apartment where each member relates his or her sexual experiences and hangups.

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Distortions of Sexuality

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