Monday, March 15, 2021

A Gay Man Watches Straight Porn #4: ‘Roommates’

DVD cover art for the 1982 film ROOMMATES
Roommates, the Beaches of adult movies.
Well, this was unexpected: a pornographic chick flick.

I don’t mean “chick flick” as a pejorative — honey, I love chick flicks — it’s just surprising to encounter one in the genre of adult film, especially one made in 1982, two years before Candida Royalle founded Femme Productions, and directed by a man. Of course, the director in question, the late Chuck Vincent, was gay, so maybe it’s not that surprising that he’d make a movie that’s reminiscent of A Life of Her Own or a less outrageous Valley of the Dolls.

ROOMMATES is the story of three young women — yes, roommates — trying to make it in New York City’s entertainment industry. There’s Joan (Veronica Hart), a naïve drama student who moves to the city to pursue a career in theater, even though she’ll be separated from her married college drama instructor, with whom she’s having an affair. Sherry (Kelly Nichols) is a model who’s decided to stay in NYC because she’s “tired of those Hollywood jerkoffs.” Billie (Samantha Fox) is an ex-call girl embarking on a career as as an assistant producer of TV commercials, taking in roommates so she can remain in her chic-for-1982 high rise apartment.

Gloria Leonard and Samantha Fox in a screen grab from the 1982 film ROOMMATES
Billie tries not to be intimidated by her former madam’s
(Gloria Leonard) hat.

We immediately get a sense of each of the three characters in their first scene together. Billie is friendly but understandably guarded. Sherry is a bit cold, more interested in taking advantage of the city’s club scene than making new gal pals. Joan, on the other hand, desperately wants to make friends, and she tries several times to engage Sherry in a conversation, never picking up on the fact that the model has little patience for her sunny optimism. Joan is also the most sheltered of the women (when Sherry asks for Jack Daniels straight up, Joan says she’ll have the same thing “with orange juice, please”), clearly not realizing you try to take a bite out of the Big Apple, the Apple bites back.

Fortunately for Joan, she’s kind of the comic relief character so the Apple’s bite isn’t too deep. There’s a funny audition montage where we see Joan calibrate each succeeding reading or interview answer based on her previous audition (e.g., after giving her age as 25 she’s told she’s too old for the part; at the next audition she gives her age as 21, only to be told they’re looking for someone “with a little more maturity”). After a string of rejections, she ends up at a small showcase theater where she meets Eddie (Jerry Butler, the hottest guy in the cast), who gives her a little coaching before she auditions, advising her to lose her glasses because this movie, like its Hollywood analog, believes women only wear glasses to look frumpy.

Veronica Hart in the 1982 film ROOMMATES
Then again, Joan’s glasses are fucking hideous.

Don Peterson and Veronica Hart in the 1982 film ROOMMATES
Joan pleads for her lover (Don Peterson) to
give her the courtesy of a reciprocal orgasm.
Joan gets the part and develops a friendship with Eddie, her mind put at ease when he tells her he’s gay (spoiler alert: not really). He even gets her a waitressing job at the restaurant where he’s a maître d’. Life is going great for Joan. If only her college professor lover (Don Peterson, billed as Phil Smith) would leave his wife. Or, at the very least, stick around long enough to get her off.

Things aren’t going as smoothly for her roommates. Billie impresses her co-workers, especially Jim the jingle writer (Jack Wrangler, a fixture in gay porn but cheerfully eating pussy nonetheless). But it turns out Billie’s sleazy boss Marv (Bobby Astyr, Fox’s real life boyfriend at the time) is a former john, something you’d think she’d have discovered during the interview process. He proposes that she could make additional cash by “entertaining” prospective advertising clients — that is, if she values her job. To add insult to injury, the first man Billie is whored out to is Ron Jeremy.  

Samantha Fox and Ron Jeremy in ROOMMATES.
And this is Ron Jeremy when he was at his most fuckable.
Sherry’s story is the bleakest, her growing drug addiction leading her down some dark roads. In one grueling scene, Sherry, stoned out of her mind, is gang raped in a vacant building. The rapists take their turns, urinating on her and even shoving a bottle inside her (neither act is shown, mercifully), until they’re chased away by Paul (Jamie Gillis). Paul cleans the spooge and piss from Sherry’s body, but he’s not one of the good guys. “Did they hurt your pretty pussy?” he asks before whipping out his cock and jerking off on her. Soon, Paul is stalking Sherry, coercing her to go on dates with him and goading her to remove her panties while they’re dining at a restaurant, similar to how William Baldwin got Sharon Stone to do the same thing in Sliver, except in Roommates the scene is uncomfortably tense instead of stupid.

