French Quarter - 1978 - 5/10
Exploitation sleaze succumbs to artistic overreach.
Young girl, after burying pa, leaves the bayou and catches first bus to New Orleans. (Nice outdoor photography of late 70’s New Orleans.)
Being blonde, shapely, and wearing a granny dress that is see-through against the light, the only job position she is able to find is stripper in a cheap club.
This part held my interest, though as a dancer that girl is godawful.
All too soon, she wants out and goes to an apothecary shop, where she is promptly drugged for sex traffickers.
Then - outta nowhere - she wakes up in 1910, in a sporting house in Storyville.
Her role is the same, though, to be auctioned off as a genuine virgin.
Abundant nudity in the brothel, voodoo dancers out in the woods, and a busy snake add some interest.
Nevertheless, the plot crawls into love territory and the narrative stumbles like a weekend drunk.
Piano player in the bordello is Jelly Roll Morton. The small boy playing the cornet, Satchmo Armstrong.
Oh yeah, the 1910 scenes are all fuzzy around the corners. Artsy.
Anyway, the vintage period goes on and on and on, diluting the vibrant sleaze of the 1970’s.
One gets the impression they were striving for Pretty Baby.
Cast includes Bruce Davison and Virginia Mayo, with music by Dick Hyman.
