The Movie:

This 1976 Metro production, directed by someone known only as 'Sam Bloch' (which some suspect to be a pseudonym for Roberta Findlay, though this is little more than a rumor and has never been confirmed) features a host of the New York City sex film stars era, including the crown prince of perversion, Jamie Gillis, who plays a guy named Frank. When the film begins, Frank is playing with a nice pair of tits that belong to a cute blonde named Vicki. The two are fooling around in the back of a fancy car and as Gillis takes her from a few different angles and finishes up his dirty business by blowing his load on top of her hairy muff, the car drops them off outside a fancy home. They get out and head to the poolside where they meet up with a crime boss named Mr. Big (a pretty original name for a crime boss, right?). While Mr. Big is talking to Frank about the diamond heist that he has planned and which he wants Frank's help with, Vicki notices Mr. Big's sexy secretary, Marianne. The two enjoy a little girl on girl time and seem to enjoy eating one another's twats while the guys continue to talk business.

With the plot sort of set into motion, we cut to the fancy abode of one Mr. Greentree, the man who owns the diamonds that Frank and Mr. Big plan on stealing. He's a curmudgeony old bastard who is lecturing his dumb secretary on the importance of security. He reminds her again that there's a whole lot of diamonds stashed in this office and that while it might seem like a great idea to let anyone in to fix their recently broken air conditioner, she'd best be very careful about who she unlocks that door for. His lecture over, he and a buddy split the scene leaving the secretary alone. A guy named Todd calls her in to his office and they go at it for quite a few minutes and by the time Mr. Greentree has come back, Frank and his thugs have made their way in on the scene. They force Mr. Greentree to open the safe and gun point and fill him full of lead when he can't get it open. They then proceed to rape a blonde office girl on an orange leather couch while some strange psychedelic music swells up in the background. Gillis goes crazy here, making all manner of fucked up faces and looking rather terrifying as he forces himself on this poor girl, the eerie music making the scene more than a little bit freaky.

With the rape scene over, things start to get complicated for the group of thugs, as the plot throws in a few fairly predictable twists and turns as it all comes crashing in on them. Vickie decides to fuck one of the other thugs in a giant and very mod looking circular shaped bed and the blonde who got raped, now a hostage, gets accosted with a pair of garden sheers as the shit all hits the fan...

Wow, Saturday Night Special is a definite trip. The hardcore scenes, which have to be inserts because there are shots where things don't quite match up the way they should, add to the seediness of an already twisted crime movie. Gillis makes the movie, playing his role with as much perversions as possible and really throwing himself into the manic aspect of his rapist thug character. His performance here is on the same level of intensity as David Hess in The Last House On The Left in that it almost seems like he's not acting. The sex scenes don't really arouse here, rather, they just add to the depravity. All set to a very strange and unsettling ambient psych-rock soundtrack (that was likely stolen but where from is hard to say), the film drips with that sleazy seventies atmosphere and while it doesn't have the great New York City footage that a lot of smut films of the era use to their advantage, the location shooting (which, based on a Hwy 202 sign places this in along the New York/ New Jersey boarder or possibly in Connecticut) gives the picture an air of authenticity.

The acting is a bit rough in spots and low budget is obvious in the effects work and some of the editing but this is a pretty entertaining movie. It's not a great film in the technical perspective nor is the story all that original but it's just screwy enough and twisted enough to work.

The DVD

Video:

This fullframe transfer, which appears to present the film in its original aspect ratio, looks surprisingly sharp and colorful, if a bit faded, even if it is interlaced. The picture quality, for an old XXX film from 1976, looks surprisingly good. There are some specks here and there as well as a moderate amount of grain but this looks to be a film sourced transfer and not a VHS or tape source and there's definitely a noticeable increase in quality when compared to the Alpha Blue Archives DVD release that came out a few years back. The black levels stay strong, the skin tones look natural, and while there are a few scenes that look a bit on the soft side, overall this is a nice picture. A 'Copyright 2009 VCX' but does appear a few times at the bottom of the screen throughout the movie. This is VCX's method of protecting their properties, so it's understandable that it appears, but it's bound to annoy some purists.

Sound:

The Dolby Digital Mono soundtrack is a little muffled and not of the best quality, but again, it's taken from an older source so the limitations of the era's technology are going to be there when that's the case. Dialogue is pretty easy to understand, however, and the background music comes through reasonably clear. There aren't a lot of sound effects used in the film, mostly just some random moaning and groaning during the action scenes and these are handled just fine, as are the talkier bits of the movie.

Extras:

Aside from some tacky animated menus, VCX has included three bonus scenes, the first of which is from Sex Wish (6:25) and it's more or less a lot of old inner city NYC footage before showing us a quick clip of Zebedy Colt getting his rape on. The second clip is from Practice Makes Perfect (5:26) and it features a cute blonde farm girl giving head to the farmhand in her bedroom before they lay on their sides for some spoon fucking. The third clip is from Expose Me Now (8:43) where Ron Jeremy fucks a brunette on a couch while a blonde watches and masturbates. Last but not least, we've got a clip from a French import called Two At Once (9:19) in which a suave looking dude fucks an incredibly foxy Brigitte Lahiae in his car out in the woods.

Rounding out the extras are trailers for Easy, Aunt Peg, Sweet Throat and Flesh Fever, the Legendary Tribute montage of vintage adult movie clips as well as some animated menus, scene selection and a web-link.

Final Thoughts:

A fairly predictable crime film spiced up with some unimpressive hardcore inserts is made not only watchable but thoroughly entertaining thanks to a leering, sleazy, sadistic performance from Jamie Gillis and a truly strange soundtrack. This won't likely turn on the raincoat crowd so much but fans of seedy seventies exploitation would do well to Saturday Night Special its day in court and for that it's recommended.