Who’s got the tricks to make a sex machine of all the chicks? Satan! The proof is in The Satanist, as writer/director Zoltan G. Spencer (Terror at Orgy Castle) plops a succubus into suburbia to see what happens. Fornicating, that’s what.

After experiencing a nervous breakdown, a novelist named John (who haltingly narrates the dialogue-free picture) is ordered to temporarily escape city life for a little R&R, yet finds only T&A. Typewriter in tow, John would like to write, but his wife, Mary, feeling frisky in a second-honeymoon way, disrobes and coaxes him to do the same. He does; unfortunately, the reveal of his shaggy back rudely hurls the film into horror territory.

Later, on a leisurely postcoital drive, the couple meets the shapely Shondra (Pat Barrington, Orgy of the Dead), a neighbor who fancies herself a “student of the occult.” She loans a book on ancient sorcery to John, whose perusal of its pages causes him to have erotic dreams of making it with a bosomy blonde while Mary, undisturbed by the mattress motions, sleeps soundly.

Awake, John turns Peeping Tom and watches Shondra rub a Vaseline-like ointment all over a woman’s breasts; Mary witnesses a satanic rite being performed using her hubby’s glasses. Sufficiently weirded out, the spouses agree it’s time to end their friendship with that witchy woman Shondra, but awww, dammit, they promised to attend her party on Sunday! While it seems like an excuse to watch a hoochie-coochie dance and listen to sitar-flavored jazz, the real reason for the soirée is unveiled after the couple unknowingly downs drugged drinks: John is tied up and forced to watch as each male guest takes a turn donning a mask of fertility and, well, spreading his fertilizer. (While supposed to represent a goat, the headgear looks more like a goat with fake eyelashes and Cinnabon pastries on each ear.) The moral of this story: Following the etiquette rules of Emily Post will earn you conscription as the devil’s concubine.

It is important to note what this one-hour wonder is not: porn. All the couplings — and there are many, even before the climactic party resembling a community-theater adaptation of Eyes Wide Shut — are practically chaste by today’s standards, featuring maximum toplessness and a minimum of rolling around. Fabulously sexy as always, Barrington adds color to this black-and-white cheapie. As you might have theorized based upon all of the above — or likely just from the name Zoltan — The Satanist feels like the kind of sexploitation obscurity that served as Something Weird Video’s bread and butter, but oh, my Lord, that’s not butter! —Ed Donovan

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In Body Chemistry 4: Full Exposure, sultry TV producer turned shady murder suspect Dr. Claire Archer (Shannon Tweed, Hot Dog … The Movie) decides to check out the legal briefs of her married lawyer, Simon Mitchell (Larry Poindexter, American Ninja 2: The Confrontation), in hopes of helping her case.

To get on his good side, she gives him an oral examination in his office’s break room. With him completely won over by her well-timed arguments, they do a little gavel-bashing atop a car in a parking garage, in an elevator, on a pool table and on his own dining room table, where people eat. Even a whole bottle of Pledge wouldn’t mask that evidence.

Thoroughly routine among erotic thrillers of the 1990s (Tweed’s character likes to hump? Who’da guessed?), this entry from director Jim Wynorski (Sorority House Massacre II) also has the misfortune of allowing Tweed’s six-time co-star Andrew Stevens to show up briefly as his character from the previous year’s Body Chemistry III. Tweed, however, is new to the Roger Corman-birthed franchise, taking over the role from Shari Shattuck, who took it over from Lisa Pescia.

Also making a return appearance? Fake breasts. (To clarify, Stevens’ are real.) —Ed Donovan

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Admittedly without researching, I can think of no prostitute other than Xaviera Hollander to have achieved such a level of American fame that Hollywood responded in kind by turning her memoir and her life into a veritable film franchise. Naturally, her household-name status was a genuine by-product of the Me Decade (as opposed to our current Me Me ME Decade); I’m half-surprised she wasn’t called upon by prime-time TV to corporate-synergize by testing the cabin mattresses aboard The Love Boat or causing Tattoo to spill some ink during a visit to Fantasy Island.

Based on Hollander’s 1971 memoir of the same name, The Happy Hooker is a sex comedy that is neither all that sexy nor all that funny. Furthermore, title be damned, it’s not all that happy, either. In fact, Nicholas Sgarro’s virgin outing as a feature director is so bad, it’s depressing. (No wonder he was banished to television forever after, cresting with 54 episodes of Knots Landing.)

Gods and Monsters’ Lynn Redgrave strikes one as vigorously miscast in the role of the real-life, larger-than-life Hollander, but at least she grants sympathy to her character. Arriving in America from Holland, Xaviera is gaga for the rich guy she moved continents for (Nicholas Pryor, Risky Business), until his deep-seated mommy issues suffocate their planned nuptials with a throw pillow.

