Ecstasy Girls, The

Here is a splendid little classic from 1979, produced by Harold Lime and directed by Robert McCallum. As usual with "Golden Age" classics, the plot, acting, exterior shots and general production values are outstanding. This flick was shot on location in L.A., Vegas, Lake Tahoe and San Francisco. They don't make them like this anymore, at least not very often.

Jamie Gillis plays a washed up B-movie star who has been reduced to escorting starlets to movie premieres. He is observed seducing Desiree Cousteau at a party hosted by one J.C. Church. Church calls him the next day with a very interesting proposition. J.C. is the brother of Edgar Church, a rich and very moralistic industrialist, from whom J.C. stands to inherit. Edgar also has a sister and four daughters, however, whose shares will substantially dilute J.C.'s inheritance. J.C. believes that if he can get film of the five ladies in compromising positions, Edgar will cut them out of the will, leaving everything for J.C. So he offers Gillis $100,000 to do the job. Gillis immediately involves his two buddies, John Leslie and Paul Thomas, and they all set out to do some serious seducing.

There's some amazingly good stuff here that has stood the test of time for 20 years. The Gillis/Cousteau scene is a scorcher, as is the scene between Gillis and Georgina Spelvin, who plays J.C. and Edgar's sister. There's a really interesting S/M scene with Serena and Gillis, that shows more rough play than you typically see in an explicit feature. (After the adult industry reached an understanding with prosecutors in the 1980s that there would be no S/M with explicit sex and penetration, most of the 1970s classics were edited pretty severely for release on VHS.) Still, since there are no anals, you might classify this as a "couples" tape. It's certainly nothing that you'd be ashamed to show your girlfriend.

It is a very memorable classic, that hung around in adult video rental stores well into the 1990s. Unfortunately, the movie itself is the only good thing about this DVD. There aren't any extras except for the chapter stops and a few still photos. As with other Caballero discs, you can't back up through the chapter stops, a bizarre technical glitch. The video transfer is decent, and most of the video imperfections stem from the source material itself. Despite disc problems, this is a must-have disc for collectors of the "Golden Age" classics.