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Idiotic ego-tripping porn
lor_2 November 2015
Most of Carlos Tobalina's porn films are asinine, with insultingly stupid story lines. In this one, made at the tail-end of his prolific but uneventful porno career, erstwhile auteur "Troy Benny" shares the blame with star/scriptwriter Radio Ray Wells -who also fortunately was hanging up handing in his mic after an equally ho-hum XXX career.

To give the devil his due, the film does serve one positive function: because Carlos owned his own means of production (camera and all facilities) he insisted on shooting 35mm film three or four years after everybody else had turned to crappy & cheap video cameras. So "Pulsating Flesh" serves to preserve on film the beauty of several video-era starlets otherwise in our memories via unsatisfactory lighting and pictorial quality of VHS video: Mindy Rae, Tamara Longley, Renee Summers and Bunny Bleu.

Ray stars as Peter, an arrogant creep who boasts on TV that he always gets a woman pregnant when he humps her, even when he pulls out for a money shot (as he does throughout the film). Show in question is the Joanna Carson show, an unfunny Wells the writer reference to the King of Latenight, but unfortunately conjuring up an insult to his recently deceased ex-wife Joanne in the process. Pornographers have no shame.

Typical of a C.T. production, film is haphazardly constructed, opening with a lengthy, unidentified flash-forward of a sex scene from later in the movie -presumably in order to give the fans immediate gratification (or groans) by doling out Harry Reems' top- billed guest appearance as a peeping tom milkman (!) who watches Ray servicing a wealthy sperm customer Mrs. Wilson (Tess Ferre) and two beauties (Bunny Bleu and Tammi Lee Curtis) she's gifted him with. Of course Harry in his cute '50s milkman uniform later joins in for one of Carlos's inevitable boring orgies. Price incidentally for Peter's services is $1,600 -$800 due upfront.

Actual TV broadcast is viewed by two very horny lesbians, and for film structure students, including the IMDb-er who reviews movies from his "folding" theory often cryptically applied, some complexity is generated (perhaps unwittingly, given my low appraisal of Ray's and Carlos's abilities and intentions) by multiple layers of voyeurism: we the hapless viewers at home watching the lesbians watch Peter's porn clips he's dragged to the Joanna Carson show, in which Reems is in turn watching Peter & company have sex.

The sets are all phony and poorly dressed - a fake look even less convincing than Tobalina's studio creations of a decade earlier. Ray's cum shots are suitably copious fountains of liquid a la more recent stars Peter North and Steven St. Croix, but Carlos cannot resist adding a stupid slapstick sound effect when Ray shoots; and he also can't resist showing one of these money shots over from a different angle as inept padding.

As usual, I have to commend DVD distributor Vinegar Syndrome for preserving porn using only the finest materials, but simultaneously condemn them for continuing to revive among the crummiest and most ephemeral (hence least worth preserving) junk imaginable. To don my "old fogie" cap in closing, back in my day 40 or 50 years back poor films were categorized by potential distributors as unreleasable and lived up to that prediction, left unfinished and unclaimed in a lab or otherwise tossed at some point into a dumpster, not released just because they still exist as is the practice (at least with old, "archival" material) today. In the age of the internet and information overload, all manner of gatekeepers are ridiculed (c.f.: The Music Industry's record labels and a&r departments) by a generation unaware of their often useful contribution.
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1/10
The Longfellow and Short of It
NoDakTatum15 October 2023
This adult film is an oddity- it was produced in the late 1980's, but was shot on 35mm film stock, not videotape...oh, and it's really stupid. Ray Wells, one of porn's most unlikely leading men, is Peter Longfellow. Peter has the ability to make any woman pregnant thanks to his very potent "sperms." He goes on Joan Carson's (Tamara Longley) talk show to introduce some sex clips from his life, and viewers get turned on as the sex is somehow broadcast over the air and into their televisions.

Wells is credited with the screenplay, which is not exactly "Casablanca" or "Chinatown." I'm not sure if this was supposed to be a comedy but the humor is decidedly lame. At one point, Peter makes a wisecrack about shortening his name, Joan reacts with "that's a great line," but I still don't get the joke. Then again, if a producer told me I got to have sex with about half a dozen beautiful women if I came up with a story quickly, I'm pretty sure comprehensive plot points and character arcs would suffer. Reems has a glorified cameo in a stock porno role, and cast member Jay Serling is surprisingly hairy and sweaty. Tobalina's camera angles are well done, and the picture is clear and bright. The film does suffer from outlandishly bad sound editing, like moaning sounds from actors whose mouths are otherwise occupied. Joan's television studio is somebody's living room, and the stock footage of her "live audience" is creepy since it has some children applauding along to sex acts. When Peter climaxes, the film makers add a laser beam-like sound effect that made me giggle. Some of the sex scenes, while intermingled thanks to film editing, run way too long, and you may be wondering about Reems' introductory scene until it is explained much too later on in the weak story. "Pulsating Flesh" is pretty awful.
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Super Sperm to the Rescue
Michael_Elliott4 July 2020
Pulsating Flesh (1986)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Peter Longfellow (Ray Wells) goes onto the Joan Carson (Tamara Longley) talk show where he talks about how his sperm is so great that he can get anyone pregnant.

That's pretty much all of the story-line you need to know about this Carlos Tobalina film that came towards the end of his career. For the most part Tobalina is considered a joke to many people but I keep going through his pictures and while watching this one I think I finally realized who I'd compare him to and that's Al Adamson. Both men weren't the greatest of filmmakers but both constantly moved forward making films.

What really made me think of Adamson is that both men made some awful movies but at the same time they really weren't among the all-time awful movies that I've seen. Neither one really made a great classic either but they did offer up many "fair" or "average" pictures that were at least better than some of the worst that the respected genres had to offer.

PULSATING FLESH is about as cheap as they come and offers up a rather stupid story. I mean, this guy's whole story is that he has sperm to get any woman pregnant yet the first job he's hired for he ends up pulling out! I know the porn movie needs the money shot but that goes against the whole point of the story. Perhaps I'm just overthinking things. Either way, the film is poorly shot as usual, the performers don't seem to thrilled and that includes Harry Reems as The Milkman and there's certainly nothing erotic to the picture.
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