Main Cast: Frank Wolff, Erika Remberg, Paolo Turco
Release Year: 1970
Country: IT/WG/US
Run Time: 90 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Master of sophisticated sexploitation Radley Metzger directed this elegant and thoughtful erotic drama. A wealthy and jaded couple living in a palatial Italian villa (Erika Remberg and Frank Wolff) spend an evening watching pornographic films with their adult son (Paolo Turco). Looking for a change of scenery, the family visits a carnival where they see a stuntwoman performing tricks on a motorcycle. When she removes her helmet, they're surprised to discover that the stunt rider appears to be one of the "stars" of the film they watched earlier, except that her blonde hair has turned dark. They invite her back to the villa, only to find out that the images in the film seem to have changed, and the face of the woman onscreen is no longer recognizable. Eventually, the strange woman begins to interact sexually with the mother, father, and son as they walk a fine line between reality and illusion. As with most of his work, the American-born Metzger shot this film in Europe with cinematographer Hans Jura, whose rich color images add immeasurably to this film's impact. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
In the late '60s and early '70s, even the most fly-by-night low-budget porn purveyor strived to convince folks of the "redeeming artistic and social merit" of their work, but Radley Metzger was one of the few adult filmmakers who not only appeared to truly believe in that notion, but actively strove to live up to his own self-imposed standards of quality. The Lickerish Quartet is often dizzyingly pretentious and threatens to sink into self-parody with startling frequency, but Metzger is so determined to pull it off, that, by hook or by crook, the film manages to work both because of and despite its ambitions. With the exception of Russ Meyer, Radley Metzger was practically the only adult filmmaker of his era who had a genuine visual style (beyond pointing the camera and hoping it was in focus), and the superb camerawork and ambitious production design makes it a pleasure to look at. And while The Lickerish Quartet's intellectual pretensions and film-within-a-film, what-is-real-and-what-is-illusion structure reach further than Metzger can grasp much of the time, there's a very real charm to the picture that's engaging and entertaining. If it isn't as smart as it thinks it is, it's much smarter than it needs to be, and in a genre where intelligence and craft were usually at year zero, Metzger's big ideas and ability to make at least some of them work put him miles ahead of his competition. While the film may seem tame by contemporary standards, the glossy surfaces, overly mannered European decadence, and intellectual pretenses are more compelling and sexier than the average softcore drivel you'll find these days on cable late at night. The Lickerish Quartet plays more like a partially successful pseudo-art film than a landmark in erotic cinema (as it was hailed upon release), but at a time when most adult films appear to be the work of lobotomy cases with camcorders, it's a thoroughly enjoyable reminder of a time when someone was actually trying to raise the creative standards of skin flicks -- not a bad idea then or now. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
