Review: The ABC of Love and Sex- Australia Style

As the title suggests, an alphabetic exploration of sexual themes from a (barely) Aussie point of view…or is it just a titty movie in disguise? Both?  

 

Completely useless 1978 softcore oddity from “Felicity” director John Lamond mostly adopts a faux sex-ed documentary thing. It’s played so boringly straight that I couldn’t tell whether this was faux-doco or mockumentary at first, but ultimately, Lamond’s just dressing up a titty flick here to get around the very conservative censors of the time. Unfortunately, the dry and episodic approach completely kills any eroticism whatsoever. I have no idea what the bookending Claymation segments are about, but I bet the majority of the budget was blown on them. Meanwhile, the Softcore Stars on 45 dance routine is just all kinds of stupid, and the babbling faux-doco narration delivered by Michael Cole and Sandy Gore is, combined with the inappropriately jaunty music, a major buzz-kill.

 

To give you an indication of just how I came to my belief that Lamond’s just making a fancy titty flick, one of the first segments on birth features a baby being breast-fed in lurid close-up. Lamond isn’t interested in the topic of breast-feeding, he just likes big norks. Classy fella, but like I said, it appears to be played stupidly straight until we get to N is for Natural (more on that later). Six minutes in and I was starting to doze off, as the closest this thing gets to a true sex education documentary is being boring as fuck and completely un-erotic. Fast-cutting senselessly ruins what could’ve been a pretty sensual lesbian scene later. Likewise, a segment on Innocence/Ignorance could’ve been the hottest segment of all, if not for the ridiculous fake humping that really shows how incompetently made this is. Both participants are fully naked but it’s comically clear that there’s no actual penetration. I mean, if you’re gonna make a sexy movie (even one that pretends it’s really not a porno), you’ve at least gotta get the sex right. Right? Later, though, we actually do get some unsimulated sexual content, such as a mutual masturbation bit in the L is for Love segment (Think about that concept, by the way), and there’s definite masturbation in the M is for Masturbation bit. A later 69 scene could potentially have been unsimulated (a term I don’t really like because all movie sex lacks spontaneity, doesn’t it?) except it’s hard to tell with the woman’s long hair getting in the way of our view of what she’s actually doing. Poor staging there, but then this is from the guy who later gave us the most incompetent-looking lesbian scene of all-time in “Felicity”, so I guess you can’t expect too much. We get a precursor to that scene from “Felicity” here, by the way with P for Pornography. Ridiculous pink lighting and two women who have absolutely no idea what to do with one another is a pretty amusing but dreadfully un-erotic sight. Australia just didn’t do erotica very well in the 70s, from my experience.

 

If you’re looking for definitive hardcore content, O is for Orgasm is the one segment where you’ll get it (Apparently the more risqué segments were all filmed in Sweden, the rest in Melbourne). Penetration is clearly seen during doggystyle sex. However, it’s all for nought because the film overall sucks. The only reason the film has any notoriety at all today is probably because of the N is for Natural segment which features the now openly gay (yet actually politically quite conservative!) entertainment gossip guy John Michael Howson (who also played a pervy dress shop employee in “Felicity”) dressed as a pervy leather bikie cliché indulging in a supposed orgy sequence. I’m not going to pass judgement except to say that it definitively proves that Lamond is just fucking about making a tee-hee ha-ha sex comedy. And making it very, very badly. Oh, and once you’ve seen John Michael Howson all sweaty and bug-eyed in leather…it’s a sight you can never un-see.

 

This is nothing more than a cheapo piece of shit that was made to earn a quick buck. It’s pretty poorly made, hardly erotic, and I’m not even sure it rates a viewing for cultural/historical purposes. And remember, this stupid film was made during the New Wave of Australian Cinema!

 

Rating: D-