Tomatoes

Touted by current distrib VCX as "an enormously popular film in its heyday", TOMATOES proves to be a diverting attempt at comedy within the limiting restrictions of delivering hardcore porn.

I'm comparing the budget DVD-R version, namely one half of Something Weird's double feature on its Dragon Art Theatre Vol. 13, with a quite different VCX DVD, latter described in {brackets}.

Tommy Toole has the role of a lifetime (his career was mercifully brief) as Stanley Jones, a nerdy schmo hired by doing-the-Jewish-accent schtick landlord Mr. Watson to collect $100 rent each from his strictly female group of deadbeat tenants. This high-concept approach yields a series of repetitive but functional opportunities for sex antics and slapstick.

Title and credits are displayed scrawled on walls and signs, a typical device circa 1970 to save on optical printing costs. The slightly talented auteur is listed as Joel Robert, but his nom de film might actually have been Joel Roberts, since the cheap writer/director credit is displayed on a curling placard that has his name trailing off indecipherably.

Here's the rundown as Stanley makes his rounds, with VCX-only material in {brackets}:

(1) Blonde gives him a b.j. plus whipped cream in a scene that 40 years later exactly anticipates the highlight of the otherwise desultory current Celebrity porn video starring Shauna Sand (oddly not listed in IMDb at all), followed by sixty-nine. A weird electronic score sounds like a sci-fi film here.

(2) Lesbians Anna and Sandy with impressive racks and a big dildo take time out for a brief threesome with SJ.

{2A -VCX} {An extraneous porn scene was added to presumably spice up this vintage (1970) film for later bookings. It is the Cavalier featurette "Erotic Intrusion" listed separately in IMDb. A bearded guy (Reb Sawitz) arrives at his apartment and answers the phone, complaining of being offered nothing but "Robin Hood roles" -a predicament actors felt in the '70s when the pageantry porn genre was in flower, and a career hazard extending to present day sufferers like Costner and Crowe. He finds a pretty blonde who's been rifling through his things in the room, and they have sex after he easily talks her out of charging him $20. This completely unrelated vignette is spread out during the rest of TOMATOES.}

(3) Sultry, whip-toting Mrs. Stone (with Stanley making an inside-joke "don't I know you from..." referring to the porn film MRS. STONE'S THING) dominates SJ and nastily lights up his belly-button area after pouring lighter fluid on it. This kinky segment is softcore and accompanied by a bongos/percussion soundtrack.

(4) Weird couple, a woman and her tranny boyfriend, require a third party for kicks and SJ obliges, with a Latin background score. This segment has the duo engaging in almost funny Bickersons-style improv dialog.

(5) A sultry, half-naked redhead merely gives Stanley the $100 -that's it, no sex, and of course he's disappointed even though he finally has done his job.

{5A -VCX} {SJ enters an apartment where three weirdos are performing a satanic ritual. The girl, who was wearing a Halloween witch hat, strips and gets into a coffin, and SJ makes love to her in the coffin, while one of the evil-looking dudes brandishes a scary looking scimitar, but SJ is not sacrificed (whew!).}

(6) {In VCX version SJ is greeted at the door by an underage looking girl, who states that her mom is not home. SJ proffers that there are other ways to pay the rent.} The incomplete SWV version begins midway through this scene, with SJ giving some sort of educational lesson to the girl, teaching her the art of fellatio, when her mom arrives in time for a threesome. The repetitive "Hello, I'm the rent collector" premise is missing here entirely from the SWV version, rending the scene cryptic and out-of-place.

(7) Clearly the film's centerpiece, as a mad scientist lady (working from home) drinks a bubbling potion which turns her on and causes her to masturbate with a large dildo and then a vibrator. She shares with SJ. He goes through the cheapest (no effects whatsoever) and dumbest "transformation", becoming not Mr. Hyde but rather a bug-eyed ham actor with a vaguely Bela Lugosi accent. She deep throats SJ with impressive skill, and elicits SJ's first money shot. Surprisingly he suddenly puts her into bondage via handy manacles on the bedroom wall (!) and whips her, much to her delight.

(8) After informing Watson on the phone of his failures, he invites his boss to attend an orgy. All the tenants show up at what amounts to a wrap party for the cast, featuring very poor sound editing, more whipped cream and the cryptic (in SWV) recurring motif of a girl in a coffin. {The VCX version has already prepared us for this coffin.}Watson fires him.

{9 -VCX} {Ending has SJ driving off in a convertible with several of the girls, happy as a lark.} Typically, this ending is entirely omitted in the SWV edition, taken from a worn, splicey print.

Toole shows nascent talent but perhaps the rigors of a hardcore industry more suited to the "always reliable" Ron Jeremys, Herschel Savages and Peter Norths (all members of the 1,000-plus screen appearances club) of this world did not need him. At any rate there is an improvised joke here about him being uncircumcised that I'm still trying to figure out.

The VCX edition is obviously an adulterated version of the original film, with many "flashes" of XXX shots inserted randomly early in the movie to alert the audience that this is real porn, as well as the inclusion of the stupid "I ain't no Robin Hood" actor footage. Because it is taken from a beautiful negative or print, it is clearly superior to the truncated SWV version, although latter is representative of the original release structure of TOMATOES.