Avalon misfire: both overdone and underwhelming

This obscure Metro release from James Avalon, so forgotten I had to add it belatedly to IMDb 15 years after, has the talented director whiling away his time with visual and editing gimmicks that cannot hide the barrenness of the poor script.

Overacting more than even his usual, Evan Stone redundantly plays over & over in the early reels a poor slob at the end of his tether. He's drinking heavily, feeling sorry for himself and lashing out at the world, while we, the poor audience out there in video land, watch repetitive montages of uninteresting images purporting to show his lost love.

So-called pal Butch (Joel Lawrence) tries to cheer the big lug up by hiring prostitutes for him, stupidly referred to as Bachelor Party girls, a euphemism which gives the lousy video a title, but accomplishes little else. There's no marriage, engagement in the offing, just hookers coming over to the mansion. 

One hooker, the incomparable Ann Marie Rios, is the casting inclusion that prompted my interest, but her role is a throwaway, merely humping Joel in tandem with Holly Hollywood, also wasted. Their confrere, superstar of the moment Sunrise Adams, gets the title role, as a beauty who soon obsesses Hunter on the rebound. His pursuit of her in later reels is as stupid as his stasis in the earlier ones, leading to an equally stupid "twist ending" that Avalon somehow thought would tie up this mess neatly. It doesn't.

Examining James' directing career in toto, I am surprised at the many clunkers I find in between his classics. They're all worth watching to get a true picture of an artist's maturation, but this one definitely belongs in the minus column.

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The Bachelor Party Girl

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