I was firmly under the impression that hardcore porn drove softcore porn out of business in the early '70s, with the new explicitness a step down rather than a "liberation" for filmmakers. This terrible softcore film is evidence to the contrary: after an hour of COUSIN JED tease an audience must have been longing for and definitely deserved a triple-X reward.
The point is simple: what might be arousing and even entertaining in a 10-minute loop is BORING when stretched to feature length. And that's exactly what the wisely anonymous filmmakers of COUSIN JED RISES AGAIN have done.
Cornpone premise has happily married couple Linda and Ken faced with financial problems, so she invites her Texan cousin Jed to visit, not having seen him since childhood. Hope is that he will give them lots of money.
SPOILERS ALERT:
Jed arrives and comically (I use that word advisedly) humps and eats them out of house and home, as Ken must cede his wife to the incestuous bumpkin, and ends up cooking for them, with Jed eating up all the food. Linda works as a B girl at Willie's Pool Hall nights, and when they invite co-worker Maggie over, matters only get worse. Now Jed is sleeping with both gals, and Maggie moves in, another mouth to feed.
Completely unconvincing final reel twist has Maggie and Jed supposedly stealing all of the couple's furniture and selling it at an antique store for big bucks, splitting with the proceeds. They were hoaxing the couple all along, and punchline of the REAL Jed showing up on their doorstep, destitute and in need of a place to stay, is pure anticlimax.
The interminable softcore sex scenes are strictly dullsville -poorly staged and photographed in cheapo real-time fashion, plus a few first-person facial closeups of "ecstasy". The moaning and groaning soundtrack is annoying at first and intolerable after an hour.
Casting two of early porn's top beauties, Lilly Foster and Orita De Chadwick, gives the fans something of a fall-back position, but watching either or both of them in an 8-minute loop is far more entertaining. Paul Scharf as the stud fake-Jed seems raring to go XXX, but the film remains relentlessly softcore. Closest it gets to the real thing are several hand jobs performed by both Orita and Lilly, teasing the viewer unmercifully. Fellatio scenes are carefully framed so you can't see anything.
Topping off this indigestible package is a horrible musical score, which starts off playing about half an hour of Sonny & Cher songs, generally from their 1971 album "All I Ever Need Is You". (That means the arbitrary 1970 year of release listed in IMDb for the movie is incorrect.) After their nasal droning, things improve a bit with Tammy Wynette's "We Sure Can Love Each Other", but library music from a cowboy movie, a bugler playing Reveille, and even Mozart's piano concerto popularized famously in ELVIRA MADIGAN rear their ugly heads later on the soundtrack.
Despite the usual "classic" drivel by the liner notes shill writing for the back of the Something Weird DVD-R box (this baby is on Vol. 22 of Bucky Beaver's Double Softies series), COUSIN JED is the pits. I don't think even Malcolm McDowell in bondage with toothpicks propping his eyes open could watch it start to finish.
The point is simple: what might be arousing and even entertaining in a 10-minute loop is BORING when stretched to feature length. And that's exactly what the wisely anonymous filmmakers of COUSIN JED RISES AGAIN have done.
Cornpone premise has happily married couple Linda and Ken faced with financial problems, so she invites her Texan cousin Jed to visit, not having seen him since childhood. Hope is that he will give them lots of money.
SPOILERS ALERT:
Jed arrives and comically (I use that word advisedly) humps and eats them out of house and home, as Ken must cede his wife to the incestuous bumpkin, and ends up cooking for them, with Jed eating up all the food. Linda works as a B girl at Willie's Pool Hall nights, and when they invite co-worker Maggie over, matters only get worse. Now Jed is sleeping with both gals, and Maggie moves in, another mouth to feed.
Completely unconvincing final reel twist has Maggie and Jed supposedly stealing all of the couple's furniture and selling it at an antique store for big bucks, splitting with the proceeds. They were hoaxing the couple all along, and punchline of the REAL Jed showing up on their doorstep, destitute and in need of a place to stay, is pure anticlimax.
The interminable softcore sex scenes are strictly dullsville -poorly staged and photographed in cheapo real-time fashion, plus a few first-person facial closeups of "ecstasy". The moaning and groaning soundtrack is annoying at first and intolerable after an hour.
Casting two of early porn's top beauties, Lilly Foster and Orita De Chadwick, gives the fans something of a fall-back position, but watching either or both of them in an 8-minute loop is far more entertaining. Paul Scharf as the stud fake-Jed seems raring to go XXX, but the film remains relentlessly softcore. Closest it gets to the real thing are several hand jobs performed by both Orita and Lilly, teasing the viewer unmercifully. Fellatio scenes are carefully framed so you can't see anything.
Topping off this indigestible package is a horrible musical score, which starts off playing about half an hour of Sonny & Cher songs, generally from their 1971 album "All I Ever Need Is You". (That means the arbitrary 1970 year of release listed in IMDb for the movie is incorrect.) After their nasal droning, things improve a bit with Tammy Wynette's "We Sure Can Love Each Other", but library music from a cowboy movie, a bugler playing Reveille, and even Mozart's piano concerto popularized famously in ELVIRA MADIGAN rear their ugly heads later on the soundtrack.
Despite the usual "classic" drivel by the liner notes shill writing for the back of the Something Weird DVD-R box (this baby is on Vol. 22 of Bucky Beaver's Double Softies series), COUSIN JED is the pits. I don't think even Malcolm McDowell in bondage with toothpicks propping his eyes open could watch it start to finish.