Deep Throat

This movie has the distinction of being the first feature-length pornographic film. It wasn’t just a loop, it had a story mixed in with the sex. Sadly it’s not really a very good movie, and don’t give me the pornography excuse because there are a lot of very good pornographic films from this period up to the eighties. The story is clever: Linda Lovelace plays, well, Linda Lovelace! She can’t have orgasms, so after a lot of experimentation, including group sex, she goes to a doctor (played by Harry Reems) who discovers she has her clitoris in her throat. And so begins the reason we have our title, and Linda finds her radical 70’s liberation.
This movie is actually more famous for its fallout than the film itself, in what would become the ‘porn chic’ that didn’t last long. It’s known for all the obscenity charges that were brought up in it’s wake, and the near arrest of Harry Reems for participating in an adult film (which thankfully never came to pass). There’s also the feminist backlash, and how Linda decided to badmouth everyone and falsely claiming she was raped and forced into everything she did. But still, this movie isn’t that great. Other than her cock-sucking abilities, which are great, there’s not much to recommend from Linda Lovelace. She’s pretty damn ugly, and as appealing as the ugly chick in your high school. Hell, there aren’t any good looking people in this movie, except maybe for Thora Birch’s mom, Carol Connors, who plays the nurse. I’ll tell you what I did like: the soundtrack. It’s funk-tastic and groovy. So yes, this is an important film, hell I’d call it one of the most important in the independent film movement, and the one that introduced pornography into the mainstream, only if you want to see better movies, there are many other pornos you can watch. Gerard Damiano himself, who directed this, went on to make some very well made pornos, such as The Devil In Miss Jones, Let My Puppets Come and The Story Of Joanna, his masterpiece. Check those out instead.

If you’d like to know more about Deep Throat, I recommend the documentary Inside Deep Throat, one of the best I’ve ever seen. Gotta review that one in the future.