Fleshpot on 42nd Street

I vowed never to post here again because I'm really pissed, but, out of convenience, I guess I can still stash the occasional piece here for old times' sake.

Having said that, I just went through a grainy, lined, badly aged film called Fleshpot on 42nd Street, directed by Andy Milligan, who directed Guru the Mad Monk a few years later, starring again transvestite Neil Flanagan, who went on to star in the incredible yet still excretable Tromatic Eighties video game meets daddy quest Hollywood Zap, with Ben Frank, De Waldron, and the inimitable Ivan E. Rothman—a bunch of people that faded into the twilight zone of bad cinematic toilet stains.

(Frank was in a movie called Murph the Surf, which sounds like something that Frankie and Annette would hula baby in while jamming to some Arch Hall Jr., and also did a turn in Don't Answer the Phone! De Waldron's only other credited role was in the Penelope Spheeris-helmed punk rock exploitation film Suburbia, produced by Roger Corman.)

Fleshpot, a putative or theoretical porno flick (soft, softcore), likewise stars not one but TWO familiar faces from one of my all-time favorite films, Last House on the Left—the directorial debut of Wes "Nightmare on Elm Street" Craven, who went on to make big-time movies, and who has sadly since passed. Last House is one of the quintessential Vietnam-era flicks exploring the decline of American preeminence and offering us Nietzsche's warning about "Whoever fights monsters...and stares into the abyss."

"Tony" is played by Richard Towers, his real name, ironically enough, and ironic because "Dick Towers" just SOUNDS like a fckn porno star, dig? But he is credited as "Joe Powers" in Fleshpot and as "Gaylord St. James" in Last House. He did eleven porn flicks according to IMDb and was married to a sitcom actress who died in the Eighties. If he were alive today, he'd be a hundred.

"Joe" shows up at what is going to be one gang bang (or at least they'll take turns), and is played by Weasel Padowski himself, porno legend Fred Lincoln, who produced more bad VHS fuck tapes than the law (and especially the Feds) should allow. He has also shuffled off this mortal coil, having got, to quote a detective in Lost Highway, "More pussy than a toilet seat."

Sadly, Krug Stillo (David Hess) isn't in this picture; but damn it, he ought to be.

Dusty Cole (Laura Cannon, who did mainly porn and ultra-low-budget exploitation flicks but is also credited in the movie Deadly Vengeance with Grace Jones, from 1981) is a Times Square hooker living with Tony, shacked up, as they said in those days, who is much pissed that his little trollop isn't cleaning house or helping out by getting a legit job. He gives her a warning, then leaves for work at his square-john, strait-laced, all-American office or whatever, and she robs him of some jewels.

She takes them to a stereotypical Jewish pawnbroker, who propositions her, inviting her in back for a little extramarital hanky-panky ("Good Jews don't get divorced," he assures us), and she steals from him, too. I think.

She then meets up at some point out on the streets with a transvestite named Cherry, played by Flanagan, who is credited here as "Lynn Flanagan." Flanagan is also a sex worker, and the two decide they are going to hustle together. In the middle or so, she meets up with Bob (Harry Reems, also a notorious porno stud of the era, billed as Bob Walters), and they have a budding romance. But can she leave the sleazy life of a Times Square call girl and become an honest woman?

She meets up with a guy named Jimmie (Paul Matthews) who beats her with a studded belt, only to meet with him again at the aborted gang bang, where he attempts to strangle her nude while making love, and is stopped by the other gang johns.

In between, we have some inept work where the heads of her friends at the bar seem to grow from the bottom of the screen. The performances are surprisingly, if not good, at least have a realism that elevates them from the usual wooden grindhouse fare. Milligan made films against all odds, and though not a cinematic master, he was at least an auteur.

The film is an interesting window into the desperate lives of the underclass, of transsexuals, gays, call girls, pimps and hookers, and flotsam and jetsam of 1973. It seems to say, at the end, that tragedy always lurks for certain karmically cursed souls, and that a leopard cannot change its spots. It's so dark that, even with the nudity, it's hard to consider it even approaching literal porn.

Today, no one would bat an eyelash at it. But in 1972, it played on 42nd Street, and probably not many other places.

A weird little obscurity with a window to a forgotten past. Cinephiles may dig it. Porn addicts will yawn. The fleshpot is only half full here, but what remains after it's dumped remains compelling.

Flesh Pot on 42nd Street Bar Scene

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