The Chameleon (1989)
VCA (region 0 – NTSC)

d. John Leslie; pr. John Leslie; scr. Nick Hunter, John Leslie; ph. Jack Remy; m. Bill Heid; ed. John Leslie; cast. Tori Welles, Tom Byron, Peter North, April West, Victoria Paris, Debie Diamond, Alex Horn, Richard Pacheco, Joey Silvera (85 mins)

Director John Leslie is one of the more acclaimed of pornoteurs to emerge from the adult film industry over the past few decades. 

A veteran performer, he branched into directing video features (and later film) and steadily rose in ambition and ability to become one of the foremost stylists of the adult world, noted for his raw sex scenes and his concern for layered discourse.  One of the themes that intrigued Leslie would prove to be the decidedly sexually ambiguous notion of the sexual chameleon, the shape-changer: a sexual being that can will themself to take on different bodies (and even genders) for sexual pleasure.  As co-writer and director, Leslie introduced this rather intriguing concept into the adult film world in the feature The Chameleon to provocative success.  He later went on to re-visit the theme in such works as The Catwoman and the highly acclaimed Chameleons: Not the Sequel which managed to attract attention from outside the adult industry as evidence of a growing reaction within the industry to the increasing feminization of pornography.  Although Leslie’s clever work in The Chameleon makes for an inventive adult feature, it is the ambiguous overtones of the film which lend it its stature.  Made at a time when video had engulfed the industry and the art of narrative pornography was under assault from a vast glut of material, Leslie resolutely stuck to his ambitions and crafted a worthwhile feature.

The Chameleon tells of a married woman (Tori Welles) who sees a psycho-therapist for regular sessions and who regularly fights with her husband (Tom Byron) about their sexual escapades. 

Welles is a promiscuous shape-shifter, who can take on the physical appearance of many different women.  She does this in order to satisfy her own craving for infidelity, all the while taunting and teasing the hapless Byron who resents her infidelity but is undeniably attracted to her shape-shifting abilities.  At her therapist one day she confides her feelings but admits that she does not want to bring Byron in for a joint therapy session.  Byron still has even more trouble reconciling her promiscuous nature with his love for her.  After she once changes shape into another woman to seduce him, they go out for dinner to a fine restaurant where she slips aside for a quickie threesome (with Peter North and Victoria Paris) whilst leaving him wait patiently at the table.  Paris thereafter leaves with another man and the two of them go to a party of swingers.  At another therapy session Welles openly propositions her therapist who refuses her advances, making her angry.  Changing shape again she is soon approached by a man (Joey Silvera) who claims to know her.  In an effort to get to the bottom of the situation, Byron decides to pay a visit to the therapist, after which his efforts to control and regulate his wife take on a new dimension.

The Chameleon is essentially a melodrama about marital relations and the irrepressible nature of promiscuity and infidelity. 

It takes marriage essentially as an unsustainable ideal which causes its partners no end of problems.  Byron values fidelity more than his partner and is having trouble adjusting to Welles’ penchant for sex with strangers.  But director Leslie complicates this situation by suggesting that Welles and Byron are somehow allegorical: a kind of “every couple”.  In that they are representative of modern marriage, the film posits a situation which is decidedly post-feminist.  Here, it is the man who does not like to sleep around and the woman who refuses to repress her own sexual proclivities in the name of an outdated ideal of marital fidelity.  In this it is suggested that marriage as an ideal suppresses women’s innately promiscuous sexual leanings.  The shape-shifting here is thus a metaphor for a promiscuous mindset – the ability to go from partner to partner as if re-envisioning oneself for each sexual encounter.  It is a unique conceit in porn films and one which Leslie handles with admirable aplomb.  Furthermore, Leslie suggests that it is an inherent quality of the animus to seek sexual promiscuity and an imposition of the anima to regulate it with the bonds of Patriarchal emotional commitment i.e. marriage.   The animus gains power and even liberation through unfettered sexual expression – innately feminine promiscuity.

