artstrike 1 9 9 0 - PhotoStatic Magazine - Detritus

PhotoStatic Magazine Nº37 P R O D U C T I O N ,
Any first-time viewer who is familiar with Holmes’
performances will suspect that Holmes is not telling the
truth here; and in fact, it turns out that the amateur skater
must fellate Holmes for a good five minutes before he
cannot, indeed, take it any more. After a painfully long
close-up of an unusually disgusting cumshot, the skater
makes a pronouncement: “God, no wonder they call you
the king.”
It turns out that the two skaters want to defeat Holmes
in a forthcoming 400-yard roller skating dash. One skater
tries to bribe a bearded country hippy track official wearing
jeans, denim shirt, and a vest; you guessed it—the
Clapton look. In the soundtrack for this scene, a series of
interminable disco guitar jams eventually segue—almost
inevitably—into a muzak version of the theme of Shaft.
Without transition, the film moves from the compromising
of the hippy track official to a second womanon-woman
scene, shot in the best Ken Russell style
through the flames of a fireplace. By this point, our tolerance
for kitsch has been pushed to such an extreme
that we aren’t really surprised when a pseudoromantic
muzak serenade segues to a muzak version of “Bless the
Beasts and the Children.”
All too soon, it’s time for the race. We gleefully accept
the fact that this vitally important race is being held
on a suburban sidewalk. The Fawcettesque skater pushes
Holmes off the track. He lands in front of a sixties sedan,
where he sits, holding his ankle, and impotently shakes
his fist to the theme from the Lone Ranger.
My early implication that this film does not have “any
organizing principle whatsoever” should not be interpreted
as meaning that there are no elements of order in the film.
There is order in the recurrent underlighting and bluish
wash which function as a sort of structural glue to hold
the whole ungodly mess together. But the most notable
ordering element in Orgy Machine consists in the ubiquity
of banal cultural signs, some of which may have been
manufactured by creators who were less than perfectly
informed about the culture they were imitating. These
speculations remind us of the basic principle that the most
entertaining elements of 70s porn kitsch result from the
efforts of middle-aged directors and writers to imitate a
youth culture of which they have only the most stereotypical
ideas. [Nº4
1378 A U G U S T