One of the most entertaining drug parties ever filmed fills up most of this little unsung grindhouse masterpiece. Most directors of the time just throw some naked girls at us and hope that keeps us interested in their drug party, but director/writer/cinematographer/editor Joseph Mangine actually lavishes ART on his. His camera roves about the house, takes in little details, finds what’s interesting in each scene, and gives it to us with the bravura style of Martin Scorsese shooting an Italian mobster hangout. You feel like you’re really AT this party, passing around a joint, sharing a bowl of ice cream afterward with a cute girl in the kitchen, and then watching a game of strip toy slot car racing. When a gang of scruffy small-time bad guys crash the place late in the movie and try to turn the scene into The Petrified Forest, you’re almost as pissed off at them as the groovy guys and gals in the movie are. Thankfully, one of the partiers gets a great idea for how to dispose of the creeps.
Smoke and Flesh also reminds us that one of the great things about low-budget grindhouse/drive-in films is how they’ll show things that mainstream movies of their time won’t. Here we get positive depictions of marijuana use. Also, interracial love, until very recently, was a thorny topic in mainstream movies, but in Smoke and Flesh a white guy can lick whipped cream off of a sexy black girl’s nude body and it’s all cool.