Café Flesh

 

Sexentuate The Positive

Café Flesh
Directed by 
Stephen Sayadian & Mark S. Esposito
USA 1982 
Caribbean Films Distribution/88 Films
Blu Ray Zone A/B/C

Well this is a fairly strange movie. 

I first heard of Café Flesh when I met my friend Teresa in the late 1980s. She always used to mention wanting to see it as it semi-regularly played at venues such as the Scala Cinema and the Everyman at Hampstead (back in the days when the Everyman at Hampstead actually programmed good films and was worth going to). It’s something neither of us got around to.

Now, however, it’s out on a shiny new restoration from Mondo Macabro and, I have to say, it was not quite the film I was expecting it to be. 

The premise is that it takes place in a cabaret/cafe after the world has suffered a Third World War. This bizarre apocalypse has had the effect of leaving 90/95% of the population unable to indulge in any sexual activity whatsoever, because as soon as they try they become violently ill. These people, the majority of the surviving population, are known as negatives (or sex negatives). There is a small percentage of the population though, the positives, who have survived with their libidos in tact and are able to indulge in all manner of sexual activity. And, by law, they are legally required to perform in venues such as Café Flesh, to give the negatives something to gawp at... even though the effect on many of the audience members is actually pretty depressing. 

So the film is a series of these cabaret vignettes, involving hard core pornographic scenes, punctuated by scenes of the positives discussing their fate and, also, the heavy and irritating banter of the MC, who is a positive but who has lost his manly equipment in the Third World War. 

And it’s not what I was expecting, for sure. I mean, it has hardcore sex scenes including penetration and erect genitalia splashing the actors seed on various actresses but... I dunno. If anything, this is actually an anti-porn movie. The hard sex scenes, cut into five or six set pieces in the picture, probably total less than 15-20 minutes of the running time. And those scenes are pretty jumpy in and of themselves... cut in a shrewd way, much like the opening fight scene in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (reviewed here). So it’s more highlights of sex than the full but, often dull, lick, pump and grind you’d expect from a porn movie. 

Not only that, but these sex scenes in particular are dressed up in thematic, burlesque style choreographies and sets which can, at best, be described as highly surreal (often invoking memories for the negatives of their past lives before the apocalypse). So, the first ‘domestic’ number has three adult babies shaking their rattles in their high chairs in time to the music while a ‘housewife’ is sexed up by a man dressed as a giant rat (much is made of his throbbing tale, naturally). Other sequences include an office bound sex scene where a man dressed as a giant pencil penetrates a lady office worker, while her secretary looks on and repeatedly asks “Do you want me to type a memo?” in rhythm to the music...

Which sounds surreal and it sure is, until you compare to the sequence where two men with telephones on thier faces go to work on a lady and a lesbian scene set to a backdrop of barbed wire and the sounds of gunfire and air raid sirens. But perhaps this is to be expected in a movie where the ultimate pinnacle of male handsome is referenced as Jack Lord (I bet he would have been pleased with that) and where a couple of characters are referred to as the ‘Dagwood and Blondie’ of the scenario.

Now, the film looks pretty good with a stylistic flair which suits the premise and, pretty much all of the actors from the world of porn... Paul McGibboney, Michelle Bauer, Marie Sharp, Tantala Ray and so on, are really great (I’m not talking about the sex content here... like most porn actors of the time, they are first and foremost actors). However, the synthesiser music by Mitchell Froomis... uh. It’s both irritating and bizarrely appropriate to the story and, even though I hated it while I was watching it, it’s also kind of haunting and I wish I could get this thing on a proper CD (instead of vinyl or digital download... so not going anywhere near it in those formats, thanks). 

And that’s me pretty much done on the very interesting Café Flesh. A film that is well thought out in concept and certainly makes the viewer think about the milieu and also what this story may well be a metaphor of (and I’m sure people have their own interpretations). My one criticism would be some of the sound design... I’m sorry but that actress wouldn’t possibly be able to make those kind of sounds with the other actor’s male member lodged firmly in her throat like that... it would surely be more muffled. Other than that though... a very interesting watch and I can see how high concept pornography like this must have been an influence on directors such as Michael Ninn, ten or so years later.