You know, it just isn't right that this entertaining documentary on two pioneers of the exploitation film industry is standing alone in the festival. Granted, most of the festival entries are about reaching across international borders, bringing use together through our mutual love for the cinema and understanding each other's cultures ... Documentary goes to
roots of sleazeReview by Gary C.W. Chun
gchun@starbulletin.comAw, to hell with it! At least for the night of the showing of "Mau Mau Sex Sex," viewers should be able to watch with slack-jawed disbelief a support bill of such classics of the grindhouse genre as "Maniac," "Wages of Sin," "Child Bride," "She Freak," "Blood Feast" and "Thar She Blows." The audience would have some better appreciation (or revulsion) for what Dan Sonney and David Friedman have done to contribute to this dirty, secret corner of American film history.
Friedman mentions in the video that an exploitation classic from 1963 like Herschell Gordon Lewis' gory "Blood Feast" cost $24,000 to make and, thanks to sellout showings in backwater drive-ins across the nation, went on to gross $30 million. It's all about the Benjamins, baby!
Who needs to go through major studios when men like Sonney and Friedman could churn out cheapie sex, crime, drug and gore flicks for 40-odd years? Like the opening title cards say, they're "America's oldest independent filmmakers ... and purveyors of smut."
Combined with historian Frank Hennenlotter's (himself the creator of one of the odder horror films of this ilk, 1982's "Basket Case") hilarious insights on "the odd, exhilarating and incomprehensible," "Mau Mau Sex Sex" is a great introduction to all that is sleazy.
"Mau Mau Sex Sex" Screens at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Honolulu Academy of Arts Theatre as part of the Hawai'i International Film Festival
Both exploitation giants are now curmudgeonly and lovable elders with a mischievous twinkle in their eyes whenever they reflect on their younger, aggressive selves. Sonney got into the business through his father, a former policeman who exploited his fame for capturing the Dillinger-like Roy Gardner by staging a touring roadshow that featured one of the first re-enactments ever done on film, called "You Can't Beat the Rap."
Sonney would go on to package lurid little movies that showed all that was taboo and forbidden, and "responsibly" wrapped with moral and educational messages to try to placate the censor and church moral boards.
Friedman was a former Paramount studio publicist who found inspiration in the birthplace of exploitation, the traveling carnival. With all the panache of a veteran "carny," Friedman made his name with titillating color movies shot on location at Florida nudist camps. Being attractive, however, was never a given to be a nudist, so Friedman padded out his naked cast with lovely young "models." Thus were born the "nudie cuties."
When the two joined forces beginning in the early '60s, they began with black-and-white "roughies" like "The Defilers," movies with misogynistic themes that included women getting some serious-looking beatings. Continuing with the theme that Friedman describes as offering discriminating moviegoers of the day "a legitimate reason (to see) torture and mutilation," copious amounts of stage blood would flow next with their gore films. The effects were laughably cheesy in retrospect, but, in its day, the shock value of such grindhouse flicks far outweighed their cheap budgets.
"Sexploitation" movies were the collective swan song for the end of the golden age of exploitation. As "adults only" went from tease to explicit sex, the movie business wasn't fun anymore, and Sonney and Friedman settled back into what they thought would be a comfortable retirement from the biz, having enjoyed the ride while it lasted.
It took someone like Mike Vraney of Something Weird Video (who makes an appearance near the end of the video, showing his vast inventory of exploitation films stored in reel cans, to the amazement of the two older men) to repackage these films on VHS tapes and DVDs for fans through his mail and catalog service.
And if your appetite is whetted by "Mau Mau Sex Sex," visit the Something Weird Web site or your favorite anti-Blockbuster video store to see any of these movies in all their lurid glory.
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