The Joy of Fooling Around (1978)

71% (10 / 5)

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Description: AKA: Zo gia ton erota [original Greek]
US release contains fake credits. The original version is softcore. Hardcore footage by body doubles was inserted into the US version. Translation of the Greek title: "I live for love".
Review:
Oddball production, shot in the Greek islands, looks a lot like an Ilia Milanakos nudie of c1977. A mysterious man washes ashore. Is he a murderer sought by the police? He tangles with a cute little blonde beach girl and with a townie who does (as HUSTLER noted at the original release) look astonishingly like Alfred E Newman. He has sex with both of them. They have sex with other people and each other. The police chase him. What really constitutes a happy ending in a film like this?

As a straight nudie, this might have been a tolerable offering. As an honest-to-God hardcore, it might have had its moments, too. The finished product, however, is a bit of a dog (sorry, Jack). There is a lot of softcore-style groping and grinding and a fair amount of insert XXX, spliced into the softcore scenes but clearly performed by different people at a different time and often rather crudely matched. This technique does not work one bit better here than it did in any other film where they tried to turn a softcore into a hardcore in the editing room.

My presumption is that the US distributor bought a soft Euro nudie and tried to heat it up for the Pussycat Theater circuit. Locations are picturesque, and production values are about average for a low-budget Greek island's skin flick. "Monique du Prez," probably a fake name for the actress playing the beach girl, is lovely and expressive, but I've never seen her anywhere else.

A porn-less version of this, entitled JOY OF MYKONOS, used to play on US pay-cable in the late 1980s. I never saw that cut, but would be willing to bet it was an improvement over the version released as "sort of" XXX. I give JOY a 1 in this edition.

The Joy Of Fooling Around may have finally reached the final plateau of eroticism… with a fabulous cast, a dynamite story, the entire lush island of Mykonos, and the most astonishing sexual scenes you are ever likely to see, WHAT CAN FOLLOW IT? There is one sexual interlude on the beach (part of which takes place underwater) that I would have thought impossible not only to perform but to photograph – INCREDIBLE! I was not prepared for what I saw in The Joy Of Fooling Around – IT IS MORE THAN EROTIC TOUR-DE-FORCE … IT’S A SEUXAL Explosion… – Meredith Sinclair.

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