The 1970s are often seen as the most interesting and most fruitful decade in the history of cinema, and this is reflected in that period being seen as the golden age for particular genres. That includes pornographic films, which were more or less legalised in the USA and most Western countries during the sexual revolution, and soon even embraced by influential segments of the mainstream public as an expression of new freedoms and a radical break with the conservative past. The Golden Age of Pornography thus represented a period in which some ambitious porn film-makers tried to erase the boundaries between their genre and the mainstream, while the titles of certain pornographic films entered the general vocabulary. The last film to achieve that was Debbie Does Dallas, a 1978 hardcore sex comedy directed by Jim Clark.
The protagonist, played by Bambi Woods, is Debbie Benton, captain of the high school cheerleading team who has just been accepted for a tryout for the Texas Cowgirls, a famous professional football cheerleading team. Her parents, however, won’t pay for the trip to Dallas, but her teammates step in to help her. They form a company called Teen Services and provide assistance to local businesses in order to raise money for the trip. The girls soon discover that they can raise even more money if they provide sexual services, and, finally, that even includes Debbie, who discovers that Mr. Greenfield (played by Robert Kerman, credited as “Richard Balla”) always dreamed of being a football quarterback and making love to the captain of a cheerleading team.
Like almost all pornographic films, even those with the reputation of genre classics, Debbie Does Dallas has a weak plot that serves as nothing more than an excuse for sex scenes. Those scenes are unremarkable and probably mild in comparison to what passes for average pornography today, but they feature dedicated performers who, despite their mostly plain looks, give this film a certain realistic quality. This even includes Bambi Woods, whose lack of serious acting talent is compensated for by her “girl next door” looks, which this film puts to good use. The best acting job in this rather cheap and hastily edited film is done by Kerman, who later built something of a mainstream career in Italian adventure films, including Cannibal Holocaust.
Debbie Does Dallas would probably have been forgotten if not for the controversies created by unlicensed location shooting at real colleges and a lawsuit filed by the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, a real-life organisation that didn’t look kindly on “America’s Sweethearts” being associated with a porn icon. Those controversies, as well as playing with the average American male’s fantasies about cheerleaders, served the film very well, leading to a series of sequels, endless remakes, the phrase “Debbie does Dallas” entering the vocabulary, and even a popular stage musical based on the film. The film maintained its popularity also thanks to its star abruptly ending her career and retiring from public life, which created one of the greatest unresolved mysteries of American show business. Debbie Does Dallas is also known as one of the first big adult hits on the emerging home video market. Ironically, it was that new video technology that brought the end to the Golden Age of Pornography by allowing consumers to privately enjoy cheaply made videos instead of publicly embarrassing themselves by going to theatres under the pretence of watching art. Those who watch Debbie Does Dallas today, if they lower their expectations enough, can enjoy a short and mildly entertaining piece of cinema history which inadvertently marked the beginning of the end of an era.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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