I had a chance to see the only known copy of Warner Rose's The Smut Peddler (USA 1965) that tells about a making of a sex magazine in the mid-sixties. It's an awful film, there's nothing to be sad about the fact that all the copies of the film are believed to be destroyed. (The trailer exists and it's much better than the actual film, since it's 1:25 h shorter.) The copy is in the dens of the Finnish Film Archive and it's in a pretty good shape.
It seems that someone has gotten hold of two approximately 20 minutes of footage that shows nudie pictures being taken in Vienna and Paris. These have nothing of interest, except that some of the girls are quite good-looking. These are linked together via a story of a journalist interviewing of two former staff writers of "Dream Girl", the famous nudie magazine that was run by a man called D.G. Rawlins ("goes for DeGenerate", someone says in the film).
Dream Girl was famous for its outrageous photos. For example, there's a scene in which a girl attacks another, strangles her, tries to shove her head into a hot oven and pulls her teeth out. There's an odd discrepancy between these scenes and the footage about nudie pictures which are very cute. Behind all this there was a sadist lesbian editor, who insisted torture being shown in Dream Girl.
She also liked to "enjoy" the girls after D.G. Rawlins had taken them. (This particular scene is accompanied by a stupid march song, as if there was something funny about a girl being raped.)The sets are poor, the actors are poor, to say the least, and there's nothing of a decent plot here. There's some mild satire, but all in all a pretty sad film. The magazine's office consisted of a desk and a phone.
The other commentator (not the Finnish one, who must've seen the same copy) here is wrong, because there's simply no "slightly frightening, heavily-made up man who calls himself The Smut Peddler" in the film. He appears only in the trailer.
The script writer of the film was, if I remember the credits correctly, Herbert Coleman, but he must be some other fellow than the Coleman who worked as an assistant director and producer in some of Hitchcock's films.
Edit: see also the sequel post to this.
7 comments:
What somewhat odd-looking body part is the fellow clutching in that still?
It's a woman's leg.
I've got a copy of the Smut Peddler trailer myself, and I kinda thought that it might have the best scenes of the movie in it already, and from what you're saying here that seems to be the case!
Most certainly, Neb. There's absolutely no need to see the whole movie! ;)
the way you referred to the dream girls mag makes me think you're saying it was a real magazine, but it's not, right?
Sorry for bringing up the false image, but no, it's not a real magazine.
I remember seeing this movie on the bill at the Gaiety Burlesque Theater in Wash.DC in 1966 or so , I know it was the in-between shows movie. Plus ,I recognized actor James Hong and John something , sorry I can't remember , I thought it was John Schuck but it's not him but name maybe sounded similar. This was later on in life , as two of the movies actors got into TV. At IMDB their names weren't listed on the Cast list and neither showed them on their Name listing all their work at IMDB : but who would want their name on this REALLY BAD EVEN FOR PORNO flick !!!!!
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