More Than Friends

It's a bad sign when one of the characters carefully explains what the title means, for the slow-witted members of the audience, and that's what happens in MORE THAN FRIENDS, a slapped-together XXX exercise. It has pretty girls performing, and apparently that's enough, meriting reissue on Vol. 62 of Something Weird's Dragon Art Theatre series.

Ric Lutze and Cyndee Summers provide a minimal level of professionalism as a married couple, with Cyndee also having convincing lesbian sex with Lily Foster. But the improvised dialog is constantly messed up, with Foster peculiarly "out of it" -seeming to be stoned. Whole film falls apart with the entrance of a weird bearded guy named Gary who bores everyone (and the audience) with his shaggy dog stories about hanging out with a San Francisco guru, teaching everybody tantric exercises, and basically just filling up running time with nonsense.

One pointless sequence has Ric idiotically picking up a hooker (this from probably the most oversexed and overexposed guy in early '70s porn), having sex with her and then going nuts when she reveals she's off to a v.d. clinic for a checkup concerning her case of gonorrhea. This supposedly is meant as funny stuff and is typical of the anything goes, who cares nature of this movie. Also poorly done is some dubbed-in dialog and moaning & groaning that doesn't match the action shown on screen.

Similarly asinine is a driving sequence of Ric and the $25 per hour prostitute, where we see the Playboy Bldg., a Ramada Inn that Ric informs us in voice-over is where "Johnny Carson hangs out" and other moronic name dropping including that of legendary (at the time) comic Shecky Greene.

For folks who can't get enough of nostalgia, Rick Cassidy, as Ric's ne'er-do-well business associate, actually keeps his black socks on during an otherwise naked sex scene. I thought that went out with stag films.

Most obscure reference in the stream-of-unconsciousness dialog was a discussion of a scene between Jack Nicholson "and a hooker" in his new film -I couldn't figure out what this referred to. There will be a spot quiz, so do your homework on "The Films of Jack Nicholson".