Byron is thus contrasted to the figure of the therapist.  Although the therapist character suggests an allusion to the male libertine figure so beloved of adult film in the 1970s, he later is revealed to subvert this notion. 

Instead, the therapist is a Patriarchal ideal – the married man who is not promiscuous but has an inquisitive understanding of the opposite sex and its drive towards casual sex.  He is objective, scrutinizing the situation but outside it, a surrogate for the audience, inviting them not only to voyeuristically appreciate the film’s sex scenes but to analytically engage with what they represent.  It is clear in this character structure that as a director Leslie is as much concerned with revealing sex as a visual spectacle for cinematic pleasure as he is with analyzing the various compunctions which underlie it.  Although he is never overtly self-reflexive about to the point of being meta-cinematic in the way that much of Michael Ninn’s early work was, for instance, he alludes to the psychological underpinnings of sexual behavior just as he depicts such behavior.  The result is a knowing rather than random depiction of sexual intercourse, replete with tension between overt Patriarchal expectations of sexual behavior and innate desire.  He chooses to epitomize this desire in the figure of the shape-changer as the irrepressible animus and implies through to the wholly ambiguous end that male sexual behavior is reactionary to such an animus.

DVD DETAILS:

Vision
The visual transfer on this DVD is a functional fullscreen presentation which captures the distinct look of video work at that point in the late 1980s.  It is a technically polished film that evidences much aesthetic fore-thought within the budgetary constraints inherent in the adult film industry.  The sex-club number which begins the film is suitably shadowy and features a stylized use of onlookers, suggesting the voyeuristic modernity of contemporary sexual mores and behavior.  The stylization of this number in conjunction with the jazzy score suggests a beatnik mentality to the proceedings.  The film features a good use of cutting to introduce the shape-shifting action rather than any special effects and makes for an accomplished handling of the device throughout.  Sets are evocative and varied, suggesting the broader lifestyle the people lead and there is a contrast between private and public space.  Welles gives an eager performance throughout and the sex scenes manage to make a contrast between the sexual intimacy of a relationship and the casual sense of gamesmanship inherent in the liberated, swinging lifestyle.  The sex scenes are shot with variety and the sex-party scenes features a clever inter-cutting between a miscegenary threesome and a couple.  In Silvera’s one scene, Leslie reveals an interest in the sexual motion of women’s hips in passion and makes good use of the male actors’ edgy quality.

Sound
The sound transfer is a capable Dolby digital stereo which is true to the technology of the time of production however lacking it may be in home theatre accoutrements.  The score by Bill Heid is a definite highlight, managing a jazzy-bluesy texture that keeps the proceedings lively and inventive in the various sex numbers.  It is enervating and terse where required by the script and the characterizations.  In the sex scenes, the sound of the performers’ pleasure is mixed into the score for a nice balance of diegetic and extra-diegetic sound.  There is much emphasis on dialogue to reveal character and Welles gives a fine rendition of a woman who revels in holding men in sexual tension – the script admirably replete with the nuances of her love-hate relationship with Byron, whom she delights in both fucking and humiliating.  As is usual for the non-actor dimension of porno performances, the line delivery is mannered and also stylized.  There are minor ambient effects when called for although much of the transfer renders this rather flat.  Sound recording is indeed rather naturalistic and there is a slight hiss as well as a sense of room presence to many scenes.  Much is made of the contrast between male and female attitudes to sexual congress as played out in the game of promiscuity, which is perfect for this effective film’s treatment of current sexual ideals and practices.  Although an unadorned aural design, it is efficacious.

Special Features

In the way of special features are filmographies for several of the leading starlets – for lead actress Welles and the various performers who play her shape-shifting alter-egos, Selena Steele and April West, as well as the filmography for notable porn icon Victoria Paris.  Other than that, there is nothing about the film itself nor any previews.