Grade: B- | Genre: Documentary Summary: Inside Deep Throat is a great focal piece, exploring in depth a film that helped spark the sexual revolution. When it loses that focus, you begin to wonder what Jenna's up to these days. So you're sitting in your living room just minding your own business, then suddenly the Feds come bursting through your door to start rifling through your video collection, telling you what you can and can't see. Yes, I'm talking about pornography and no this isn't a discussion of child porn, snuff films or anything utterly vile like that. This is regular old porn. The Washington Post recently revealed that the ever-incompetent Bush administration has tasked the FBI with taking on the war on porn. Let's see, Bin Laden is still at large. Check. Drugs still flooding in over our unprotected borders. Check. Crime is still pilfering honest citizens at an alarming rate. Check. Well, I'm relieved they've addressed all the serious issues before they started infringing on our civil liberties. Anti-porn crusaders contest that pornography turns normal law abiding citizens into depraved sex offenders. I'm sorry guys, but that's just not true. Conservative politicos have tasked study after study, and the overwhelming majority says there is no correlation that would allow you to draw any connection between violent sex crimes and pornography. One study in Japan showed that the influx of pornographic material actually decreased the rates of violent sexual crime. I can hear the Christian Coalition bristling up as we speak. Read the full article at MSNBC. The film Deep Throat was a piece that awakened America to the porn industry and 33 years later we're still talking about Linda Lovelace and her extraordinary talent.

Inside Deep Throat is an HBO documentary that chronicles the sizable mark that this groundbreaking film had on the adult film industry and society at large. Deep Throat has become the most profitable film of all time, grossing $600 million on a $25,000 investment. It was a cheesy little film about a woman who clitoris is located deep in her throat, thus the only way she could achieve fireworks is through performing some mind bending oral gymnastics. Linda Lovelace plays the lead sword swallower with Harry Reems as the doctor helping her to achieve climax. Two things really struck a cord with audiences concerning this film: the act of fellatio, which had largely operated with a dark cloud of illegality over it, and the simple fact of female clitoral orgasm, which was condemned as largely a cooked up myth.

The porn industry in the early 70's operated in the shadows. It was illegal to show what were deemed to be indecent films, though it wasn't until Nixon brought the issue to the forefront by sicking censor-loving dogs like Charles Keating (yes, the same Charles Keating indicted in the Savings and Loan scandal) on the industry. Many of Hollywood's biggest directors got their start working in the porn industry because the films were so cheap to produce. Wes Craven is featured talking about his early days filming smut. Also, the criminal underworld largely funded the production of pornographic features so their legitimacy was degraded from art to sitting beside other nefarious concerns like drugs and prostitution.

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Here's where the film starts to stray and lose its effectiveness. Reems gets brought up and convicted on charges of indecency -- the director and Lovelace had bargained for immunity. An actor being charged for starring in a film? What utter absurdity. He was sentenced to five years, yet the verdict was overturned once the more liberal Carter administration took over after Nixon's political collapse. It's satisfyingly ironic that the source that took down Nixon was given the apt alias 'Deep Throat.' Then feminists enter the fray against pornography in the late 70's and convince the shiftless Lovelace to spearhead their cause with her name. She would later in life find her way back to porn's doorstep. Ultimately, the VCR took over the industry. The movie houses closed their doors as people watched their girly movies from the privacy of their own home. Porn films were said to represent 30 to 50% of all video sales when the cassette recorder was first released. At the end, the film bemoans the porn industry today by showing the big busted, air heads of blonde who have zero clue about the film that defined their industry and crowed on about the loss of art as films now get churned out by the lowest bidder.

Though this is a very interesting picture, the later half is very aimless and losses the focus of the film. It does succeed in showing us this snapshot of time that was a powder keg of sexual change. You have the flower children practicing free love while a conservative administration trys to stamp out sexual freedom wherever it didn't fit their Puritanical mold. Sadly, the parallels with the current climate aren't that much different. It worries me that a large chunk of this nation is more concerned about what their neighbor is sliding in his DVD player rather than why desperate people weren't getting food and water in ravaged New Orleans, or why isn't anyone being held accountable for the brave American soldiers dying senselessly in Iraq so Bush could continue fighting daddies' war. Truthfully, I wish Puritanical America would stop being so petrified of their own sexuality and embrace it for the magical thing that it is. Taking that mountainous guilt trip off your sexual desires can only help to make you a happier, more well adjusted human being. God blessed you those feelings for a reason. Celebrate his handiwork, don't degrade it.

Buy or rent Inside Deep Throat tonight.