Revisionists have taken '60s pornography (the films without hardcore content) and redefined it as"Sexploitation" -just another movie genre of its day alongside Westerns, Romantic Comedies and Musicals. SWEET TRASH is a good example of the folly (and downright misleading results) of this approach to film history.
Watching a new Vinegar Syndrome DVD of the movie I was both intrigued and fascinated by its good and bad elements, and treat it as a real movie, but an Adult film aimed at the nation's slice of several hundred theaters of the day that specialized in porn. Rather than put the John Hayes movie on a pedestal and pitifully treat it as a victim of discrimination, the clichéd "indie" ghettoized by an industry and critics with blinders on, the more interesting question is "what went wrong?".
Wrong in the sense that like so many films, perhaps 90 or 95% of those produced, ST barely saw the light of day. Other Hayes movies (I've seen 20 so far, only half a dozen theatrically) were widely distributed and successful at the box office, but ST sank without a trace. Even the AFI's 1976 book documenting all U.S. releases for 1961-1970 (as complete as research would permit) has only a sketchy place holder listing for it.
My key point of comparison stems from this movie having starred Duncan McLeod (billed here as "Patrick Shea"), among my favorite Russ Meyer actors. He starred opposite Erica Gavin in VIXEN, my favorite porn film back in the '60s and a truly huge hit that grossed millions at the box office, far more than the average mainstream film of its time. In Cleveland it was shown at "art houses" like the Continental Art Theatre where I caught it first-run.
In SWEET TRASH, McLeod plays Michael Joseph Donovan, giving a fascinating performance, at times thanks to Hayes' pretentious script taking the little movie into Eugene O'Neill territory in its depiction of an Irish working class subculture in NYC's Hell's Kitchen of the '60s. But that aspect of the movie clashes with its far more routine, and necessary, main plot of sleazy sex-trade in the Big Apple, dominated by organized crime, loan sharks and unbelievably a monster computer (not unlike COLOSSUS of THE FORBIN PROJECT) that turns out to be little more than an IBM card sorter in the final reel "shock ending" (the shock is how lame this is).
So why is Meyer's VIXEN a movie breakthrough and SWEET TRASH a total flop? It wasn't persecution by the establishment, otherwise Meyer, who was painfully hounded by censors throughout his career, would not have been the constantly influential success story he was.
While watching TRASH the answer became obvious: though Hayes like clockwork inserts Pavlovian scenes (albeit brief) of actresses displaying full-frontal nudity and beautiful breasts, the movie's serious, pretentious tone and aspirations are a turn-off to the target audience. Wiser pornographers, like David Friedman and Harry Novak, knew their customers (belittling them as "pervs" in their SWV DVD voice-over commentaries decades later), but Hayes, like his contemporary Paul Leder, apparently though he was dishing out high art to the unwashed.
McLeod as Donovan is a longshoreman oddly chosen by the nameless (but evil?) computer to be recruited by the mob as a loan shark. On the issue of scalability, presumably he is the computer's test case for outreach as the mob enters modern management era.
The existing loan shark McGuire, whom McLeod already owes $4,000, schemes to have him lose at a big back-room poker game in Pete's bar, his aces-over full house beaten by four fours. Independent spirit McLeod rejects the job offer out of hand, preferring the alternative of having his fingers crushed by mob goons.
This sets in motion an improbable tale of McLeod outsmarting the baddies, going on the run to Coney Island and Jersey, and the film trailing off into rather fanciful but pace-killing excursions that are more dreamlike (and often, like Meyer, potentially accused of being Fellini-esque) than fitting the film's down to earth atmosphere.
Location footage of Manhattan, replete with Bowery bums oddly relocated to litter the Hell's Kitchen sidewalks, and Brooklyn is perhaps the movie's strongest suit, though typical porn-level claustrophobic interiors for the disrobing and barely shown simulated sex scenes predominate. Acting is at a very high level, notably the character actress (who does disrobe revealing a huge chest late in the film) who plays McLeod's Irish pal from childhood but can't stand his antics and pipe dreams. She's the movie's Colleen Dewhurst to his Jason Robards, but the chances of Hayes ever working with such greats as these were clearly nil.
Similarly Ted Roter as the nominal villain of the piece, sleazy Rizzo, surrounded by beautiful babes in his Westchester mansion, is suitably slimy and far more entertaining here than in his later XXX garbage where he both directed and spotlighted himself in leading roles. Hayes takes great pains (perhaps out of fear of retaliation?) to avoid Italianate Mafia references, with the unseen mob kingpin named Mr. Cohen.
Photography by vet pornographers Paul Hipp and Henning Schellerup is excellent. Hopefully some '60s experts will identify the half dozen alluring actresses in supporting roles who deserve some sort of posthumous credit. As far as Hayes is concerned, I suspect he will suffer the double-edged fate of leaving one's legacy to revisionists: destined to be remembered more for very occasional straying into klutzy and worthless horror and suspense genre territory with misfires like DREAM NO EVIL and GARDEN OF THE DEAD than his pretentious pornography.
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