The Film:
The early sixties saw the rise in the amount of sexploitation films that were made, mostly due to the fact that they were very cheap to produce and made substantial profits. Most of these films were sort of comedic sexcapades by director's such as Russ Meyer, but ten years later saw a move into more dramatic erotic films such as Justine De Sade, Emmanuelle and Eugenie: The Story Of Her Journey Into Perversion. With sex still being a little taboo in mainstream cinema in the sixties, you could say that Joseph W. Sarno was ahead of the times by making a string of dramatic sexploitation films throughout the decade. Moonlighting Wives came about after devout christian producer William Joseph Heineman realised the profit potential in such films.
Loosely based on a true story about a group of women from New York caught running a prostitution ring, Moonlighting Wives is very different to any film I have ever seen before. Starring Tammy Latour as Joan Rand, a housewife who is sick of living on her husbands low earnings, she turns her office into a stenograph service which is actually a very well hidden escort service. As she recruits more housewives who are feeling similar about money, the business rockets in growth, even providing loca bars with a catlogue of the women available. However, she soon gets too involved and soon her husband starts seeing the babysitter and Joan herself is dragged into a game of blackmail and wife-swapping. It isn't long until the police close in and the worst comes to the worst.
Moonlighting Wives is a very interesting film depending on how you look at it. You can see it either as an erotic drama with very little actual nudity and love scenes, or you can look at it as the telling of a true story that shows us how parts of the more financially well-off American society in the sixties (and probably the same across the world) spend their money on the ever-growing illegal sex industry. The script used for the film is good and some changes have been made to the actual real events with a couple of characters being added to help progress the story. The acting is surprisingly good, with a few members of the main cast turning in decent performances, yet hardly any of the cast have had much of a career since. I would recommend this to people interested in sexploitation (though that term should be used with realtive lightness here) and fans of Joe Sarno. Nothing great, but worth a watch.
The DVD:
Video:
The 4:3 transfer that Retro-Seduction Cinema have provided is actually really bad. There are hundreds of scratches and some major print damage throughout as well as poor clarity and overly dark colours. Grain takes a huge toll on the print aswell, sometimes rendering the odd few seconds unbearable. However, I am still going to mark this as a C-/D+ rather than an E after watching the extras, because I can now see exactly what they had to go through to even get this far. It should also be noted that Retro-Seduction have done the unthinkable and put their logo into the print for ten seconds every fifteen minutes.
Audio:
Retro-Seduction have provided us with a solo English Dolby Digital 2.0 Dual Mono track, which is actually the film's original option. There are a lot of crackles, and the quality of the track is also quite bad. Dialogue is not always and music levels can be inconsistent. Obviously, an upmixed surround track of some sort would have been a great addition, but as it is, the mono track will have to do. No subtitles have been provided which is also a bad move.
Extras:
The first extra is an interview with director Joseph W. Sarno. He recalls the interviews he had with the ladies from the true life events and how they were used to transfer things to the big screen as well as adding fictional characters and why he thought that this story would be an interesting movie. The interview runs for eleven minutes and 25 seconds and includes various scenes from the film itself.
Next up we have a pair of restoration featurettes:
- "Moonlighting Wives Restoration" (2:45)
- "Retro-Seduction Restoration" (3:53)
Both featurettes are not mentioned on the case so this was in fact a pleasant surprise. If you skipped to this part of my review without reading the picture quality section, I suggest you scroll up a little bit. The featurettes show plenty of before and after shots from several films and show us the state of what can be the only known prints, so we can see just how bad they actually are. If it weren't for these little segments, the picture would've scored much lower than it has. Very good, if far too short in length.
We then have a bunch of trailers:
- "Suburban Secrets" (1:56)
- "Abigail Leslie Is Back" (3:18)
- "Laura's Toys" (3:58)
- "Confessions Of A Young American Housewife" (1:25)
And we finish with a booklet that includes some extensive production notes.
