Neu Wave Hookers Review

Back in 1985, the Dark Bros.’ New Wave Hookers was one of those inevitable porn jokes. It spoofed pop culture with its premise of two deadbeat pals (Jamie Gillis and Jack Baker) who get baked one night while watching a skinflick and imagine themselves as pimps running a stable of “new wave hookers” (so-called, because of Baker’s genius discovery that otherwise innocent girls could be turned into raving sluts if they listen to too much new wave music on big clunky headphones. Hey, porn is all about fantasy!).

With a soundtrack by the Plugz, a classic DP scene by ‘80s porn It Girl, Ginger Lynn, and the soon-to-be-controversial casting of secretly underage Traci Lords, New Wave Hookers put the Darks on the map, and created a porn-hipster cache that director Greg Dark would continue to work decades later as a producer of rock videos (ultimately signaling porn's definitive seepage into mainstream pop consciousness, and positing Britney Spears in schoolgirl drag as the true inheritor of Traci's jailbait divadom. Oh, hit me, baby, one more time!). And once the Traci tsunami hit the adult industry, NWH became something of a film maudit, as original copies were recalled from video stores and subsequent versions edited to scrub her verboten scene as a pouty she-devil.

Flash-forward. It’s 2006, and “alt-porn” is a new buzzword. An art-school trained director named Eon McKai creates one of those inevitable porn jokes. Only, this time, the joke doesn’t spoof pop culture – it spoofs porn, and the act of porn-spoofery itself. Neu Wave Hookers is meta-porn in the same way that Jean-Luc Godard movies are meta-filmmaking, only way more strokable (unless you count Isabelle Huppert in the four-way daisy chain scene from Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980), hoy, but that’s a different “new wave”). Basically, McKai uses the original video as the basis of a palimpsest: Something halfway erased and scribbled over.

It’s not a remake, it’s an un-remake.

The concept works because McKai switches polarity. The “hookers” are a group of girls (Joanna Angel, Riley Mason, Tiger, Justine Joli, Felix Vicious, etc.) who sit watching the original (“OG”) video after buying it at a garage sale. They are killing time between turning tricks, and banging go-go boys (James Deen, Tommy Pistol and Kurt Lockwood). What’s cool is how this flipped perspective leads the viewer to consider the scenes from a female perspective. It also helps that all the girls and all the guys look like people who would probably fuck each other anyway. The one exception is Dirty Harry, who is dead-on perfect as a creepy old guy who keeps hiring the girls for sordid trysts in sleazy hotel rooms, girls who then squirm their way out of having to fuck him. (I love that this $100,000 production begins with a scene of thwarted desire, as Harry molests a totally vibed out Riley Mason. To return to our “meta” theme, the scene unreels as, on the audio track, the real-life Riley tells producer Malachi Ecks about her experiences as a teenage escort. The scenario repeats with Joanna and Tiger).

As far as the “alt” business goes, I’d say it’s mostly a matter of attitude. The candy-colored limbo of the sets evokes a certain kind of post-punk production design that typifies work by indie filmmakers like Gregg Araki and subversive glam-rock gender-bent musicals like Hedwig and the Angry Inch. The sex scenes, which segue out of music-video set ups using music that is variously campy, emo and art-damaged, offer variety: you get romance (Joanna and Kurt), you get a go-go boy song and dance DP (Tommy, James and Sierra Sinn), you get a girl-girl-girl-girl-girl orgy finale (here’s where glamour babes Justine and Felix jump Into the fray) set to the jaunty masturbatory ode "Orgasmatron" (but not the Motorhead version), you get a very creative boy-girl romp on a swing set (Riley and James), you get Kurt Lockwood with a girl (Nyomi Zen) jamming her finger up his ass, and you get the delicious Dana DeArmond, previously an Internet sensation only, deiivering one hell of a juicy-hot blowjob to Tommy Pistol in a “reenactment” of the Traci Lords casting legend for New Wave Hookers, in a blonde bimbo wig, even.

The joke on McKai has been that he just hauls a bunch of old TV sets into a room and gets people to fuck in front them – with bad lighting and annoying shaky-zoom shots like they use in those anti-smoking commercials. And based on a couple of editions of Kill Girl Kill that did seem the case. (Hey, gonzo standards are so low, just jettisoning the dreaded yellow couch makes you a regular D.W. Griffith of gash). But with NWH he actually has come up with something fresh and fun and sexy and human. I could use better lighting and less shaky-zoom, and the soft-focus in some of the sex scenes makes them too gauzy. The casting is perfect, however, as is the packaging (snazzy 3-disc box set with graphics by Alaska, with commentary on the main feature, a bonus disc jammed with BTS goodies, and a third disc with the original New Wave Hookers, unfortunately not redesigned so the menu is consistent with the other discs).

Whether the hype is ultimately justified or not doesn’t really matter. Neu Wave Hookers brings some personality back to porn. Porn insiders are going to be hating all over it, but the market that exists for this kind of video (young, sexually fluid, tired of their dad’s smut) could care less about that. Personally, I'd love if McKai took his instincts even further next time out, with more detailed and developed scenarios that subvert the expectations we usually bring to porn viewing. That would be "neu," indeed. And bring back Dirty Harry. That fucker's a natural.

4 ALT-PORN INFLUENCES

Scorpio Rising (1963). Kenneth Anger invents the rock video with this homoerotic biker death trip scored to a subversive cycle of 13 jukebox hits of the day.

Pink Flamingoes (1972). John Waters high-camp sleazefest about a battle to the death between a 300-pound transvestite (Divine) and a pair of kidnappers for the title of filthiest person alive. Talking assholes, poodle-poop eating and the Egg Lady -- a fiesta of bad taste and transgressive folly.

Night Dreams (1981). It's the old "scientists observe a crazy chick as she dreams with electrodes on her hot bod" theme. Dorothy LeMay gets it on with dancing cereal cartons, pleasures the wildly phallic nose of a scary Jack-in-the-Box and beds the Devil himself in this surreal fuckfest. Wall of Voodoo ("Mexican Radio") lay down the tunes. The movie simultaneously set up Andrew Blake (Night Trips is a direct ripoff) and the Dark Bros. (offbeat music by real LA new wave bands, goofy costumed sex scenes), thereby making it something like the square root of the two primary innovators in '80s porn. It is Brian DePalma's favorite dirty movie.

Cafe Flesh (1984). Future bigtime record producer Mitchell Froom (Los Lobos, Suzanne Vega, etc.) did the soundtrack for the futuristic saga of a sexless society spellbound by performers known as "sex positives." Low on stroke value -- save for star Pia Snow -- and high on weirdness.