She revolts the same way many women do: balling as many men as possible. What she enjoys, she soon gets paid for, which leads to full-time freelancing and, eventually, full-blown whoredom heading a bordello. See, Xavier does anything and anyone, while her peers may flinch. Make out with a black chick? Not a problem! X’s color-blind tongue is already out, wet and a-waggin’!

For something so sordid-sounding, The Happy Hooker is not only boring, but almost fully absent of nudity. Redgrave’s big number has her stripping to her underwear — and then back again — while dancing atop the conference room of a Wall Street executive (Tom Poston, TV’s Newhart). The only flesh bared is brief, yet belongs to Anita Morris, Ruthless People’s risqué redhead, here turned into a giant banana split with extra whipped cream. As with every scene in Sgarro’s film, it’s not as much fun as it sounds.

This awful flick was followed by 1977’s awful The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington and 1980’s truly awful The Happy Hooker Goes to Hollywood, which would be forgotten from pop culture’s collective conscience if not for Adam West (TV’s Batman) appearing in drag and getting blown. With each adventure, a different leading lady donned the garter belt. —Ed Donovan

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Not much occurs in the pedestrian and paltry Schoolgirls in Chains beyond what the title promises, and even that is a misnomer. I get it, though: Sexploitation is sexploitation, which requires salable sizzle, and “schoolgirl” tickles a particular — and particularly popular — fetish. Like Troma’s infamous Mother’s Day seven years later, this feature from The Love Butcher director Don Jones centers on two adult brothers who live a screwed-up existence with their screwy mother in a home just middle-of-nowhere enough to be ideal for their peculiar method of entertaining members of the opposite sex.

Frank (Gary Kent, Jones’ The Forest) is the brains of the Barrows boys; the mentally challenged John (John Parker, The Mighty Gorga), the brawn. Through automotive mishaps and what have you, the brothers nab the nubile, take them home and chain ’em up in the cellar with the others. On occasion, John likes to play doctor with them, whereas Frank has little patience for games — he just out-and-out rapes. Jones’ choice to score this grimy scene with romantic sax music is all the more troubling.

Equally as troubling is the film’s highlight: a flashback in which Mother (Greta Gaylord) ruins Frank’s chances at marriage by telling his fiancée that while he used to wet the bed, he now just gets her wet in bed. Translation: incest. We can’t place all the blame on Mrs. Barrows, however, because in the same scene, when she asks her son for a massage to relieve the pain she’s having, he complies; the “pain” is in her breasts. I know women like to see how their husband-to-be treats his mama, but this? It’s a red flag that sews, raises and waves itself.

Yep, kids, SiC (!) is one of “those” kinds of movies: not pornography, but misguided eroticism. Hey, it takes all kinds to make the world go ’round. It takes a village! —Ed Donovan

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Warning: Arthur Marks’ The Roommates may cause whiplash. For its first 39 minutes, it plays like one fun-loving, fuck-me pump of a sexploitation flick. Then, at minute 40, one of its many lovely ladies takes more than 100 stab wounds to the torso, and not by choice.

No worries, though! Soon, the dial is cranked right back to happy-go-lucky, borrowing a pattern straight from that archaic TV nugget of the sock-it-to-me ’60s, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In: minimal setup, corny joke, onto the next one. Mind you, this episodic structure actually proves to be a plus.

Delivered the same year he moved into the lucrative blaxploitation game with the Quentin Tarantino-beloved Detroit 9000, Marks’ film makes much use of its finest special effect: the bevy of beauties. As the titular Roommates, Pat Woodell (The Big Doll House), Roberta Collins (Death Race 2000), Marki Bey (Sugar Hill) and Laurie Rose (The Abductors) romp in the sand, discuss women’s lib, take showers and, eventually, summer at Lake Arrowhead.

They’re not vacationing as a foursome, however, which further lends the film a soapy layer similar to the Valley of the Dolls it name-drops. Joining Woodell’s Heather for the trip is her young, feisty cousin (The Stewardesses’ Christina Hart), who is more than happy to make Oedipal overtures after a conquest of Heather’s tells her post-coitally, “Oh, Heather, it’s just like old times, isn’t it? You’re as good as you were when you were 16!” Meanwhile, Rose’s Brea assumes nursing duties at a kids’ camp, where she and her tight Ts and short shorts garner a great deal of hormonal attention from overly (but justifiably) horny boys: “Boy, is she built like a brick shithouse! Boy, would I like to make it with her!” Get in line, brother …

In fact, I’d like to serially date the hell out of this movie. It’s too much of a carefree blast to not swing right along to its delectable rhythms and life-affirming scenery. —Rod Lott

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