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STORMY (1980)
CAL VISTA DVD (region 0)
d. Joseph Blanski; pr. Sam Norvell; scr. Jack Livingston; cast. John Holmes, Linda Wong, Lauren Black, Connie Peterson, Don Fernando, Montana, Paula Wain, Suzanne French (80 mins)
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Pornography as Social Document faces Christian Morals Backlash
By the end of the 1970s, John Holmes was virtually enshrined as a contemporary male pop-icon.
Indeed, some two decades later he would be virtually synonymous with the golden age of adult feature film pornography. Although infamous for the character of Johnny Wadd he played in a number of films for adult auteur Bob Chinn, Holmes was prolific. Amongst his middle period works, before his legal troubles, he was re-united with one of his earlier co-stars, Linda Wong, for the amiable Stormy, the result of director Joseph Blanski and producer Sam Norvell, who had latched onto the breezy 1970s pre-AIDS morality to turn out adult films with some thematic ambition, storyline and now the status of social document. Wong, the first Asian actress in feature film pornography, had been with Holmes in the classic noir-influenced The Jade Pussycat and in their knowing re-teaming for Stormy was thus perhaps evidence of porn’s increasing self-reflexivity as a genre. After all, at this point in American cinema history, adult features were still regularly reviewed in the mainstream film industry publication Variety and had not yet eroded their brief legitimization through cheap video proliferation. However, the moral backlash against pornography as a discourse has ensured that Stormy is consigned to “classic” and released to cater for what is still more a wave of nostalgia than any concerted sociological or analytical effort to re-discover these films.
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Synopsis (contains spoilers)
In Stormy, John Holmes stars as the owner of a call-girl service. The film follows what it offers as a typical day.
Holmes is ready to leave for work when what seems his symbolic wife / domestic steady (Linda Wong) persuades him to have sex with her first. He obliges her and promises to return home for more after his day’s work is done. Holmes drives to work as out on the street a young woman in need of a job is propositioned. She accepts the offer of being put to work and is the put through her sexual paces by two men, as a kind of try-out. At work, Holmes wants to know if there are any new women. There is one, and Holmes beds her as another tryout of his future merchandise, concluding as she services him that she will make him a lot of money. In the office, a young girl shows her I.D to the staff. There, Holmes’ male business partner remarks that she doesn’t look of age, to which Holmes’ female accomplice says to never mind about it. Elsewhere a gigolo attends to a young woman, joined by her husband before returning to the base. Although Big John’s employee’s question the amount of money they make for him, their loyalty seems assured. Holmes’ male partner rejects the sexual advances of two whores although later finds his lesbian co-workers in action and joins them, the shy man coming to potency. Holmes and another entrepreneur engage in another encounter, with another woman before Holmes returns home.
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The Everyman Pimp as Adult Movie Archetype
Although amiable in tone, Stormy is essentially a look at the commoditization of women through the eyes of Holmes as a kind of everyman pimp.
Part of the appeal of Holmes was precisely that: the unbecoming super-cock as representative of the American male. Thus, Holmes’ role here as sexual entrepreneur is telling: it is in this film that Holmes becomes the emblem of the sex-industry itself. Holmes the person, Holmes the icon and also Holmes the symbol thus merge in this film’s absolute insistence of Big John as the man in charge of all sexual action – hence he determines position and reveals his authority by in effect being the controller of sexual circumstance. With Holmes thus as a representative patriarch, the film correspondingly posits the sexual commoditisation of women as the inherent function of a kind of patriarchal capitalism: that such prostitution is somehow the natural order of morality under such authority. The women in the film have no function except as the objects of male pleasure, except for Wong whose servitude is domestic. All women accept this role willingly, finding their pleasure in it, the film suggesting that prostitution is indeed thus the natural order. However, it does interestingly position the role of performance within such commoditisation, in effect uniting the actress and the whore – itself perhaps a comment on the accusations so often labelled against pornography as an industry.
In its episodic sex-pieces and minor narrative, Stormy does offer a profile of the people involved, from the man in power, Big John, through his associates who do the day to day running of the business, to the procurers and onto the whores and gigolos.
