Tonight on Playboy Radio: Stiff Competition

Tonight on Playboy Radio Debi and I discussed the Caballero Classic release, Stiff Competition.   There’s some question as when the movie was made — we list it as 1984 (its copyright date), AVN lists it as 1985 (US release date) and IMDB lists it as 1986.  (IMDB seems to consider its release date in Japan as its source.)

“If you can’t eat me, you can’t beat me!  Please excite me, just don’t bite me!”

The movie starts in San Francisco, where Tammy (Gina Carrera) is riding along with her much older sugar daddy, played by Nick Random. He has a surprise for her, a trip to an underground blowjob competition.  (Ah, simpler times when a blowjob competition was considered an acceptable place to take a date…)

After paying the cover at knifepoint, they work their way downstairs where they see Jeff (Kevin James) a cocksucking coach working the crowd, looking for action that “The Mouth” (Susan Hart) can get off some lucky stud (Michael Christopher) in 8 minutes. She rips his cock out, and starts going to town as Jeff shouts encouragement and tips (“That a way – good technique! That’s the way to work it, Mouth!”)

He shouts to the crows “What do you think folks?  Do you think she’ll do it?  I think she’ll do it!” but the crowd doesn’t believe him, and a sailor comforts his friend, assuring him that Mouth isn’t up to the job. Jeff hears this and starts to get impatient — “You better do this, Mouth!” — at which point she tells him to fuck off and she runs out.

Tammy doesn’t see what the big deal is and tells Jeff she’ll finish the job so he doesn’t lose his kneecaps.

The crowd is agitated at the staff change, but Jeff and Nick talk them down and let Tammy do her job which ends up with the guy jerking off on her neck prompting Jeff to yell “WE DID IT!” as he spins Tammy around and offers to buy her dinner.  Nick takes off with a wave… this doesn’t seem to be the first time he’s let his girlfriend go home with another man.

(Point of order, I think that would be a disqualification as the girl did not get the guy off, but he got himself off… but then I suppose there’d be no movie…)

Cut to NYC and The Mouth is calling Cynthia Silkthroat (Cyndee Summers) a retired competitor who is planning her comeback on the underground cocksucking syndicate. Cynthia, — Silky, to her friends — tells The Mouth to keep an eye on Jeff and his new find so as to not have her big return spoiled… since there’s a $50,000 purse at stake.

Afterwards, she tells her manager, Jake the Snake (John Leslie), the score.  He tells her not to worry and they should get back to business… OF FUCKING! ;-)

“How about I don’t fuck you; I just look at you and jerk off?”, Snake asks.

“No way”

So he mounts her and her hips buck to meet his.  They kiss as he talks his way through it, and then they shift to doggie and she thrusts her ass against his cock. They finish up spooning, and he pulls himself out and jerks off on her bush.  They kiss quite a bit afterwards as he tells her how much she drives him crazy with lust.

At dinner, Jeff tells Tammy about the competition – the “Super Bowl of Suck-Offs.”  Tammy dreams about the 50 grand — only to say “it’s not about the money” a short while later — and Jeff offers himself as a manager for a small percentage of the purse.  He explains the competition – there’s a big suck off in Las Vegas.  The East Coast champ, Silky Throat , retired, but everyone is worried about her making a comeback to get the prize.  Tammy is non-plussed.

He invites her back to his place to see his “Yellow Bellied South African Blowfish” which is code, apparently, for making with the sex.  As she strips, Jeff makes sure she knows she’s “one attractive lady.”  They never fuck, she blows him, he fucks her face for a little and then she jerks his sizable load all over her chin.  (Nice shot, Kevin!)

Dissolve to the breakfast nook with the sun streaming in, and Tammy is looking all kids of sexy, sitting on a chair in nothing but a T-Shirt.  (Among other attributes, Gina Carrera has awesome legs.)  Jeff proposes hitting a bunch of swinger’s clubs so she can practice on a bunch of different cocks.  They settle on a name – Tammy The Tongue.

