Review of Sexboat

Sexboat (1980)
Underwhelming mish-mash from big-deal feature team
10 May 2016
In the Golden days of porno-chic, the Svetlana-Frazier team produced big-budget, big-star movies of a high standard. "Sexboat", inspired by TV's "Love Boat", is a clumsily made programmer not up to their usual work.

Location filming and a very lengthy cast list spell big bucks, but the results are meager. As a structuralist I was taken aback by the paste-up job aspect of the movie, the first 16 minutes of which (including credits accounting for 20% of total running time) are just tacked-on to the film proper. This prologue has two sex scenes involving abusive cuckold husband Kevin James forcing his wife Loni Sanders to hump her boyfriend Mike Ranger, and then Kevin having a threesome with two cuties out in his Hefner mansion-styled lagoon.

He sends Loni on an all-female cruise ship (costing $5,000 a pop) to punish her, and it turns out she's never seen in the following scenes aboard the vessel. The awkwardly edited final reels are very sloppy, and Loni is reconciled with Kevin, their participation uncredited and not integrated into the rest of the movie. I don't see this glaring defect referred to in the previous reviews on IMDb, but it is obvious. I suppose they added these stars to a finished film for commercial reasons.

The hour-long main film is stillborn, establishing a premise lifted from Billy Wilder's classic "Some Like It Hot", acknowledged explicitly by the lead player exclaiming "Nobody's perfect" early on, quoting that film's memorable final line. Randy West and pal Robert Lyon stowaway aboard the cruise ship in unconvincing drag, in order to get their hands on all the lovely ladies.

Scenario is very poorly developed: the boys have repeated slapstick sex scenes, frequently reveal their identities to the girls, and nothing much happens. Out of desperation, an idiotic subplot takes over as the ship is invaded by pirates in cahoots with the corrupt female captain as part of a never-realized kidnapping scheme. This gives our jerky heroes a chance to be heroic, and amounts to nothing more than childish cosplay action and the occasional 'Arghhh!" on the soundtrack.

Some famous actresses stand out momentarily in the ensemble, including Kelly Nichols imported from NYC as a lesbian and Little Oral Annie as breast in show plus deep throat purveyor. It adds up to an over-stuffed, scatter- shot nothing.
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