The Mitchell Brothers' sequel to their hugely successful first porn feature Behind the Green Door is an ambitious, layered and unusual film, not at all what one would expect for a skin-flick. The film details the developments in the relationship between a couple, Eve and Frank, who fall in love, get married and then get involved in the swingers' scene; there are complications along the way, not least that Eve gets mangled in a car accident and has to have her face rebuilt, which is where Marilyn Chambers takes over the role. Eve is, in fact, played by three actresses there's a pre-surgery Eve and a child Eve, although thankfully the actress playing the child is clearly pushing 20, as her scene involves Eve being molested by a dirty old "friend of the family" when she was 12.
The melodramatic storyline of the car crash and plastic surgery is a bit of a red herring, silly and unrealistic although not more so that the plots of some 1940s Hollywood women's pictures (compare A Woman's Face). I suspect that the film was begun without Chambers, even without being a hardcore film, and then changed to cash in on the success of Green Door (Chambers turns in a pretty decent performance in the role, btw). As it stands, the sex in The Resurrection of Eve is hardly aimed at a masturbatory audience, being rather an intrinsic bone of contention in the plot and what's more the nexus of the issues which face the characters. And these characters do have issues not just around whether they will be a traditional, monogamous couple or a pair of swingers (although this is a bone of contention) but also in terms of "surviving" child abuse, dealing with white male jealousy, chauvinism and sadism. The plot, which switches between Eve and Frank, is ultimately her story of sexual liberation, and things end with her putting into practise his greatest fears (that she wants to screw her black male friend) and announcing that their marriage is "over." The liberation of Eve has a superficially feminist tinge to it, and it is interesting how many of the classics of 70s porn problematize and attempt to "solve" female attitudes to sexual satisfaction. Eve the character is a creation of men, and although she learns that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and we see her not merely coming around to the idea that they should swing but surpassing her husband in her taste for it, we have to take this with a pinch of salt, as it suits the men who made it a little too much to have a woman come round to their point of view, punishment of Frank the character notwithstanding. Yet it's fascinating that the makers of porn films should have felt the need to engage in these questions at all; many of them did, and The Resurrection of Eve is one of the most sophisticated. Shorn of its hardcore shots and with better production values, a script such as this would be seen as a perfectly respectable contribution to post-1960s cinema, as insightful as a film by Paul Mazursky or Milos Foreman's Taking Off.
The film is shot in Day-Glo colours which assault the eye of the viewer with their extremity. The narrative is tricksy, especially in the first half hour, as the past and present of Eve, portrayed by the 3 actresses, are portrayed in unison. There are some odd digressions, such as the shot of a movie concession stand employee pocketing change, a fat woman plopping turds into a loo whilst she speaks to Eve on the phone and, oddest of all, a long interlude at a Nickelodeon show. The hospital scene are risible, and I suspect were an inspiration for John Waters when he planned Dawn Davenport's disfigurement in Female Trouble; certainly the fat black nurse is a Waters-like figure. All in all, a curate's egg, and proof positive if nothing else that at least some of the makers of 70s porn were serious about making genuine erotic feature films as opposed to mere loops strung together around a flimsy plot.
The melodramatic storyline of the car crash and plastic surgery is a bit of a red herring, silly and unrealistic although not more so that the plots of some 1940s Hollywood women's pictures (compare A Woman's Face). I suspect that the film was begun without Chambers, even without being a hardcore film, and then changed to cash in on the success of Green Door (Chambers turns in a pretty decent performance in the role, btw). As it stands, the sex in The Resurrection of Eve is hardly aimed at a masturbatory audience, being rather an intrinsic bone of contention in the plot and what's more the nexus of the issues which face the characters. And these characters do have issues not just around whether they will be a traditional, monogamous couple or a pair of swingers (although this is a bone of contention) but also in terms of "surviving" child abuse, dealing with white male jealousy, chauvinism and sadism. The plot, which switches between Eve and Frank, is ultimately her story of sexual liberation, and things end with her putting into practise his greatest fears (that she wants to screw her black male friend) and announcing that their marriage is "over." The liberation of Eve has a superficially feminist tinge to it, and it is interesting how many of the classics of 70s porn problematize and attempt to "solve" female attitudes to sexual satisfaction. Eve the character is a creation of men, and although she learns that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and we see her not merely coming around to the idea that they should swing but surpassing her husband in her taste for it, we have to take this with a pinch of salt, as it suits the men who made it a little too much to have a woman come round to their point of view, punishment of Frank the character notwithstanding. Yet it's fascinating that the makers of porn films should have felt the need to engage in these questions at all; many of them did, and The Resurrection of Eve is one of the most sophisticated. Shorn of its hardcore shots and with better production values, a script such as this would be seen as a perfectly respectable contribution to post-1960s cinema, as insightful as a film by Paul Mazursky or Milos Foreman's Taking Off.
The film is shot in Day-Glo colours which assault the eye of the viewer with their extremity. The narrative is tricksy, especially in the first half hour, as the past and present of Eve, portrayed by the 3 actresses, are portrayed in unison. There are some odd digressions, such as the shot of a movie concession stand employee pocketing change, a fat woman plopping turds into a loo whilst she speaks to Eve on the phone and, oddest of all, a long interlude at a Nickelodeon show. The hospital scene are risible, and I suspect were an inspiration for John Waters when he planned Dawn Davenport's disfigurement in Female Trouble; certainly the fat black nurse is a Waters-like figure. All in all, a curate's egg, and proof positive if nothing else that at least some of the makers of 70s porn were serious about making genuine erotic feature films as opposed to mere loops strung together around a flimsy plot.