What follows is a pretty funny training montage – she’s in front of an American flag, as he points to charts and graphs of penises.  She does tongue exercises.  He repeats mantras.  She works her way down a bunch of dildos on a piece of wood.  She’s in a swinger club taking on three guys as Jeff continues his coaching.  “Remember the head – you’ll be a winner! You want to be the best, you have to work the hardest!”  Interspersed are spinning headlines “The Tongue – IS TERRIFIC..!”

Jake throws a newspaper away and bitches “Next thing you know, she’ll be on the cover of Time magazine!” (Ah, the conceit that these events are big enough to merit nationwide interest always makes me laugh.  They take it to an extreme later as we cut around to various houses filled with all shapes, sizes and ages of people watching the competition on TV.)

Silky calls Don Head in Vegas (a thin Ron Jeremy with Don King afro) to enter the competition and tells her that he sold the rights to the title bout and it’ll be carried on cable TV.  He tells her only two women have qualified so far, Linda Lonestar from Texas (Bridgette Monet) and Tammy.  (All the whole, Don is being blown by his secretary (Misty Regan) under the desk.)

What I find interesting is the willingness to not have a full sex scene.  Just a quick shot of the girl blowing Ron is enough.  It’s blowjob as sight gag; not as sexual device.

Next up, we’re in Beaver Creek, Texas and Linda Lonestar (Bridgette Monet) is doing some barbell curls and already spending the 50 grand, telling her husband (David Cannon) to hire a limo to take them to the airport instead of using a rental car.  Shortly, they get down to business on the weight bench, and she starts sucking his cock.  She deep throats him completely, the first time we see this feat in the movie.  He buggers her and then cums on her ass.  (There’s been some question if this was a stunt butt or not.  I think it’s inconclusive…)

Cut to a swinger’s party and there’s some coupling going on - Kristara Barrington is astride an amazingly young Peter North, Cynthia Brooks is being eaten by Craig Roberts – but it gets interuppted by Tammy and Jeff’s entrance.  Everyone uncouples and crowds around them.  Wayne (Herschel Savage — how young!!) swaggers in with Patti Cakes (Patty Plenty) in tow and talks some smack… so it’s a BLOW-OFF!  First one to make their man cum WINS!  (Seems to me you need less of a great cocksucking skills and more of a premature ejaculation problem to win this bet.)

Tammy sucks Jeff and Patti sucks Wayne.  There’s a ton of people cheering them on, including Jake and Silky who are getting their first glimpse of Tammy.  Before we get a winner crowned, we get Fellatio Interruptus as the host bursts in yelling that “This is a pleasure party, not a business party!  Now, get outta here!” and throws the competitors out as the rest of the guests go back to getting their freak on.

Swedish Erotica magazine sends Kitten Natividad over to cover Tammy’s training and take some photos, and you can’t have one naked girl without it becoming two naked girls, so it’s not long before Kitten releases her most famous attribute and dives in for some light pussy eating and nipple fucking. Not really a great scene.

Wayne and Patti show up in Vegas to see Don, and discuss the appearance of impropriety since Don has a contract with Silk – so how can anyone else win? So Wayne tries to grease the wheels and help with Don’s alimony with five grand, and when that doesn’t work, after much protesting of how it appears having Wayne and Patti in the office – Don lets his dick get sucked while Wayne fucks her from behind.  After a bit, they switch spots (tho Don/Ron takes her ass) and Wayne cums on her face as Don cums on her butt.

Tammy finds herself hanging around with Jake — tho she does not know who he is, or that he set her up to see Jeff and Silky rekindle their old flame… she has Jake take her home.  Jake mentions that he can help Tammy win by fixing the contest.  He takes off his ring and talks her out of  her sweater.  (“Do you feel sexy?  You look sexy…”) There’s some good sexy talk from Jake as he gets the scene started.  There’s some breast play as Jake says “I’m gonna jerk off to you.” The dirty talk continues as he taunts her by not fucking her. Eventually, naturally, they *do* fuck, but he stops and just jerks off some more, eventually cumming on her skirt. A smoldering scene.

