Is marijuana an aphrodisiac? While I know some women who would easily fellate you for a dime-sack of high-quality, hydroponic sticky-icky with no hesitation, I have a feeling that has more to do with low self-esteem and the lack of a positive male role model than it does any type of magically seductive ingredient laced within those tenderly pungent pot buds.

Sadly, I personally have never been privy to such THC-leazy doings — although it hasn’t been for a lack of trying — nor have I ever been to a swanky cocktail party wherein a joint is casually passed around and eventual inhalation of the demon weed leads to a spontaneously nude encounter group session wherein pock-faced, fully-bushed cuties are told to stare at your bathing-suit area and gently caress your mons pubis, as I am repeatedly promised in this 1971 sexploitation relic.

Sorry, Aphrodisiac!: The Sexual Secret of Marijuana, but while you dubiously proclaim that cannabis is an ancient sexual enticer that will lead even the most frigid broad to drop trou and let you plow, in my experience, it’s typically just two or three dudes chafing it up on a Goodwill couch, barely watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force and, almost ritualistically, going to sleep, alone, with a belly full of Salsa Verde Doritos, depressed they can’t even maintain the most pathetic of erections for some tearful self-stimulation before passing out to side one of Jefferson Starship’s Red Octopus.

Your visual dissertation just doesn’t hold (bong) water, Aphrodisiac! It does, however, hold other, thicker fluids. While I’m sure in their heart-of-hearts, the filmmakers thought they were presenting a strong case for the use of marijuana as a sexual aid, all that hard work and scientific research is pretty much lost entirely the first moment onscreen penetration occurs between two of the saddest, most unphotogenic, low-rent porn actors the Bowery-based modeling agency could rustle up.

And, you know, I kinda liked that, actually. The idea of a director trotting out to the nearest homeless shelter, paying a belligerent morphine addict $10 to mime the most reptilian of sexual encounters with an equally uninterested, possibly dead hooker, using every diseased thrust as an opportunity to feel something other than the lifetime of mind-numbing regret and stomach-growling hunger … well, that’s some sexy shit. It makes me feel like a shadowy Italian businessman who just paid $5,000 to sit in a hotel room with other equally shadowy businessman — mostly Japanese — to watch a Bolivian snuff flick. I’m sure we can all relate. —Louis Fowler

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I knew I was going to dig Superchick once the opening credits read, “Norman Bartold as old policeman.” But, yeah, the sight of Joyce Jillson strutting down an airplane terminal in black hot pants and fuck-me boots, all to a swingin’ soundtrack, sure didn’t hurt. (In fact, it felt good.) Neither did the sight of Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy, accompanied by a toilet flush, suggesting that high art, this ain’t, so take it or leave it. I’ll take it!

Peyton Place refugee and eventual kook astrologer Jillson essays the role of Tara B. True, a stewardess — yes, back when they were called “stewardesses,” not “flight attendants,” because they said things like, “Coffee, tea or me?” — who’s quite a liberated gal, juggling three lovers in three cities. She’s faithful to all, not counting the lucky dudes she spontaneously inducts into the mile-high club.

One of those is a Marine she nails in the lavatory just to serve her country; the soldier stands at attention. Tara’s the kind of woman who coos threats like, “Last one in bed … gets no head.” She’s a fun girl. And she should be, because Superchick is essentially plotless, no matter how hard it tries to venture into mob territory.

In the loose framework of the film, Tara visits a porn set (where luscious Uschi Digard is fully on display); tokes up at a pot party; kung-fus a biker gang intent on a gang bang; screws a composer inside a piano, twice; chains John Carradine to a wall; loses her bikini bottom in the ocean, leading to some saltwater lovin’; and, finally, foils some hijackers, whereupon her blouse pops open for the TV cameras. You’re cleared for takeoff! —Rod Lott

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Black Cobra Woman isn’t so much a film as it is 95 minutes of Black Emanuelle startlet Laura Gemser disrobing and hopping into bed with random people, regardless of gender, race, color or creed. It’s not for nothing this is also known as Emanuelle Goes Japanese.

Gemser works in Hong Kong as a dancer at a club, and her act involves gyrating suggestively with a live snake. This so entrances filthy rich businessman Jack Palance that he meets her the next day and asks her to move in with him, despite just being told that he gives her the heebie-jeebies. But he wants her company because, he says, “It’s lonely. And I like your scent.” (Hey, in a film like this, who doesn’t?) She relents until her jealous Asian boyfriend slaps and then dry-humps her (while wearing all of his three-piece suit). Then she’s gladly Jack’s new roomie. As the tagline goes, “How much snake can one woman take?”

