Cult 70's Porno Director: Alex deRenzy 2 Review

Distributor: Alpha Blue Archives Edition Details: Standard DVD Release Specs: Video Format: NTSC Format: DVD Regional Code (for DVD/Blu-ray): 0 (All) Number of discs: 1

Alpha Blue Archives has put two of Alex de Renzy's titles on this release. One is most likely his best film and the other one is not that great. The transfers for both films are in rather bad shape. Babyface, his best film, appears to be uncut while Little Sisters is missing 16 minutes of footage. Both films are available in better versions on other releases. Alpha Blue Archives hasn't included any extras on this release at all. You can jump to the review of Babyface or Little Sisters or just keep reading to read them all.

Babyface is a great film to have come from the golden age of adult films and director Alex de Renzy. The film tells the story of Dan (Dan Roberts), who gets caught seducing the underage Priscilla (Lyn Malone) by her mother Molly (Molly Seagrim). Dan barely escapes, gets rescued, and ends up at The Training Camp, a male brothel where he hides from Molly and the law.

John Milligan does a great job of revealing the story through the film. Instead of starting at the beginning, the story starts out at The Training Camp with Dan already in hiding. Through his time there the story of how he ended up hiding out there is told, then the story goes forward. Not only is this a great way to tell the story, but it allows for numerous sex scenes, all fitting within the narrative, to be within the film.

The sex scenes are well done. Alex de Renzy has done a great job shooting them, as he did with the non-sex portions of the film. The cast does a good job with the sex with not just visually appealing scenes but also with staying in character during the scenes. Alex de Renzy utilized some great locations while making Babyface. The end result is an intriguing adult film which never gets old throughout the run time and shows why Alex de Renzy is though of as one of the great directors from the golden age of adult films.

Alpha Blue Archives has done a poor job with this release of Babyface. Of the three releases currently available, this is the worst. Babyface is presented in the full screen aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The transfer is from a video source. The very left edge of the image is missing and there are tracking lines at the bottom of the picture throughout the presentation. The picture lacks definition, has heavily washed out colors, there are glitches in the video, artifacts, and print damage. This release appears to be uncut.

Babyface is presented with an English Dolby Digital 2.0 monaural track. The track contains a loud background hiss throughout the film but the dialog is able to be understood.

Little Sisters is an extremely odd film to come from Alex de Renzy and likely one that most viewers will dislike. Little Sisters is best described as Alex de Renzy's acid trip of an adult fairy tale, although that may not even properly describe this film. Two sisters Emily (Clair Dia) and Candy (Kandi Johnson) live with their mom in a wooden gypsy caravan sheltered from the world deep in the woods. They are told never to venture into the woods. One day, while their mom is out, the two are kidnapped by some sort of hippie pirates who leave a note blaming the kidnapping on a local group of lesbians. When the mom gets home she goes in search of her daughters, finding the gang of lesbians, who also go — on their own — in search of the two sisters as well. During her search for her daughters, the mother runs into drag queens, gay monks, and a rather tall forest elf named Derek, and ends with a full cast song. Honestly, this sounds like far more fun than it really is.

I'm not even sure that the film was telling a real story. The night before the kidnapping, the mother reads to the sisters Lewis Carroll's “Jabberwocky.” Everything else that follows in the film feels like utter nonsense, which leads me to wonder if the reading was put there on purpose. The finished film has a feeling like it was ever really truly created. It more feels like de Renzy came up with an idea, started shooting without any real plan, and then threw together the footage that he got. The entire film also feels like it was shot on the unkempt backyard of some estate.

Alex de Renzy appears to have been trying to create a comedy. The gang rape that occurs doesn't fit in well with a comedy but then again, de Renzy was never one to be trendy. The mix of heterosexual and homosexual scenes will put off some viewers as well. Sadly, none of the sex scenes are particularly erotic. There is no real acting per se, there seems to be no real direction either, nor any script that anyone had to follow. While de Renzy would go on to create such classics as Pretty Peaches, Femmes de Sade, and Babyface, Little Sisters is no where in the league of any of these films and is likely not to thrill even hardcore fans of the director.

Alpha Blue Archives has done a horrific job with Little Sisters. Little Sisters is presented in the full screen aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The transfer is from a video source and has tracking lines at the bottom of the screen throughout the entire film. The picture has a lack of definition, glitches in the video, washed out colors, and artifacts. The transfer has heavy print damage and there are jumps throughout, which are significant in places. The master also has a total of 16 minutes of footage that is missing from the film.

Little Sisters is presented with an English Dolby Digital 2.0 monaural track which has background his throughout. Due to damage there are also jumps in the audio making portions of the audio indistinct.

Alpha Blue Archives has put two of Alex de Renzy's titles on this release. One is most likely his best film and the other one is not that great. The transfers for both films are in rather bad shape. Babyface, his best film, appears to be uncut while Little Sisters is missing 16 minutes of footage. Both films are available in better versions on other releases. Alpha Blue Archives hasn't included any extras on this release at all.

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