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The Sexploiters
[Retro Seduction Cinema]
1965; color
Directed by Al C. Ruban
Starring: Marlene Starr, June Roberts, Leonore Rheine, Terri Steele & Jackie Miller
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Just to prove Something Weird isn't the only company that can uncover a sexploitation film from the early 1960s no one's ever heard of and release it on DVD, Retro Seduction Cinema takes a break from releasing a ton of stuff by Joe Sarno to offer up this kooky, somewhat kinky, obscurity. Which they refer to as a cult classic. Truthfully, I'm not sure a movie can be considered a cult classic if hardly anyone has seen it but I suppose it's not out of the question it's DVD release could help solidify such status down the road. The Sexploiters is the simultaneous directorial debut and swan song of a fella named Al C. Ruban, whose other exploitation film work was mainly in the capacity of producer. (Then he apparently hooked up with John Cassavetes who, at the risk of making myself look stupid, is an actor and director I'd never heard of prior to reading his name in the propaganda that accompanied this.) Oddly enough, I have heard of Ruban because I previously reviewed one of his productions, The Beautiful, The Bloody And The Bare; a weird nudie cutie with a slight gore angle, revolving around a modeling agency in NYC. This is more of a nudie cutie with a slight fetish angle and isn't a movie in the traditional sense. It's more of a bunch of scenes strung together with some weak dialogue. There's also a curiously loud and seemingly out of place voiceover that pops up a couple times. Unlike most voiceovers, this doesn't add much by way of plot explanation and almost feels like it was added in later, but I'm pretty sure no one, then or now, ever went to see a film with a title like The Sexploiters looking for plot development and seamless continuity so we won't spend too much time complaining about that. At the onset we're introduced to a suburban housewife named Lynn. Like a lot of suburban housewives, she's bored with her lot in life and chooses to entertain herself with expensive trinkets her single income family can't afford. She's a fairly enterprising bored suburban housewife though so she sets out to earn a little cheddar of her own, via a city-based "modeling agency." Which is simply a thinly disguised prostitution service - just like a real modeling agency. Kidding! I probably shouldn't even have said that out loud / in print, lest Tyra Banks hunt me down and kill me, but sometimes you have to pad out a review of a film that doesn't have a lot to it by digressing into only slightly related topics in order to fill the space. Much in the same way that a director or producer might have to pad out their exploitation film with an endless array of unattractive naked people just kind of standing around and pretending to have their pictures taken in order to fill the time request requested by their distributor. In all seriousness though, Lynn really does work for a prostitution service and during the course of the film we see she and her colleagues earn their money the old fashioned way, in an array of "salacious" situations which were probably rather salacious back in the day but seem kind of kitschy now. Lynn specifically has the pleasure of pleasuring a masochistic dude with an unusually large and angular jawline; a guy with a coffin fetish; and a group of "college students" over the course of the festivities. Then she just goes back home where her husband is none the wiser. Or if he is, he just doesn't give a fuck. Any way you slice it this is one strange slice of sinema, sure to either satisfy or completely baffle any seasoned b-movie viewer.
—Bunny
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