Teenie Tulip (1970) Online

Probably due to its asinine, completely irrelevant title, TEENIE TULIP is an ignored early film from Gerard Damiano, sloughed off by both fans and historians.

I found it to be a pivotal movie, one that actually points the way to a parallel world where Soft Porn ruled. That is to say, it is very easy to imagine an America where hardcore pornography was NOT legalized circa 1970, and where filmmakers had to continue as they had in the '60s to avoid showing verboten shots. Stag films existed underground for many decades and should have continued as the outlet for XXX porn, alongside (I am speculating) with European porn not permitted to pass through customs here.

But instead the floodgates opened, ultimately resulting in the porn domination of our culture, now largely via internet sources. But in the '70s the onslaught of XXX in the theatrical arena relegated softcore porn to novelty drive-in fare and eventually the snooze-inducing Cinemax late night cable garbage.

In TEENIE TULIP Damiano, before himself turning to XXX and single-handedly revolutionizing the adult cinema industry with its greatest all-time hits, pushes the boundaries of softcore. Yet he has made a real film here -it plays like a B movie with endless pages of dialog, decent acting, and the overlay of tons of simulated sex.

I'm reviewing a reissue version titled CAN'T GET ENOUGH fabricated about five years later, in which XXX footage is very effectively integrated into the original film. I'll point out its effect as I describe the movie.

Short little Peggy Simpson is quite effective in the lead role as Karen, a bride-to-be (in two weeks) who frustrates her fiancé Jim (Don Nardo) by refraining from sex. Her BFF Jane (sexy Linda Southern) is a recovering nympho who is being treated by one Dr. Luv (hambone Steve Dickenson, who reminds me a lot of the droll '60s comedian Dayton Allen, but an unfunny version). She suggests Karen see Dr. Luv to cure her sexual hang-ups.

Luv's patients are a motley crew, allowing Damiano to load the film with kinks and keep it interesting. There's former patient Rita Bryant, alluded to early on in an odd scene where Dr. Luv is grilled by two colleagues (filmmaker Ron Wertheim and Hack Rightor, latter obviously protective of his true identity) about Rita's death by horse trampling. A later flashback shows us the buxom Rita (Anita Ventura, previously featured in an all-time favorite of mine, THE TAMING) patting down a stallion, but unlike a latter-day porn classic like THE PERVERSE WORLD OF BEATRICE we're not shown her fondling the beast's genitals before he gets angry and kills her.

Clyde (Donny Lee) is a young voyeur who can't get involved with a partner but gets his rocks off watching Dr. Luv's Euro blonde assistant Bridget masturbate. Dr. Luv believes in sex as therapy, and his statuesque assistant Mother (aka Millicent), played by Karen Richards and virtually stealing the film, dishes out punishment to all and sundry with her riding crop.

Mother also is an effective lesbian partner to both Jane and later Karen. The XXX version has perfectly matched insert closeups where Mother's vibrator penetrates Karen's latter-day double. Karen reveals to the doc a teenage trauma when she was inappropriately groped on the front seat of a car during a date, and here we are treated to XXX inserts that dovetail well with the softcore action. The porn double for Karen doesn't match when a hardcore fellatio insert is provided, however.

Film culminates in a party at Luv's house that is treated with tongue-in-cheek dialog and characterizations, including mincing patient Morris (Larry Hunter, one of softcore's prolific critters) and matronly but dirty minded old Mrs. Freestone (Lucy Rey, quite an actress and not involved in any nudity or sex acts whatsoever). Presaging DEVIL IN MISS JONES, the ironic ending is Damiano-scripted with just the right amount of nastiness.

Along the way the re-jiggered XXX version has an incredibly pretentious addition of Terri Hall as a bridal-veil wearing nude frolicking in field and stream, added as sort of an alter ego to Karen. Shot like dream sequences (and presaging her Zebedy Colt classic THE DEVIL WITHIN HER), this footage is silly and absurd, simply injected to add some hardcore to the reissue in "artistic" fashion. Screwiest motif is when Karen is masturbating as the semi-hypnotized centerpiece at Dr. Luv's house party: Karen rubs grapes all over her nude body, intercut with Terri rubbing an octopus (!!) on her body. I guess the "visionary" who was Gerard Damiano was inventing yet another porn genre of the future, namely the disgusting fetish of Japanese pornhounds for tentacles sex.

This is a well-shot, composed and performed movie, which just happens to be porn, in the same camp as much of Joe Sarno's '60s output. The sex scenes are hot and feature novel and effective camera angles. Even with the addition of XXX footage, it plays well. And without that footage, it represents a type of film which could have satisfied audiences for many more years had XXX features remained illegal.