Finally – we’re at the contest. This was shot in a real boxing arena, and the place seemed to have a lot of people in it; sure some of it was movie magic, but there were still a whole bunch of people there.

 

Paul Thomas is doing a servicable Howard Cosell impression. Next to him are some Japanese announcers, with others down the ringside table. Don Head is the ring MC, and we get some interesting shots of the arena – overhead, low shots up the steps as Linda Lonestar enters… they’ve captured the wrestling vibe very well — outlandish costumes, characters…

As the contestants are being introduced, we cut around to various people watching the match on TV at home or in bars.  That’s a lot of second unit insert work that someone had to shoot.

ROUND ONE: Tammy takes on Tom Byron and Linda takes on Steve Drake.

The crowd has signed “Tammy is on the HEAD of my list…”

What Gina lacks in deep throating skills (she has none), she makes up for with tongue work.

PT’s dialogue is overwrought in the best Cosell-ian fashion: “Tammy the Tongue has literally swallowed the nation’s imagination with her titillating tongue techniques. It’s rumored she was a trumpet player in high school and there learned to use her tongue in such a fascinating fashion and that’s what she uses to get these men off.  Her tongue is moving at an incredible 100 miles per hour…”

Hey, it’s Jack Baker in the crowd!

Linda’s stud isn’t getting hard at all, so her manager tags him out and starts fucking her face vigorously.  Bridgette is a better cocksucker than Gina, and it’s no surprise she gets her manager off before Tammy gets off Tom Byron.  (Tommy wears a bemused expression throughout.)  However, it’s the story not the performance that makes her lose the round on a rules violation.  (The rules — page 6, section 9 — state that for the purposes of competition, the sucker and the suckee cannot know one another. )

Her manager wails “How we gonna pay for that limousine now?!?”

They also cut to the TV truck where they’re shooting the match for cable TV.   I’m really impressed with the level of non-sex production put into this movie.

Cut to a packed bar where barflys argue stats:

BARFLY1: I’m telling you, the world record is 7 minutes, 23 seconds…

BARFLY 2: Indoor or Outdoor?

BARFLY1: What’s the difference?

BARFLY2: Wind resistance.

At this point, there’s a sad trombone kind of music drop.  This is a bit of a motif that runs through a lot of these 80s comedies – the director almost groans at his own joke with a music cue.  Pachard did it in Sexcapades and in Great Sexpectations.. it’s almost they don’t trust their own script.  A minor stylistic nitpick.

But the fact that the scene exists at all is extraordinary to me, since it does nothing but provide color.  There’s nothing sexy; these aren’t hunky guys or anything… it’s just a scene that the movie needed and Vatelli wasn’t afraid to shoot.

The crowd starts to go wild (and we see all the empty seats above them) when Cynthia Silkthroat enters the arena.  We cut back to the bar:

BARFLY 1: I saw this Silkthroat bitch at the ’83 Tampa Suck-Off. She’s the rat’s ass.

BARFLY 2: Your wife blows better than she does.  She’s finished.

BARFLY 1: What?   How would you know how my wife blows?

Ba-dum-bum.

ROUND TWO: Silky and Patti go up against one another; Patti blows Tom Byron (he didn’t finish the first time) and …

I’ll leave the rest of the contest for you to discover.  You can bet along with the barflies… tho I will say Tammy got a faceful of Peter North :-)

However, stick around thru the credits since there are bloopers, Cannonball Run style.

