Better known for his 1971 film SCHOOL GIRL, director Paul Gerber flunks out with THE COMING THING, an atrociously poor porn movie that is embarrassing. Something Weird reissued it for video fans but few, other than a completist like myself, took the bait.
It's a clumsily put together hodge-podge, existing merely to deliver tight closeups of XXX content, executed by an ugly cast. The heroine playing Linda Pearson is ill-treated by Gerber who evidently had no makeup budget, so her acne and (in one unfortunate low-angle shot) an upper-lip herpes sore are spotlighted to her disadvantage.
After a tedious sex scene opening featuring a pig-tailed girl and a guy who looks like a young Nick Millard, Linda's story is related by Miss Pigtails in a half-hearted way -we see the flashbacks. But not as half-hearted as Gerber's direction.
Story is pure corn: Linda is a secretary who moves from Fresno to San Francisco and can't land a job there. Endless shots of the back of her head (wearing a crappy, phony looking blonde wig) in various phone booths are used in this mainly MOS-shoot with voice-over to establish her boring job hunting. Maybe Gerber was hoping to move to England and get hired to shoot Dr. Who episodes.
Thanks to a hitchhiker who gave her a photographer's business card, she goes to an interview for potential modeling work. This triggers an insultingly stupid scene of her being "turned" from honest young lady into instant porn performer by the creepy shutterbug. I took this to be the usual Freudian Slip on the part of the filmmaker -how Gerber gets innocent young women in desperate need of gainful employment to become hardcore honeys. Watching it was disgusting.
Remaining scenes are pretty random, with the pigtailed narration format doing little to knit them together. Linda moves in with another creep, enamored of his throw pillows (!), and she masturbates with a candle while watching videos of herself sucking the guy off, that he recorded with a fancy CCTV setup. Cast expands to budget-busting (for a one-day wonder) proportions with an orgy scene, very poorly shot. Linda emerges from the pile of sleeping bodies to go back upstairs and fondle her doggy in the nude. Our piggy narrator and her boyfriend get a big yock out of "what was she doing with that dog" for a truly HI-larious ending to this pile of crap.
Along the way Gerber steals from only the best for his soundtrack, not Muzak versions but original recordings of: "I Feel Free" by Cream; "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Stones (played twice); "Ain't Superstitious" by Led Zeppelin; "The Hunter" by Albert King (later riffed by Led Zep, but King's version plays here); and finally an endless string of Doors numbers: "Hello I Love You", "Back Door Man" (foolishly NOT keyed to the porn action -duh!), "Love Me Two Times", "Five to One" and "End of the Night".
It's a clumsily put together hodge-podge, existing merely to deliver tight closeups of XXX content, executed by an ugly cast. The heroine playing Linda Pearson is ill-treated by Gerber who evidently had no makeup budget, so her acne and (in one unfortunate low-angle shot) an upper-lip herpes sore are spotlighted to her disadvantage.
After a tedious sex scene opening featuring a pig-tailed girl and a guy who looks like a young Nick Millard, Linda's story is related by Miss Pigtails in a half-hearted way -we see the flashbacks. But not as half-hearted as Gerber's direction.
Story is pure corn: Linda is a secretary who moves from Fresno to San Francisco and can't land a job there. Endless shots of the back of her head (wearing a crappy, phony looking blonde wig) in various phone booths are used in this mainly MOS-shoot with voice-over to establish her boring job hunting. Maybe Gerber was hoping to move to England and get hired to shoot Dr. Who episodes.
Thanks to a hitchhiker who gave her a photographer's business card, she goes to an interview for potential modeling work. This triggers an insultingly stupid scene of her being "turned" from honest young lady into instant porn performer by the creepy shutterbug. I took this to be the usual Freudian Slip on the part of the filmmaker -how Gerber gets innocent young women in desperate need of gainful employment to become hardcore honeys. Watching it was disgusting.
Remaining scenes are pretty random, with the pigtailed narration format doing little to knit them together. Linda moves in with another creep, enamored of his throw pillows (!), and she masturbates with a candle while watching videos of herself sucking the guy off, that he recorded with a fancy CCTV setup. Cast expands to budget-busting (for a one-day wonder) proportions with an orgy scene, very poorly shot. Linda emerges from the pile of sleeping bodies to go back upstairs and fondle her doggy in the nude. Our piggy narrator and her boyfriend get a big yock out of "what was she doing with that dog" for a truly HI-larious ending to this pile of crap.
Along the way Gerber steals from only the best for his soundtrack, not Muzak versions but original recordings of: "I Feel Free" by Cream; "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Stones (played twice); "Ain't Superstitious" by Led Zeppelin; "The Hunter" by Albert King (later riffed by Led Zep, but King's version plays here); and finally an endless string of Doors numbers: "Hello I Love You", "Back Door Man" (foolishly NOT keyed to the porn action -duh!), "Love Me Two Times", "Five to One" and "End of the Night".