Retail Price: $19.99

Reviewed by:

Ian Jane on March 8, 2003

Nick Philips made some pretty strange films in his time, but something about his adult work stands out. Maybe it's the casting of a certain Uschi Digart, who besides being visually impressive, has a certain screen presence lacking in a lot of today's actresses. There's something about films like Roxanna, Lustful Addiction, and more importantly for this review, Pleasures of a Woman, that stick in your head for a while after seeing them.

The plot is pretty simple, which is no surprise for most folks familiar with this genre. Gwen (played by Lynn Harris) has recently lost her uncle, and while attending his funeral in San Fransisco, meets her Aunt Martine (Uschi Digart), all decked out in stockings and garters and definitely standing out from the crowd.

Gwen, tired and exhausted from the days events, decides to spend the night at her aunt's house. This is when things get weird. Martine, thinking Gwen is asleep, grabs one of her shoes and goes 'downtown' with it thinking Gwen to be alseep, while she's all the while peeking in on the shenanigans from behind the door, and digging every second of it.

Later, Gwen decides she needs some manly love, so she looks up an ex-boyfriend and they hook up and get it on, all the while Gwen's mind keeps going back to Martine. When she's finished with her boy toy, she heads back to Martine's house, where they two of them get drunk and of course, the inevitable lesbian antics ensue, and a whole lot of foot fetish, leg worship and thigh high boots are put on display. 

It turns out that Martine is not only a sexual deviant, but also a dope fiend as well, and of course the two of them pop some pills together. Gwen starts tripping and imagines a leather clad woman stripping for her, then later wigs out and the trip turns bad as her mind turns to images of dirty old men as she convulses on the bed in an almost epileptic fit.

Is there a moral in there somewhere? Maybe. If so, it's pretty convoluted and not all together too clear. But Pleasures Of A Woman does do a masterful job of combining the erotic with the freaky in a way that died with the decade it was made in.

The camera leers, as it should in a porno film, over every inch of the women in the film, while the narration (there is no dialogue here) and the cliché seventies porn soundtrack serve to add to the trippy atmosphere already beating you over the head with it's strange and taboo sexual situations and depraved and degenerate characters.

Besides the requisite trailers for other Seduction Cinema and Retro-Seduction Cinema titles, there's a pretty decent interview with adult film historian '42nd St. Pete.' Pete obviously knows his stuff and has a real affection for the piece and especially for Uschi. Pete also supplied some informative liner notes that are further supplemented by a piece from Ted W. Crestview who explains his thoughts behind the remake.

The main extra though, is the aforementioned Crestview remake. While this film doesn't follow the same plot exactly, it's heavily influenced by the original and adds a few small twists to the story that it's based on. While I didn't feel that the remake that Crestview did of Roxanna really served as much of a tribute piece or stood on it's own, this one does. With Darian Caine and Julian Wells in the lead roles, Crestview's version is equally sleazy and plays quite well as a double feature with the original film.

Both versions of Pleasures Of A Woman are worth taking a look at for obvious reasons, but they might just stimulate your mind a little bit as well as your crotch. It's interesting stuff if you're in the right mood for it.

To order this disc, check out www.xploitedcinema.com

Uschi Digart, Lynn Harris, Darian Caine, Julian Wells, Tina Davis, Syn DeVil