Although the process of commoditization centers on the women, the presence of a gigolo does suggest the possibility of men being similarly considered. However, in the scene with the gigolo, it is clear that the events favour his perspective and that the desiring and consuming woman is placed within the perspective of the male as prime desiring agent. Thus, despite this brief note, the process of the sexual objectification of women seems the inherent function of this film’s narrative, although it does try to find an economic rationale for this mentality. Unapologetic in its politics, it is also somewhat dated, suggesting that female liberation effectively offers the opportunity for women who like to fuck to do so without retribution and for money. However, although this exists as subtext, the film, like most male-oriented feature film pornography, is intent on revealing women’s sexual place as it revolves around the phallus. Hence, even the lesbian number is thus interrupted by a male, the two women gaining purpose in their role in bringing about his sexual awakening. Still, the film demonstrates the capitalist imperative to organize gender in terms of commodity and consumption.
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A Male Perspective on Sexual Activity
The fullscreen transfer is a mostly competent remastering of an old adult feature, in look and design a film that is as “classic” as the moniker attached to it suggests.
It contains solid indoor and outdoor work and has a natural open frame feel to these outdoor scenes. As in any Holmes movie, his appendage features prominently as an emblem of masculine sexual will and is here attended to by several women. Holmes is playfully authoritative and his many partners are all compliant. The naturalistic lighting works well and in some of the sex-pieces there is a surprisingly gymnastic variety of positions. Point of view is allied to Holmes or to what the film considers the male perspective of sexual events, suggesting the commoditizing gaze as an inherent expression of male sexual authority. Being a movie from the golden age of porn, bodies are natural – hairy, sweaty and without enhancement. As performances are staged for the enjoyment of men in a couple of scenes, the film is slightly self-reflexive about this agenda although does not follow through fully with the inter-textuality. Editing continuity reveals the problems of a low-budget, limited camera set-up although maintains coherence until the finale, which is a tacked-on collage of footage not otherwise incorporated into the plot. The lesbian scene features a sucking of mother’s milk and there is an improvisational spontaneity to many of the sex scenes.
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Cheesy Funk and the Aura of Carnality in the City
The sound transfer is available in Dolby Digital surround. It is a clean enough job which at least preserves the low-budget aesthetics often so beloved of early film porn.
Hence, the post-dubbing is often out-of-synch although the little dialogue also carries that improvised feel necessary for the sense of easy-going fun underlying the film’s conception of prostitution as a natural and valid industry. The music has that cheesy funk-like feel also common to much pornography from the 1970s and there is a breezy lounge-music style accompaniment to some of the expected noises of pleasure. The dialogue contains many references to using women and trying them out and thus re-enforces the film’s deliberate emphasis on the very commoditization of sexuality. Minor diegetic sounds, such as traffic noise for instance, are noticeable at times although much of the film is flat bar the score and the post-dubbed effects of pleasure. There is a certain comedic undercurrent made of women’s reaction to Holmes’ endowment although female voices are always pleasured and pleasuring whereas the male voices are controlling and authoritative (with the exception of Holmes’ male partner who is initiated in the order of the male orgasm). The sounds of carnality are playful rather than ever really passionate and the injection of some dialogue between Holmes and his sexual partners suggests a laid-back relationship.
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Special Features for the Pornhound
In the way of special features are a slide show and stills from the movie as well as some promotional information about NuTech Digital and their new release website.
Sadly, there is nothing about the film itself – a wasted opportunity considering the John Holmes cult that was revived following such hit 1970s porno themed films as Boogie Nights and Wonderland. Nor is there anything about the other performers in Stormy, unusual considering that Linda Wong also has a continued cult as her films see DVD re-release. On the reverse side of the disc is stored a collection of Nu-Tech trailers, which are available in either DTS or Dolby Digital 5.1 sound options. The trailers feature fairly elaborate menu screens: for the record, the trailers are all for contemporary releases. Considering that Stormy is promoted and marketed as a classic, this particular selection of previews seems arbitrary and even neglectful of the DVD’s primary market. The trailers are for the films Boogie Now, Coming to Beverly Hills, Coming to Beverly Hills 2, My Best Friend’s Wife, It’s a Wonderful Life, A Peek of Pandora, The Price of an Education, Promises, Sensual Experience and Sex, Lies and the President. There is also, roughly dividing this list of previews, a profile of actress Kaylan Nicole with a list of her titles. The trailers are fairly routine although the sound transfer accompanying them is much fuller than found on Stormy itself.
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