HONEYMOON turned me on, but ultimately saddened me as a waste of talent, and creativity gone awry.
For adventurous spirits who like freewheeling cinema and are not averse to explicit sex (think: early Alex De Renzy), HONEYMOON is a must-see; all others will reject it out of hand. But its strangeness is significant.
Leading lady Savannah Gold is most impressive in a very large role -though a bevy of beauties have been cast. Usually with such a large cast the lead is stuck with maybe one or two sex scenes, but Gold seems omnipresent. Sadly, she died tragically several months after the video was released.
Secondly, and my review is of necessity loaded with spoilers, there is no honeymoon in HONEYMOON. Part of its charm is a scatter-brained unpredictability. If this were serious filmmaking and had any real craftsmanship (not a strong suit in the dozens of slovenly made Bluebird videos I've watched to date) involved, it might be considered surreal, but unfortunately sloppy is the operative term.
But with cinema becoming slicker by the minute in an age of CGI, TV commercial directors doing features and story boards all the rage, it is the spontaneity of HONEYMOON that delights. Like most Bluebird effusions, it has no script credit, but director Max Cool (an unfortunate moniker that does not suggest a talent in the rough) must have had something scribbled down on the back of a few envelopes to guide him. Or perhaps not -after watching the entire two hours you be the judge.
Back of the DVD gives a highly misleading blurb on the film, even calling Gold's character Natalie by the name of Jamie. Essence of the imputed storyline is that Natalie meets an old boyfriend Steve (Steve Hooper) while she's working as a waitress in a strip club (DVD box calls her a pole dancer which she's not). He improbably takes a knee and proposes to her then-and-there, and the nonsensical mayhem begins.
She next heads for a gypsy fortune teller, played by Jodie James, who sports the largest breasts in show. They naturally have a lesbian interlude. So far not too nutsy.
But next we have Gold working at a car wash for no convincing reason, but giving her an opportunity to soap up and squish herself on windshields in homage to "Cool Hand Luke". A couple humps inside the car being washed, and naturally a threesome with Savannah results.
Feature's strangeness escalates at the Pink Cockatoo Club, where groom Steve has a stag party and elsewhere at the club Gold is celebrating with her girlfriends. Plenty of quality group sex results in these two arenas of action, with the bosomy and appealing Lee twins (Kit and Kat) going in for their usual non-incestuous but quite satisfying troilism while both leads Gold and Hooper live it up.
After a money shot, a XXX stripper suddenly slaps Steve across the face, and then Gold pops in to immediately slap him again, neither action warranted, especially since Gold still has cum dripping from her chin due to heavy humping on her part in the next room. I took the undeserved slaps as a wakeup call to the audience. ('tis a shame that adventurous videos like HONEYMOON come along so many years after the communal ritual of attending porn cinemas has died -this baby needs an audience, not solitary devils back in their homes.)
Next goofiness has Gold reading a dirty magazine and suddenly imagining herself starring in a sexed-up Gainsborough type production, think THE WICKED LADY. She longs for a highwayman to come along and deflower her and this is acted out with sex outdoors, again for no particular reason. Apparently Max Cool had no self-censorship.
The couple makes up and we get a weird (what else?) wedding. I tried very, very hard to follow the narrative at this point (no help from the typically very poor sound recording of dialog by the crack Bluebird staff) but it defies any rational interpretation. Basically the reverend is attacked by the bridesmaids (there's some blood-spattered momentary gore as they bite him) who have become crazed ghouls due to flowers emitting strange smoke. No, I'm not making this up.
So the bridesmaids hump the miraculously unharmed reverend in a threesome while our dear Steve and Savannah get it on nearby. Making matters even stranger for me is the casting of my favorite Marc Dorcel French (by way of Eastern Europe) unsung star Laura Lion as one of the violent but horny bridesmaids - I've never seen her in a British production other than this one.
Finally the happy couple get into a limo and head for their honeymoon, but Mr. Cool has a few more pointless tricks up his sleeve. The chauffeur is Pascal White, who pulls a gun on the newlyweds and reveals that the other bridesmaid in the limo, Rebecca Smyth, is actually Steve's wife! Holy bigamy, Batman! Savannah pulls off her ring and tosses it, declaring she's a free woman again, so of course she has anal sex with Pascal on the limo's hood while Steve humps his real wife.
Sounds like a contrived happy ending porno style, where sex solves all. No, as luck would have it, after the money shots dear Rebecca shoots Steve in the head and makes it look like suicide. No honeymoon and no groom.
Perhaps the outlandishness is a revival of the crazy/deranged scripts that denoted the late soft-core era circa 1968 through 1970, when obviously bored pornographers amused themselves, and sophisticated film buffs like myself who happened to catch their work. Sort of America's answer to the outré Nikkatsu product in Japan, which latterly has gained posthumous respectability but was derided when it was new -almost none of it exported to America way back when. If Max Cool and his British cohorts are intent on reviving this nuttiness, Good on them!
