Burl reviews Street of a Thousand Pleasures! (1972)

 

Toora-oop-de-doo, it’s Burl, bringing you a review of a picture that isn’t pornoo, but veil-dances mighty close to it at times! If you’re looking for a story, pass this one by! If you want art or craft, keep on moving! But ha ha, if you’re after a parade of naked ladies being leered at and nuzzled by a first-person camera, then sister, take a walk down the Street of a Thousand Pleasures!

Floppy-haired John Tull, whom we recall as the pig-lovin’ Junior in Sassy Sue, plays “field geologist” John Dalton, leaving his unseen but shrewish-sounding wife to do some field geology in the Middle East! On arriving he manages to save his host, a fake sheikh, from a would-be assassin, and as a reward is allowed to visit the forbidden slave market, which is where most of the rest of this mind-numbing production takes place! The prevailing theme is erotic astonishment, and indeed a truly astonishing number of naked ladies are paraded before his eyes!

We hear the aptly-named John’s creepy thoughts as he observes the unclad ladies: “These girls are naked! She’s so young looking!” Happily none of the ladies are particularly young looking – they’re not old, but they’re clearly beyond their teenage years, and with the camera taking Dalton’s perspective we continue to leer at them and hear his thoughts! “Uhhhh, ohhhh, so soft!” he says as he, or at least the camera lens, kisses a breast! Occasionally it cuts back to Dalton with a disbelieving look on his face, and then it’s back to his gross and unwanted narration as his hairy hands caress the ladies: “Ooh, such hard little nipples! Like elevator buttons!”

You can see from this what kind of movie it is, and one feels for the women on display here – not actual slaves perhaps, but maybe not far off either! The gross creep Dalton keeps up his inner commentary for what seems like forever, moaning things like “Oooh, aaahh, your buttocks are so firm!” and “Nice! Very nice! Very, very nice! Very, very, very nice!” and “I’ve never seen a woman so beautiful! I’ve never seen a woman so beautiful!” And of course he must continue with his POV kisses on their breasts, bellies, and thighs, complete with little lip-smack sounds and occasionally the imprint of the camera lens visible on the body as it pulls away!

Occasionally more human thoughts intrude: “She looks so sad!” Or, commenting on the other fake sheikh and fez-wearers wandering the market, “They look at them like they were livestock! Well they’re a far cry from livestock!” He reacts with mild disfavour when he sees the girls being mistreated, but then it’s back to the same monoto-logue: “Mmmm, so beautiful! Just wandering around, just milling around, all nude! They just never wear clothes it seems! Ha ha!”

Things turn a little darker when he spies a woman tied up and a devilish figure molesting her, but he’s soon back to his old tricks, ogling and fondling the girls as his neverending monologue runs, expressing disbelief and admiration, chuckling and smacking his lips, guessing at the nationalities of the girls and so on! But soon he’s begging “No more delights!” In a different room, a sheikh played by the director is receiving a fake BJ from a lady, and the scene doesn’t end until the sheikh has said “Ho!”

But in the last moments there’s a bit of incident, and suddenly John is on the run with one of the slave girls in tow, then we catch up with the two of them back in America, with John in a secret room in his house where he keeps the slave girl away from the prying eyes and barking voice of his horrible invisible wife! It doesn’t seem like a sustainable situation, but that’s where we leave our floppy-haired protagonist! And yes, more naked ladies dance naked under the end credits!

Some of the ladies in the picture are familiar, like Joyce Mandel of Weird Science and the mighty Uschi Digard from Truck Stop Women and many Russ Meyer productions! But most are just mildly uncomfortable-looking women who’ve been thrown a couple of bucks to stand around in the buff, either tied to posts or dancing lazily! You can really see the difference a few years on from nudie pictures like Hot Nights on the Campus, which had more plot and fewer naked ladies, versus this one, which has endless nudity – and even some dudes, ha ha – and no plot at all! Well, maybe plot is overrated! I give Street of a Thousand Pleasures one half of a pathetically fake Arab sign!