With the Golden Age of porn already waning amidst the proliferation of video in the early '80s, by mid-decade it was getting harder and harder to find slick, professional sex films being produced on 35mm. Bob Chinn's ALL THE WAY IN! is an exception, an unambitious though amiable effort buoyed by well shot erotic encounters and a game cast.
The plot comes from the standard porn trope of missed connections, with stripper and sex columnist Candy Keen (Candy Samples) pining for an admirer she met on tour. We first meet her on her return flight, where her bust-size is accurately estimated by famed mammary enthusiast Russ Meyer, providing a late-career cameo. (Chinn also knocks out his own cameo AND Lisa DeLeeuw's in this scene, almost as if he were obligated to put them in and wanted to get them over with as quickly as possible.)
Returning to work, Candy is unusually disinterested in the carnal couplings going on at the office welcome-back party, and confesses to her coworkers that she's fallen for a guy named Pat on her recent stripping tour. After plying her for four nights with gifts and romance, he disappeared on the fifth, promising they would meet again. Ever since, Candy's lost all interest in sex, and her coworkers make it their project to revive her flagging libido, all while fretting over an impending takeover of their magazine by wealthy industrialist P.J. Corona.
It won't take a genius to figure out the denouement, as the "lovers reunited" conclusion, besides being fairly standard for sex films dating back to the early '70s, becomes blindingly obvious from the second the name P.J. is mentioned. If there's any weak spot in Chinn's film, it's this completely obvious "twist," a "surprise" so thuddingly obvious it hangs over the film like an impending root canal.
Thankfully, the cast manages to save the day, keeping the proceedings cheerful enough to remain aloft despite the narrative inertia. Highlights include Ron Jeremy seducing a newly hired secretary (a scene that definitely reads less PC today than it would have at the time) and a fun three-way between Mai Lin, Tanya Lawson and Francois Papillon that sees the latter (still fairly new to the genre) prove his mettle by providing two (!) cumshots. (In an amusing tweak on Papillon's Gallic background, Chinn even throws in some silly "Ah oui, c'est bon!"-type comments as the star receives fellatio – just the type of playful touch that would soon disappear from the genre completely.)
Providing more than just playful carnality, however, the movie's conceptual highlight is a mid-film phone-sex scene that finds publishing magnate Eric Edwards trying to bust Samples out of her torpor by reading a sexy letter over the office intercom (all while simultaneously receiving fellatio from Ms. Lin). This sequence, which intermingles both sides' (Edwards/Lin and Samples) real-world pleasure with their private takes on the letter's fantasy scenario, is one for the books, proving just as stimulating mentally as it is physically. Even at this late stage in the industry and on a pretty paint-by-numbers project, it's clear Chinn was still capable of distinguishing himself when he put his mind to it, and it's this attention to craft that makes ALL THE WAY IN! such a delight. While probably not the high-watermark example to recommend someone still dubious about pornography's artistic merits, there's nevertheless comfort in seeing a familiar concept executed with panache, and on that level ALL THE WAY IN! delivers.
The plot comes from the standard porn trope of missed connections, with stripper and sex columnist Candy Keen (Candy Samples) pining for an admirer she met on tour. We first meet her on her return flight, where her bust-size is accurately estimated by famed mammary enthusiast Russ Meyer, providing a late-career cameo. (Chinn also knocks out his own cameo AND Lisa DeLeeuw's in this scene, almost as if he were obligated to put them in and wanted to get them over with as quickly as possible.)
Returning to work, Candy is unusually disinterested in the carnal couplings going on at the office welcome-back party, and confesses to her coworkers that she's fallen for a guy named Pat on her recent stripping tour. After plying her for four nights with gifts and romance, he disappeared on the fifth, promising they would meet again. Ever since, Candy's lost all interest in sex, and her coworkers make it their project to revive her flagging libido, all while fretting over an impending takeover of their magazine by wealthy industrialist P.J. Corona.
It won't take a genius to figure out the denouement, as the "lovers reunited" conclusion, besides being fairly standard for sex films dating back to the early '70s, becomes blindingly obvious from the second the name P.J. is mentioned. If there's any weak spot in Chinn's film, it's this completely obvious "twist," a "surprise" so thuddingly obvious it hangs over the film like an impending root canal.
Thankfully, the cast manages to save the day, keeping the proceedings cheerful enough to remain aloft despite the narrative inertia. Highlights include Ron Jeremy seducing a newly hired secretary (a scene that definitely reads less PC today than it would have at the time) and a fun three-way between Mai Lin, Tanya Lawson and Francois Papillon that sees the latter (still fairly new to the genre) prove his mettle by providing two (!) cumshots. (In an amusing tweak on Papillon's Gallic background, Chinn even throws in some silly "Ah oui, c'est bon!"-type comments as the star receives fellatio – just the type of playful touch that would soon disappear from the genre completely.)
Providing more than just playful carnality, however, the movie's conceptual highlight is a mid-film phone-sex scene that finds publishing magnate Eric Edwards trying to bust Samples out of her torpor by reading a sexy letter over the office intercom (all while simultaneously receiving fellatio from Ms. Lin). This sequence, which intermingles both sides' (Edwards/Lin and Samples) real-world pleasure with their private takes on the letter's fantasy scenario, is one for the books, proving just as stimulating mentally as it is physically. Even at this late stage in the industry and on a pretty paint-by-numbers project, it's clear Chinn was still capable of distinguishing himself when he put his mind to it, and it's this attention to craft that makes ALL THE WAY IN! such a delight. While probably not the high-watermark example to recommend someone still dubious about pornography's artistic merits, there's nevertheless comfort in seeing a familiar concept executed with panache, and on that level ALL THE WAY IN! delivers.