Put On Your Raincoats | Private Private (Unknown, 1971)
Early on, the detective protagonist played by Ric Lutze is sitting in his office and munching on a pear when Rene Bond walks on. Bond pulls out a gun which misfires, at which point she starts crying that she was trying to avenge the death of her husband and even screwed that up. Lutze explains that he killed the man in self defense, but quite frankly looks more interested in his pear. This sets up the central dynamic of the movie, more compelling than the actual plot about a bank robbery, which is that Lutze plays a compulsive eater. In any given scene he is stuffing his face with whatever food he has at hand, or going to get something to shove in there provided he isn’t occupied with genre demands. And even then his attention seems to waver, as he plays darts while being blown by Bond. (He also tells her “I’m glad I killed your husband”, which is a really weird compliment.)
When he visits Bond’s house he seems more interested in his sandwich and fries than in her. After his office gets raided, he stuffs his face while on the phone, leaving the viewer to wonder if the person on the other end of the line could make out anything he said. We even get a surprisingly long scene where he packs his lunch while in the nude. I guess that’s the joke, but the way that the movie sets it up means that it amuses more for its absurdity than any actual punchlines here. At one point in the movie I was seriously wondering whether Lutze was paid with lunch.
You know this is a great movie because there’s no credited director. The raw materials of the film were so powerful that the finished product willed itself into existence. The camera just started rolling on its own. Yup, that’s the only explanation. Anyway, this is probably typical of porno movies of this era in that it’s obviously shot cheaply and quickly, and the filmmaking can be charitably described as unfussy. There is actually something of a plot here, filtered through a sense of dramatic irony as the detective hero remains oblivious to the actual machinations of the criminals. And the climactic bank robbery happens offscreen, which perhaps makes this like the cinematic equivalent of jazz (the action scenes you don’t see). Yeah, this is real deep.
Anyway, the sex scenes are uniformly low energy, although there is one where the participants are on top of a table that creaks loudly during the action and the male grabs onto a chandelier like it’s load bearing that might have you worried for the performers’ safety. And there’s another scene where the same man speculates that he’s " the only person in the world who got his dick sucked by a person who planned a bank robbery", and I’d like a greater sample size. These things are often enjoyable for providing windows into the filmmakers’ homes, and there’s a pretty arresting painting of a caribou in one the later scenes.
Anyway, this is very obviously not good, and could probably stand to be even shorter than it is, but something about putting a detective plot in a porno always tickles my fancy (calling this a noir would be a stretch, though), and I like hanging out with Rene Bond, what can I say.
