SEXIS WRONG

that strikes a relaxed groove through its insulated setting and
occasional disco music interludes.
Gillis is in top form. His seedy brutishness sets the film’s
tone. At one point, he humiliates and force-feeds oatmeal to
a girl who, when provoked, explains her shaved pussy as the
result of recent surgery. This only inspires Gillis. This is one
of the few films to feature Helen Madigan in a dominant role.
Creative verbal abuse, avaricious sex, and curious casting
made Winter Heat a comfortable white noise for the Capri’s
roughie fans. It’s a must-see for Gillis aficionados.
By the mid-1980s, the Capri turned into a $1.99 second-run
house. It was so infested by crackheads that the theater’s
management was forced to team up with the NYPD to stop
the place from being a full-tilt crack palace. Tom handed over
the Capri’s daily operations to a couple of patois-babbling
Haitians, who suffered from terrible B.O., and Mary, an old,
stone-faced Greek troll, who oversaw the cashbox.
After Mary quit, Tom hired Wayne. Wayne was
an aged career chickenhawk with a Grecian
Formula pompadour who worked every single
adult theater in Times Square at one point or
another. Wayne was known for tricking with
troublemaking Latinos. One wily youth went
so far as to rob a local black coke dealer named Muscles.
When Wayne got rid of that kid, everyone at the Capri was
glad. Wayne was quiet, but his friends were trouble.
It opens with an antisocial, troubled, and confused Jamie Gillis
wandering through the fetid 9 th Avenue Food Fair, stopping
briefly to have his bewildered mug placed on a “Spirit of
’76” badge. Gillis contemplates the button, then goes home
to peek at a stewardess neighbor. Frustrated, he heads to an
S/M massage parlor, where Eric Edwards and Marlene Willoughby
play a sadistic doctor and nurse. They give a bound
and gagged girl a disciplinary high colonic. After seeing this
scene unfold, Gillis’ gaskets are blown. He goes bonkers,
haunting 42 nd Street adult bookstores, buying slick enema
mags, muttering, “That’s where it’s at...water and power!”
Now crazed and overheated, Gillis goes on a nozzle rampage,
beginning with his stewardess neighbor. He progresses to
two aged schoolgirls, and ends up with undercover cop C.J.
Laing in handcuffs. Gillis gets away scot-free, and a postscript
mentions the number of unsolved rapes in the United
States.
Waterpower is held together by a straightforward B-picture
narrative and goes for a documentary look with brown, muddy
photography. The film helped cement Gillis’ reputation as
dean of the roughies. On its initial release, Waterpower flabbergasted
42 nd Street’s inner-city audience, a nearly impossible
feat. People could not believe what they had just seen
and sat through it numerous times. The film was a real rarity.
Red Heat is equal parts off-kilter
Vegas travelogue, bloody sex-killer
flick, and raunchy loop package,
all in one.
Everyone kept their hands under control as they sat elbow
to elbow, spellbound, watching the acting stylings of Gillis.
The crowd laughed and speculated aloud about how crazy
Gillis was.
The Rialto One
Forty-second Street’s biggest, friendliest, and best-liked adult
house was the Rialto One. It was situated right on 42 nd Street
and 7 th Avenue. The heart of the Deuce. Surprisingly, patrons
made the effort to stay out of each other’s way and be unobtrusive
to one another. The Rialto was a first-run house, so
the audience held high expectations for each premiered film.
You could bring a date. The Rialto attracted a more cerebral
crowd. Opinions flew through the air. Everyone had a say.
In 1977 the Rialto unveiled Waterpower, the most bizarre
film ever credited to Gerard Damiano but actually directed by
Shaun Costello. It’s a taboo-breaking film dealing with scat
and enemas without ever displaying the brown. Since Waterpower
was made around the time of Taxi Driver, you’ll see
the similarities.
It sounds funny, and it was, but it was a very special event.
The right audience had shown up for a movie that not only
met their expectations but challenged them, keeping everyone
engrossed in what was about to happen next. Waterpower
does its job in spades. It is a dirty movie that delivers
heavy sex scenes with an A-level kinky cast. It also works
as a grindhouse picture with a full-scale maniac portrayal by
Gillis, an obsessive-compulsive loner who was real enough in
terms of Times Square.
The Globe
The Globe was a big, rude theater squatting right next to Nathan’s
Famous Hot Dog emporium on 43 rd Street and Broadway.
In the early 1960s, it had been a revered nudist theater
for aging World War II veterans. In the 1970s, the Globe
peeled its fisheye towards freaky stuff, like 1974’s Climax of
Blue Power. Originally, the movie was reviled by critics for its
intermingling of violence and twisted sex, but its eye-catching
ad campaign, classic title, and high-voltage content made
the picture enormously popular. The film is one of the boldest,
at times funniest, and most unrelenting roughies ever
BLACK AND BLUE 155