All Rise...

Judge Mitchell Hattaway has a curious obsession with Alex Karras, former Detroit Lion and TV dad to that adorable Webster.

The Charge

Her obsession is every man's desire.

Opening Statement

It's like an A/V Club nerd's dream come true.

Facts of the Case

A 16mm film projector with a mind of its own and a carton of old nudie movies turn a couple of college roommates into lesbian nymphomaniacs. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The Evidence

Even by Seduction Cinema standards, Curious Obsessions is a pretty flimsy excuse for a movie. Five minutes of setup are followed by more than seventy minutes of Bethany Lott (who starred in Lust in Space) and Jackie Stevens (who also starred in Lust in Space) writhing and groping while footage from old stag films is projected onto a nearby wall. You get three scenes of Bethany and Jackie getting it on, along with a solo scene from each woman sandwiched in between, and then the movie ends. That's it, that's all. Absolutely nothing else happens. Hell, I know it's nothing more than a filmed-on-the-cheap softcore flick, but even I expect a little more than that.

Director John Bacchus (who directed Lust in Space) and producer Michael Raso (who produced—you guessed it—Lust in Space) concocted this flick as a means of exploiting a bunch of stag loops they acquired and restored. I'll give them points for being honest about their intentions, but that's all I'm willing to give them. This movie is boring, annoyingly repetitive, and overlong by a good sixty minutes. I know this might sound strange coming from me, but there's only so much of the same two women doing a very poor job of pretending to be in the midst of Sapphic ecstasy (or autoerotic pleasure) a person can take. Sure, the footage of Bethany and Lott feeling themselves (and each other) up is intercut with footage of women who are now old enough to draw Social Security removing their garters, but this stag footage also quickly wears out its welcome and is primarily good for nothing more than a few chuckles. I haven't had a whole lot of exposure to old nudie loops, so I cannot make a blanket statement about movies of this ilk, but the snippets included in Curious Obsessions make me glad I'm living in this day and age, as the women featured here look like they were cast straight out of the dairy section of the local Piggly-Wiggly. (I guess there's never a Bettie Page around when you really need one.) Honestly, most of them appear to be nothing more than bored housewives who are out to make a few extra bucks. (And one of them has a grapefruit-sized bruise on her left buttock, but the less said about that the better, and I think I have already said too much.) I can't speak for anyone else, but that doesn't do a whole lot for me.

That being said, I cannot help but wonder why Bacchus and Raso didn't dispense with the nonsensical (to say nothing of nonexistent) plot and simply release a compilation of the loops. I guess you could argue (although I am not sure why anyone would want to) that Bacchus and Raso were attempting to pay homage to the nudie movies of days gone by, but if in fact that was their intention, I don't think they pulled it off. Anyone who's interested in the old stuff will be annoyed by the inclusion of Jackie and Bethany, just as anyone who is interested in Jackie (who is actually too attractive, albeit not too talented, to be doing this sort of thing) and Bethany probably won't give a damn about the stag footage. Truthfully, I cannot imagine anyone will be too terribly interested in this movie, and that includes any thirteen-year-old boy who happens to stumble across it while secretly staying up late to watch Cinemax.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that several questions are left unanswered at the movie's end. For example, where did the projector come from? Is the mysterious power in the projector itself or is it in the loops? How did the projector and/or the loops acquire this mysterious power? How do I get my hands on such a projector? Was this sort of thing going on when I was in college? If so, why didn't somebody tell me? Why, despite the fact that she's looking at a reel of film, does Jackie Stevens keep referring to "the tape"? Maybe all will be explained in a future sequel, although I'm not really hoping for one.

As is the case with many Seduction Cinema releases, Curious Obsessions was shot on low-grade digital video. The video is soft (which I'm sure is at least partially a stylistic choice), with several instances of macroblocking, pixelation, and smearing. On the other hand, the old nudie loop footage looks quite good; I don't know the extent of the restoration work, but the results are impressive. The stereo audio often sounds more like mono; the dialogue sounds canned, but there are less than a dozen lines of dialogue in the movie, so this isn't really a problem. What is a problem is the cheesy music laid down over all of the writhing and groping, which has a tendency to creak and crack. Extras include a brief interview with producer Michael Raso, a short glimpse into the making of the movie (during which Bethany Lott…on second thought, this is a family-friendly site, so I'm not even going to attempt to describe what she does), nine Seduction Cinema trailers (including one for this flick), as well as some excised footage from the movie Spiderbabe. Why is a deleted scene from another movie included here? I'm not sure what the official reason is, but the scene features Bethany Lott, who gets naked and does it with some dude, and that in itself is a good enough reason for me.

Closing Statement

I imagine this flick was a lot more fun to make than it was to watch.

The Verdict

Guilty.

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