#robert kerman

Inside Jennifer Welles opens with Joe Sarno’s longtime muse masturbating in bed as the telephone rings. “You just caught me in the middle of my morning exercise” she tells the caller about her breathlessness, who in turn advises Welles that some sort of pre-planned activity is confirmed and that a car will be picking her up shortly. Not to spoil anything, but she’ll be chauffeured to a gangbang.

From there, we get our first sign of Sarno’s directorial flourish as the camera pans out, revealing that our titular character was in fact not masturbating – someone was giving her oral sex all along.

While being driven to this mysterious destination, Welles, one of the biggest adult stars of the 1970s, is chauffeured around The Deuce, reminiscing about some hot encounters which serve to introduce several sex scenes. “Ah, that’s where my dentist’s office was…” leads to exactly the kind of scene you’d expect from such a statement.

The car drives along Broadway, passing the Circus Cinema advertising Sarno’s The Trouble With Young Stuff (1977 – a really good working class women flick which I’ve written about here), and up along 48th St., crossing the Cine Lido, playing another Welles film, Little Orphan Sammy (also released in 1977). Welles reminisces about the theatre: “Yes, I got to know the projectionist very well. I was signing autographs there on a hot summer's day. During a lull I decided to see the film from the projection room. I discovered the best show wasn’t on the screen.”

The ensuing scene, where Jennifer pays a visit to said projection booth, giving the great R. Bolla something to do in between change-overs is one of the film’s highlights. It’s both hot and incredibly funny.

There’s also a visit to a gay bar where Welles is picked up by a fedora-wearing Marlene Willoughby in Dietrich drag; monetary confusion with a cab driver (turns out she had the money in her purse the whole time, who’da thunk?). Even the scene featuring a baby-faced Carter Stevens is really good. Inside Jennifer Welles is overall scorching — Joe Sarno was no slouch in framing Welles’ incredible body and keeping the comedy flowing throughout.

The finale, however, is a rather cringey one, with waiters from a Chinese restaurant getting post-gangbang sloppy seconds as Dave Ruby and his tuxedo-clad pals eat the meal they just served. While it’s rare to see Asian men performing in a porno at this time, the scene begins and ends with canned “asian music” (kinda like every time Mai Lin appears on screen in any film) and groan-worthy stereotypical subtitles about soya sauce and wontons appear throughout. It kinda deflated the an otherwise incredible film.

Samantha Fox, Kandi Barbour, Robin Byrd and Christine De Schaffer play the titular Pink Ladies, a quartet of disenfranchised housewives. The opening racquetball sequence, washed in Watkins’ usual clinically white backgrounds, drifts in and out of caustic chaos as ELP’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” batters down. Leslie (De Schaffer), who can’t play racquetball to save her life, is excluded from the sex scene with coach/voyeur creep Ron Hudd because she’s being pelted by the automated racketball launcher.

Like all of Watkins’ flicks, the soundtrack pops. “Sister Midnight” from Iggy Pop’s The Idiot plays during a BDSM scene between Leslie and her repressed husband (Alan Adrian). The Gus Kahn standard “I’m Through With Love” is the soundtrack to one of Vanessa del Rio’s rides on the proverbial carousel of married men. And “Ride of the Valkyrie” (Watkins’ nom de plume Richard Mahler was partly a nod to Wagner) plays during one of the final scenes, which can only be described as our merry band of housewives fantasizing about having sex with a pack of flesh-and-blood Skittles.