WAR AND PIECE (the title on the coming attraction "Teenage Lovers" is intentionally 100% misleading) is one of those misguided porn projects that attempted to foist an "epic" on the fans, when its out-of-the ordinary characteristics were merely in the minds of the pornographers. Not surprisingly it has slipped into deserved obscurity.
Then as now (and especially with mainstream movies), a sure sign of a clunker is a great cast wasted. Four of the best porn actresses of the era were recruited and summarily given little or nothing to do. So only completists need apply.
Marland Proctor and John Holmes are two G.I.s in North Africa in 1942, with beautiful Susan Westcott tagging along (IMDb lists her as a nurse, but in khakis she seems merely a camp follower in the poorly written script).
Stranded in the middle of the desert and looking in vain for their comrades on the front, the trio wanders along, but conflict erupts due to Proctor and Westcott humping. This makes Holmes, on the sidelines, not merely horny (his usual state anyway) but angry as hell. He even has a nightmare, in the form of a '60s S.O.L.I. sequence of Susan & Marland dancing around naked in the sand.
Proctor was a softcore sex film actor who later had many mainstream roles, but was not a hardcore performer. The sex scenes of Westcott with him are strictly softcore, including her eyeing his cock hungrily (but not ingesting it) and an obvious dry hump staging.
Holmes goes crazy and chokes Marland, raping Westcott (sort of; in porn tradition she likes it after offering toking resistance). Thus, it is 23 minutes into the film before any XXX footage is delivered. Holmes has trouble with insertion (Mr. Flaccid, as usual) and the sex scene is poorly photographed, so most of it might as well be softcore.
Proctor turns out to be still alive, and when he wakes up he beats up Holmes, who meekly apologizes, and all is forgiven (yeah, right). Scene shifts to an Arab sheik's tent, with the heroes asking him for help to get back to Allied lines. Claiming to be anti-Nazi he agrees, and the film goes into a near-permanent stasis at this point, meekly attempting to be wall-to-wall sex, but as before incompetently directed in the XXX department.
The sheik's dancing girls are top-of-the-class: Andy Bellamy, Rene Bond and Sandy Dempsey. Once again, it is mainly softcore that is delivered, satisfying on that level. Bond has her wonderful pre-op natural breasts and looks very young here, so the IMDb dating of the picture as 1975 is definitely incorrect. Given its soft-to-hard content ratio and star Proctor's career arc, it has to be a 1971 or 1972 production.
Dempsey, always a trouper, delivers the lion's share of XXX action, making love to Holmes over & over and seeming to get him hard where Westcott failed. The ugly, bald & fat sheik gets to hump Bellamy, while Bond (with zero dialog) basically tags along with Bellamy in threesome format with the sheik, giving him a most tentative blow job. Other than looking good, this has to rank in the lower 5 percentile of Bond's numerous film roles. Bellamy's face is barely shown until the later reels, so poorly photographed is this opus.
SPOILER ALERT:
This tedious segment is finally interrupted by Dempsey warning Holmes the sheik is a liar, in league with the Nazis, but before he can act on this news, the sheik shoots him. Proctor kills the sheik and the glum finish has Susan and him standing by Holmes' desert grave, unhappily facing the prospect of each returning to their respective spouses back home after going back to the war effort.
One wonders how the Greatest Generation managed to win WW II with soldiers like this. Holmes with his ultra-long curly hair is totally unconvincing as a G.I., and one wonders why Proctor was hired instead of a real XXX actor. I'm a huge Westcott fan, and have to rank this as the least interesting performance of hers I've seen.
Clocking in at a numbing 87 minutes, WAR AND PIECE is merely the umpteenth opportunity to see one's favorite early porn actresses naked -almost any loop featuring them would be far more rewarding.
Then as now (and especially with mainstream movies), a sure sign of a clunker is a great cast wasted. Four of the best porn actresses of the era were recruited and summarily given little or nothing to do. So only completists need apply.
Marland Proctor and John Holmes are two G.I.s in North Africa in 1942, with beautiful Susan Westcott tagging along (IMDb lists her as a nurse, but in khakis she seems merely a camp follower in the poorly written script).
Stranded in the middle of the desert and looking in vain for their comrades on the front, the trio wanders along, but conflict erupts due to Proctor and Westcott humping. This makes Holmes, on the sidelines, not merely horny (his usual state anyway) but angry as hell. He even has a nightmare, in the form of a '60s S.O.L.I. sequence of Susan & Marland dancing around naked in the sand.
Proctor was a softcore sex film actor who later had many mainstream roles, but was not a hardcore performer. The sex scenes of Westcott with him are strictly softcore, including her eyeing his cock hungrily (but not ingesting it) and an obvious dry hump staging.
Holmes goes crazy and chokes Marland, raping Westcott (sort of; in porn tradition she likes it after offering toking resistance). Thus, it is 23 minutes into the film before any XXX footage is delivered. Holmes has trouble with insertion (Mr. Flaccid, as usual) and the sex scene is poorly photographed, so most of it might as well be softcore.
Proctor turns out to be still alive, and when he wakes up he beats up Holmes, who meekly apologizes, and all is forgiven (yeah, right). Scene shifts to an Arab sheik's tent, with the heroes asking him for help to get back to Allied lines. Claiming to be anti-Nazi he agrees, and the film goes into a near-permanent stasis at this point, meekly attempting to be wall-to-wall sex, but as before incompetently directed in the XXX department.
The sheik's dancing girls are top-of-the-class: Andy Bellamy, Rene Bond and Sandy Dempsey. Once again, it is mainly softcore that is delivered, satisfying on that level. Bond has her wonderful pre-op natural breasts and looks very young here, so the IMDb dating of the picture as 1975 is definitely incorrect. Given its soft-to-hard content ratio and star Proctor's career arc, it has to be a 1971 or 1972 production.
Dempsey, always a trouper, delivers the lion's share of XXX action, making love to Holmes over & over and seeming to get him hard where Westcott failed. The ugly, bald & fat sheik gets to hump Bellamy, while Bond (with zero dialog) basically tags along with Bellamy in threesome format with the sheik, giving him a most tentative blow job. Other than looking good, this has to rank in the lower 5 percentile of Bond's numerous film roles. Bellamy's face is barely shown until the later reels, so poorly photographed is this opus.
SPOILER ALERT:
This tedious segment is finally interrupted by Dempsey warning Holmes the sheik is a liar, in league with the Nazis, but before he can act on this news, the sheik shoots him. Proctor kills the sheik and the glum finish has Susan and him standing by Holmes' desert grave, unhappily facing the prospect of each returning to their respective spouses back home after going back to the war effort.
One wonders how the Greatest Generation managed to win WW II with soldiers like this. Holmes with his ultra-long curly hair is totally unconvincing as a G.I., and one wonders why Proctor was hired instead of a real XXX actor. I'm a huge Westcott fan, and have to rank this as the least interesting performance of hers I've seen.
Clocking in at a numbing 87 minutes, WAR AND PIECE is merely the umpteenth opportunity to see one's favorite early porn actresses naked -almost any loop featuring them would be far more rewarding.