Don’t expect wacky, Three’s Company-style shenanigans, because the rest is pretty much full-frontal Gemser, as she sleeps with women, showers with them, gets massaged alongside them with phallic instruments and even “helps” one put on her bathing suit and is practically hypnotized by the sight of the girl’s trim-needy beaver. To make up for the lack of story (and perhaps slightly justify the title), a couple of naked chicks are fatally bitten by snakes.

Given that it has some awkward edits — oh, and that it’s directed by porn’s Joe D’Amato — I’m convinced a harder, pervier version exists out there. It’s fairly pointless, but so blatantly prurient that its shortcomings don’t sink it entirely. —Rod Lott

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Alice Goodbody is not a good film — if only because it never completely transcends its status as a low-budget ’70s softcore sex comedy that had the misfortune to not be made by Russ Meyer — but it’s an amiable, occasionally funny effort that actually manages to sneak in some sly commentary about the realities of Hollywood filmmaking.

As the title character, former Meyer starlet Sharon Kelly (who would later end the decade with a guest spot on TV’s Lou Grant before re-inventing herself as ’80s adult film actress Colleen Brennan) plays a ditzy L.A. waitress whose attempts to fuck her way to a major role in a musical version of Julius Caesar are hampered by the injuries she sustains each time she appears in front of the camera. Much of the film’s humor comes from how none of her sexual partners seem particular turned off by the casts, slings and neck braces she collects as the story progresses.

Writer/director Tom Scheuer clearly had no interest in the film’s many sex scenes, since he plays them all for laughs (with varying results), but they all benefit from the presence of his lead actress (who appeared in a lot of these movies for a good reason), which makes their ubiquity a lot easier to bear.

Definitely a product of its time, Alice Goodbody manages to be both more innocent and cynical than other films from its ignoble genre, which isn’t enough to recommend it, but also not enough to warn you to stay away. —Allan Mott

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Austin Powers would be proud to see that Heather Graham shags well — and shags often — in Killing Me Softly, the kind of softcore erotic thriller most name actresses aren’t desperate enough to appear in this early in their career. Was she in such a slump that she thought humping Joseph Fiennes on film half a dozen times was her ticket to the A-list?

In Killing Me Softly — not an adaptation of the Roberta Flack song — she plays a designer of corporate CD-ROMs. I’m not convinced that the real-life Graham even knows how to insert a CD-ROM, so the credibility factor goes right out the window from frame one. Plus, every reaction shot of her suggests deer-in-the-headlights stupid (but hey, nice headlights!); nevertheless, they cast her as this happy, well-off, picture-perfect, upwardly mobile gal living in London who, one day, exchanges lustful glances with a mega-creepy Fiennes on a street corner and, within the hour, exchanges sex fluids with him without so much as asking his name.

Heather, thy name is horny! These two do it everywhere, at the drop of a hat, a needle, a thong — you pick the object. And violently! Apparently, she has no problem with vaginal chafing. His character is a mountain climber and he likes to mount her — so clever! Despite a demeanor that suggests Fiennes is a predatory nutball, the sex is so good that Graham dumps her boyfriend for Fiennes, seconds after he smashes a would-be thief’s head to a pulp in a phone booth. Y’know, for her.

You’d think that would be the first sign that her Mr. Mountaineer is an unhinged loony, but nope, Graham needs several more! Not even when, on their honeymoon, he ties a naked Graham up in knots like a freaking Gerry Anderson marionette so he can cut off her breathing while he nails her. Finally, as the clues pile up so high they threaten to topple over on her, she starts to suspect him of murdering an old girlfriend. By then, I was praying she’d become the next victim.

I know that the sex isn’t supposed to be funny, but it is here. And Graham (Acting It Poorly) looks ridiculous feigning passion with her boobs flying every which way (Bouncing Them Madly). Not only am I unsure what her character sees in Fiennes, I’m also unsure what the filmmakers saw in him, either, because with his stoic nature and half-evil smile, he comes off as autistic. Granted, an autistic who’s grrreat in bed, but autistic nonetheless.

Killing Me Softly is a tremendous embarrassment to all parties involved, so be sure to get the unrated cut; I have a sneaking suspicion the R-rated version is far less riotous. —Rod Lott

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