The line between sexploitation and the art film was a lot finer in the 1970s. Once upon a time, porno chic was real. Seriously. It was hip to see movies like Deep Throat. It was rebellious. Contrarian. Revolutionary. Sex in films was the latest breakthrough in cinema. Movies used to be silent and without natural color. Then times changed. We got sound, we got color and now we’ve got sex.
Where do we go from here? Parading generous nudity and frank dirty talk into an uneasy psychological thriller sounds like a good next step to me, as it probably did to the makers of Sugar Cookies (co-written by future Troma man Lloyd Kaufman and co-produced by a young Oliver Stone). While they’re at it, they also take a big bite off of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, an already perverse scenario that’s allowed to drop its clothes on camera here.
This is not hardcore pornography. I wouldn’t even call it softcore pornography. It’s got flesh galore, but its (few and simulated) sex scenes go by in a flash. What Sugar Cookies brings, aside from a great and glowering Mary Woronov as one of the leads, is a strong New York City bohemian vibe. Shag carpets, space age furniture, dream-like day-glo rooms and lesbians. It’s set in the world of pornographic films, but its characters are well-to-do “artists”, whose art just happens to require naked young hopefuls whom they see as playthings. Sounds like a good place for everything to go completely wrong to me. For a film called Sugar Cookies, this is bitter stuff. Maybe that’s why it never became a hit (Lloyd Kaufman, in his self-deprecating style, calls it the only X-rated film that ever lost money). Time has treated it well, though. It leaps out of the time capsule and sinks its fangs right into you.