Jamie Gillis and Kelly Nichols in the 1982 film ROOMMATES
Jamie Gillis has Kelly Nichols’ panties as an appetizer.

Our three heroines are all pushed to the brink in various ways, with Joan again having the softest landing. While serving her professor/lover and his wife at the restaurant where she works, Joan learns the couple are going to have a baby, ergo Joan will always be the side piece. Eddie is there to give her a shoulder to cry on, and a few scenes later, a new man to love, Eddie evidently not that gay. (My first thought was, Great, Joan’s gotten herself into another doomed relationship, but then I remembered that Wrangler was happily married to a woman, though in the documentary Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon, he described their sex life as “masturbatory.”)

Jerry Butler and Veronica Hart in a scene from the 1982 film ROOMMATES
If Eddie took the time to light all these candles, you know
he’ll take time to find Joan’s G-spot.

Meanwhile, Marv leases Billie out to a bachelor party, then pressures her to give him a BJ in the men’s room—during the filming of a cat food commercial, no less. Billie puts on a smiling face for the guys at the party, but there’s no masking her feelings when the groom shows up (you get one guess who the guest of honor is). Billie isn’t the first person to reassess her career while getting fucked, though for most of us that’s a figurative, not literal, fucking.

Bobby Astyr and Samantha Fox in the 1982 film ROOMMATES
Samantha Fox’s I’ll-bite-your-dick-off face.

Sherry has it worse still, getting violently attacked by Paul while she’s alone in the apartment. It’s a pretty harrowing scene, with Gillis so convincingly terrifying that I wondered if Nichols was acting or if she really was afraid for her life. Sherry survives the encounter and decides that she needs to make some changes if she expects to see her thirtieth birthday.

A Great Adult Film, Sub-par Porn

Poster for Chuck Vincent's 1982 film ROOMMATES
Critic Judith Crist praised Roommates
for its “frankness, humor and heart.”
Presumably she had no issue with
the movie having only two cumshots.
 
Roommates has all the trappings of a “real” movie, with high production values and an involving story with real characters brought to life by convincing performances (Hart is generally singled out, but Fox and Nichols are equally impressive, while Gillis solidifies his reputation as the best actor in porn). It even has a Streisand-esque theme song. It’s not surprising it got good notices from the likes of mainstream movie critic Judith Crist. Were it not for the scenes of hardcore sex, I’d think I was watching an indie drama, something that might be distributed by New World Pictures or Crown International. That’s the movie’s greatest strength, and also its biggest weakness. 

As good as it is as a film, I don’t see it appealing to my straight brethren. The sex scenes, while plentiful, are brief, allowing more time for all that character and story development. Also, unlike most porn movies, the sex scenes are actually part of the storytelling and not just inserted (so to speak) to get the audience jacking, meaning their tone is dictated by the narrative, and considering that sex for our three main characters is usually unfulfilling, transactional and/or abusive, that tone is usually less than erotic (unless you’re a misogynist asshole). There are, in fact, only two scenes in the whole movie — the one with Fox and Wrangler, the other between Hart and Butler* — that are truly romantic, and they go by so fast that only guys suffering from premature ejaculation or still in their teens will be able to get off before they’re over. 

Samantha Fox and Jack Wrangler in a scene from the 1982 in ROOMMATES
“Ta-da!”

According to A History of X: 100 Years of Sex in Film, Roommates, wasn’t a huge success when first released as the thoughts of Judith Crist aren’t generally considered by men seeking masturbation material. “Somebody looking to get off would rather see five barrels of cum on some girl’s face than emotion or drama,” the book quotes Jerry Butler. 

Sexy? (via GIPHY)

Five barrels of cum? That’s... gross, actually, but Butler’s point is well taken. I wonder if the movie would’ve fared better marketed to women, or, more accurately, if the porn industry and American culture at the time (this was back when WAP meant something entirely different) acknowledged that a female market for porn even existed.

Samantha Fox, Veronica Hart and Kelly Nichols in a scene from the 1982 adult film ROOMMATES
Joan and Sherry say good-bye to their security deposits.

I didn’t watch Roommates with masturbation in mind, so I had no problem enjoying it as a movie. In fact, I think it would have worked better as a softcore film. It really is an X-rated movie with an R-rated heart. So, I guess it’s no surprise that the bulk of Vincent’s output during the 1980s was R-rated fare like Hollywood Hot Tubs, Warrior Queen and Bedroom Eyes II, with his last film being the sexploitation comedy New York’s Finest (also featuring Veronica Hart) before his death of AIDS in 1991.

*Interesting that the two sex scenes that appear mutually enjoyable involve a performer who identified as gay IRL and a gay character. I wonder if this was intentional on Vincent’s part.