The closing credits conflict with the opening credits in that the opening credits list 1984 as the copyright date, but the closing credits say 1985, so somewhere in there is the truth. (Maybe they started th emovie in 1984 and ended in 1985.) :-)

Well, the oddest thing about this movie is how weak the stars are in the oral department as compared to others stars of the day.  Tho most their review was very positive, AVN had this to say:

“… for a film about a blowjob championship, none of the three major stars – Gina, Cyndee and Bridgette – had the skill of a Little Oral Annie or a Marilyn Chambers. Summers should’ve won but Gina Carrera was the director’s girlfriend.”

… and it’s hard to dispute that.  (The movie acknowledges this by giving Don a snippet of dialog saying that Little Oral Annie was beaten in an earlier round; there’s a newspaper prop even.)  More trivia: Paul Vatelli directed LOA’s seminal ball-draining scene in I Like To Watch.

Of the three, Gina was the weakest, tho her tongue was very active.  Bridgette could certainly swallow Dave’s dick with aplomb, but she did have quite a lot of practice with it. :-)

The best scene for me was the Gina Carrera / John Leslie more for what wasn’t done than what was.  It’s a good tease scene and John brings the charm.

Paul Vatelli died in 1986 of AIDS related pneumonia.

I was hoping to briefly revisit Dick Howard‘s post-performer career — he is quite a bit more than just a “utility player” as I characterized him, and he deserves his due — but we didn’t have the time.  To state for the record, he’s best known and most influential for his work in the adult press.  As Jeremy Stone, he served as editor of Adam Film World and as Tim Connelly, he served as editor of AVN. He was also married to Kelly Nichols,  Kimberly Carson and then later to Christy Canyon. They all ended in divorce.  In his words, “I’ve learned after being married to three porn stars that I’m really good at getting married, but I’m just not good at staying married.”

His history, in his own words, from a circa 2004 interview:

I’ve been in the business going on twenty-eight years now. I started out primarily as a performer back in New York. I’m a rock and roll drummer, and I started teaching a punk rock band’s girl drummer how to play drums, and it turned out that she wasn’t very good at playing the drums, but she was a great stripper and porn star, named  Helen Madigan, and we started a relationship.

When I got back to New York, I needed money, and I had a chance to perform with Helen, so we did that. I had a great time, and I did well, I guess, because they asked me if I wanted to continue doing it when I needed money, and I did. I also started doing live sex shows. Being someone who was a writer as well as a drummer, I started writing about my experiences. Pretty soon I found myself writing for High Society Magazine, for Swank; I ghost wrote columns for porn stars.

Then I evolved into a relationship with Kelly Nichols, who became my first of three porn star wives. The entire time I continued to play drums, and write for adult magazines about my experiences. I also started reviewing movies for Adam Film World – I used the pseudonym Jeremy Stone, because back then, in the early eighties it wasn’t necessarily a good idea to use your real name if you wanted to have a career in the music industry. So I pursued that, and continued to play drums, and whenever I needed money, I would go and do an adult film.

[Performing] was something I just found myself enjoying all the time, so when I moved out to California to play in a band, I continued to perform in movies, and I ended up with Kimberly Carson – who is the mother of my daughter, [my daughter] is now 18 – and [Kimberly] got pregnant, and wanted to get out of the business, and so did I.

At that point I was the editor of Adam Film World; I had already started doing the directory of adult films, as well as syndicating my writing into the foreign market, and I was freelancing for Adult Video News. Paul [Fishbein] had always talked about wanting to have me come over and work with him, but we just had to get the right thing going at the right time. It had to be the right money, the right agreement, the right relationship, and that took a while. We did the dance with each other for about seven years, and we continued to try and work together, and then finally about two years ago, we put it together and it happened. Since then, I’ve been over here as publisher.

(These quotes came from an interview he did with sexherald.com — “Twenty-Eight Years in the Industry – AVN Publisher Tim Connelly Loves the Job ” – but Google is currently reporting that the site is currently adware infected, so I won’t link there.  I had to use a minor bit of wget voodoo to get past Google’s blocking of the site. :-)