For adventurous spirits who like freewheeling cinema and are not averse to explicit sex (think: early Alex De Renzy), HONEYMOON is a must-see; all others will reject it out of hand. But its strangeness is significant.
Leading lady Savannah Gold is most impressive in a very large role -though a bevy of beauties have been cast. Usually with such a large cast the lead is stuck with maybe one or two sex scenes, but Gold seems omnipresent. Sadly, she died tragically several months after the video was released.
Secondly, and my review is of necessity loaded with spoilers, there is no honeymoon in HONEYMOON. Part of its charm is a scatter-brained unpredictability. If this were serious filmmaking and had any real craftsmanship (not a strong suit in the dozens of slovenly made Bluebird videos I've watched to date) involved, it might be considered surreal, but unfortunately sloppy is the operative term.
But with cinema becoming slicker by the minute in an age of CGI, TV commercial directors doing features and story boards all the rage, it is the spontaneity of HONEYMOON that delights. Like most Bluebird effusions, it has no script credit, but director Max Cool (an unfortunate moniker that does not suggest a talent in the rough) must have had something scribbled down on the back of a few envelopes to guide him. Or perhaps not -after watching the entire two hours you be the judge.
Back of the DVD gives a highly misleading blurb on the film, even calling Gold's character Natalie by the name of Jamie. Essence of the imputed storyline is that Natalie meets an old boyfriend Steve (Steve Hooper) while she's working as a waitress in a strip club (DVD box calls her a pole dancer which she's not). He improbably takes a knee and proposes to her then-and-there, and the nonsensical mayhem begins.
She next heads for a gypsy fortune teller, played by Jodie James, who sports the largest breasts in show. They naturally have a lesbian interlude. So far not too nutsy.
But next we have Gold working at a car wash for no convincing reason, but giving her an opportunity to soap up and squish herself on windshields in homage to "Cool Hand Luke". A couple humps inside the car being washed, and naturally a threesome with Savannah results.
Feature's strangeness escalates at the Pink Cockatoo Club, where groom Steve has a stag party and elsewhere at the club Gold is celebrating with her girlfriends. Plenty of quality group sex results in these two arenas of action, with the bosomy and appealing Lee twins (Kit and Kat) going in for their usual non-incestuous but quite satisfying troilism while both leads Gold and Hooper live it up.
After a money shot, a XXX stripper suddenly slaps Steve across the face, and then Gold pops in to immediately slap him again, neither action warranted, especially since Gold still has cum dripping from her chin due to heavy humping on her part in the next room. I took the undeserved slaps as a wakeup call to the audience. ('tis a shame that adventurous videos like HONEYMOON come along so many years after the communal ritual of attending porn cinemas has died -this baby needs an audience, not solitary devils back in their homes.)
Next goofiness has Gold reading a dirty magazine and suddenly imagining herself starring in a sexed-up Gainsborough type production, think THE WICKED LADY. She longs for a highwayman to come along and deflower her and this is acted out with sex outdoors, again for no particular reason. Apparently Max Cool had no self-censorship.
The couple makes up and we get a weird (what else?) wedding. I tried very, very hard to follow the narrative at this point (no help from the typically very poor sound recording of dialog by the crack Bluebird staff) but it defies any rational interpretation. Basically the reverend is attacked by the bridesmaids (there's some blood-spattered momentary gore as they bite him) who have become crazed ghouls due to flowers emitting strange smoke. No, I'm not making this up.
So the bridesmaids hump the miraculously unharmed reverend in a threesome while our dear Steve and Savannah get it on nearby. Making matters even stranger for me is the casting of my favorite Marc Dorcel French (by way of Eastern Europe) unsung star Laura Lion as one of the violent but horny bridesmaids - I've never seen her in a British production other than this one.
Finally the happy couple get into a limo and head for their honeymoon, but Mr. Cool has a few more pointless tricks up his sleeve. The chauffeur is Pascal White, who pulls a gun on the newlyweds and reveals that the other bridesmaid in the limo, Rebecca Smyth, is actually Steve's wife! Holy bigamy, Batman! Savannah pulls off her ring and tosses it, declaring she's a free woman again, so of course she has anal sex with Pascal on the limo's hood while Steve humps his real wife.
Sounds like a contrived happy ending porno style, where sex solves all. No, as luck would have it, after the money shots dear Rebecca shoots Steve in the head and makes it look like suicide. No honeymoon and no groom.
Perhaps the outlandishness is a revival of the crazy/deranged scripts that denoted the late soft-core era circa 1968 through 1970, when obviously bored pornographers amused themselves, and sophisticated film buffs like myself who happened to catch their work. Sort of America's answer to the outré Nikkatsu product in Japan, which latterly has gained posthumous respectability but was derided when it was new -almost none of it exported to America way back when. If Max Cool and his British cohorts are intent on reviving this nuttiness, Good on them!