Tonight on Playboy Radio: New Wave Hookers (1985)

Tonight on Playboy Radio, we talked about New Wave Hookers, Greg Dark’s not-first film (I thought it was his first, it wasn’t; it was probably his second or third; “Let Me Tell Ya Bout White Chicks” came first…)

New Wave Hookers was a milestone of its time – called Hustler’s Film of the Year for 1985 — because it featured hot starlet of the day Traci Lords on the cover (Ginger Lynn is pictured on the DVD cover) and Ginger Lynn had a DP in it. Up until this point, girls as hot at Ginger didn’t do things like DPs, that was left to a, er, skankier class of performer; but Ginger came in and said “Hot girls can get dirty too!” and went on to change the industry forever. There was a rawness to this movie which wasn’t seen elsewhere at the time and that helped it to stand apart.

But, since this movie was made pre-1987 (i.e while Traci was underage) all copies of it had to be recalled and pulled from retailer’s shelves at great cost — both financial and criminal — and the movie was re-cut and re-released, the changes being a re-edit of the opening credits to excise Traci from the parade of New Wave Hookers and a total elimination of her one scene in the movie.

However, since the movie is largely a series of disconnected scenes, cutting her out of the movie was no great feat, unlike the poor folks behind Talk Dirty to Me 3 who had to reshoot LARGE parts of the story with Lisa De Leeuw taking Traci’s part.

The basic story behind the movie is two guys Jamie Gillis and Jack Baker lamenting the fact that they have no girls and that pimps must get a ton of pussy. They fall asleep in front of the TV and wake (?) to find themselves as pimps who will program their ho’s to fuck to the sound of New Wave music. Oddly, Jamie Gillis’ pimp has an offensive Japanese accent throughout.

The production values are minimal. Filing cabinets are made out of cardboard. The rest is pretty bizarre. Steve Powers, a Dark Bros. favorite, plays the office dog, complete with collar and toys to play with. (Not that this stops him from helping his master fuck Desiree Lane when she shows up to join the stable of New Wave Hookers.)

The standout scene is Ginger Lynn‘s pairing with Steve Powers (now graduated to nerd from dog) and Tom Byron (just a nerd). They call for a New Wave Hooker to come service them, and this is where Ms. Lynn performs the aforementioned DP. The whole scene is great and worth renting the movie for.

The rest of the pairings are good, in an odd way. Kristara Barrington controls the second half of the film, fucking Jamie, Jack and Steve Powers.

The film ends with the girls on a merry-go-round; Kristara is with Jamie and Steve Powers; Desiree Lane is back with Steve Drake and go at it; and Gina Carrera and Greg Rome go for a ride as well.

The movie ends with Jack and Jamie waking up and Jamie heading home. On the street, he sees Kristara who acts as if she knows him… so was it all a dream or not?

The last thing about the film that sticks with me to this day via my iPod is the theme song. The Plugz (AllMusic listing) were a Southern California Latino punk band led by Tito Larriva, and their song Electrify Me was tapped to be the theme to most of the movies in the New Wave Hookers series. It’s appeared on “Ranking & Skanking – The Best of Punky Reggae” compilation which is where I finally found it since their original albums are long out of print. According to YouTube, the version used in the movie is quite a bit faster than the version that appears on the Rhino compilation CD and the video below (which features the original cover art)… but it might be a tape speed issue…

FUN TRIVIA: Tito Larriva appeared as Hammy in the original production of The Pee Wee Herman Show — the tape of original show Paul Reubens did at the Roxy that eventually became his TV show…