2069 A.D.

An extremely obscure film surfaces in a ragged, black & white (IMDb lists color for original release) version thanks to Alpha Blue Archives' tribute to Marsha Jordan. I enjoyed it for what it is, aided by zero preconceptions.

The one-sentence plot snippet listed in IMDb is misleading. Film opens in the year 2319 A.D. with a "Twilight Zone" type abstract scene of a repeat offender criminal on a darkened set hearing the riot act from an off-screen voice of authority. In this future violent crime has ceased to exist, and this guy is given a magical ring to take him back in time and see the error of his ways by observing sex and violence in previous, less-enlightened times. The ring also gives him the power to supposedly speed up time when he snaps his fingers (this proves to be a low-budget gimmick to merely cause instant clothing removal).

More fantasy than sci-fi gimmick, he is sent to the title year 2069 first, and appears magically in the room of a buxom woman, and soon they're humping, soft-core style. Choice of that year is because that's when violence ceased, but in the film proper it's just a nondescript apartment set that could have served for Jackie Gleason's "The Honeymooners" in the 1950s.

After they're sexually satisfied, she gets the ring and inadvertently takes over his penance, suddenly transported to 1863 the day before the battle of Gettysburg, in the tent of a Union Captain played by genre stalwart Forman Shane. His acting and clever retorts (verging on the anachronistic) keep the film entertaining, apart from the inevitable parade of unclad actresses.

He ends up with the ring and is shazam-ed back to Czarist Russia, in the boudoir of big-hair (and big-breasts, of course) Marsha Jordan, sporting a cute accent as "Czaress" Natasha (I think they meant czarina?). They hump and I got the picture -this is one of the dozens of movies made using the format of LA RONDE, the classic Max Ophuls film based on equally classic play by Arthur Schnitzler. The passing of some object, or chance encounters, is the gimmick to knit an episodic film's scenes together, and like LA RONDE, 2069 features lovemaking in each vignette.

Shane keeps the ring this time and ends up in a dungeon with a female slave, who I believe is played by Shane's co-star Sharon Matt, from THE ECSTASIES OF WOMEN as well as LINDA AND ABILENE (I'll have to bewitch them to make sure). She gets the ring and ends up with a lady for some sensual lesbian sex.

The other woman gets the ring and is transported to a dungeon containing a guy with Fu Manchu mustache -it's the time of Genghis Khan. He speaks in pidgin English and gets the ring to take him to ancient times with a busty Cavewoman who rides him gleefully. Her caveman is none too happy with this, grabs the ring and smashes it, causing the caveman to go back to the future to 2319. The control voice finds some irony here, in that the original prisoner is trapped somewhere in the past (2069 as we know) and the violent caveman takes his place in the non-violent future. Hardly the elegance of a merry-go-round, circular LA RONDE script.

I'm thankful that some companies are still searching attics, checking out garage sales and perhaps even hoodwinking some widows who don't know what to do with their porn inheritance, so that obscurities like 2069 can see the light of day decades after they were discarded.