Inside Deep Throat (2005)

DVD, Somerville, MA

March 01, 2007

** 1/2 / ****

In 1972 American motion pictures were turned on their head by a mediocre porno film entitled Deep Throat, the first hardcore movie to play to a mainstream audience. And boy did it play. Made for a miniscule $25,000 it raked in a supposed $600 million making it, by nearly all accounts, the most profitable movie of all-time. Yet with all that money changing hands, everyone involved and nearly all who have seen it have the same admission: it isn’t very good.

So why was Deep Throat such a phenomenon during its time? The answers are numerous and a bit complex but stem from two main thrusts: the exploding sexual revolution and the fact that home video was still ten years away. Throw in Linda Lovelace, a vulnerable and confused budding pornography actress lacking a gag reflex and a script chock full of dopey jokes right in the middle of the hardcore and you’ve got the date movie of 1972, as unlikely as that may have been then or now.

Inside Deep Throat tackles the Deep Throat phenomenon as a cross between an encyclopedia entry and modern MTV, leaping from talking heads to archival footage to shots from the movie itself attempting to illuminate the peculiar circumstances of the little porno movie that could. We hear from many of the usual suspects: Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, and the typical moral majority (or is it really minority?) who went through all channels to put an end to pornography once and for all. We also get a glimpse of the director, the stars, and the distributors as they are today. We learn about the heavy hand of the mafia that loomed over the proceedings, the tragic circumstances of its actors following the movie’s debut, and a little about pornography’s morphing from raincoat theater to porno chic to near-nonexistence until the advent of home video. Glittering graphics cross the screen with the usual seventies elevator funk punctuating the visuals. And then we get to see the infamous act, itself, in all its magnanimous glory. Yet for all this information and glitz the fast-paced documentary gives a mere cursory run-down of the ins and outs (pardon the pun) of the principle players with nothing save a few weirdo pundits and clever quips lingering in the mind after the experience.

If directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (who together also made the enjoyable Party Monster) had gone beyond the cursory details their slick little film might have left more of an impression. With such lurid subject matter and the amount of old footage the directors have at their disposal there seems a much more entertaining way to tell this tale than what we find with Inside. What we do find is Bailey and Barbato veering from any complications with the subject, never asking either the talking heads or themselves anything provocative or hard hitting, and most disappointing, failing to get deep inside any of the many tangents the film throws off but never pursues. Sure, Inside is a pleasant documentary viewing experience because it doesn’t go overboard in taking any particular stance on pornography, art, politics, or really anything, but this makes it somewhat boring in how it typically allows the story to play itself out. The good guys are always just trying to make their way in the strange universe of the early ‘70s, the bad guys are always sanctimonious, misguided cretins, and those in between are just curious. But for all the excitement Deep Throat provided the citizens of 1972 its documentary counterpart is better served as mere background material, hardly an event in and of itself.

Now I’m not recommending the real Deep Throat instead of this film, but compared to similar fare such as Boogie Nights, a movie infinitely more entertaining and educational than Inside, it’s a no contest. Now that’s porno done right, with or without a raincoat.