Just about the saddest little porno flick I've seen this side of BAT PUSSY, THE PAIN LOVER (as it's titled onscreen) has been added by some intrepid IMDb-er as an Athena Films production. I have no reason to doubt the assertion (films strictly dedicated to S&M were pretty rare during this period, and Athena was one of the foremost purveyors), but even in comparison with the rest of the studio's sometimes shaky output, this rates as really poor.
The film has no plot at all, either as a narrative or pseudo-doc, which it purports to be; instead, it merely cuts back and forth between two couples, each spicing up their love life with a bit of whipping before engaging in pretty standard fellatio and vaginal coitus. Meanwhile, a narrator babbles on incoherently in an absolutely ridiculous voice, claiming to be the "Baron Erich von Spratt" and reading passages from pieces of public-domain dirty literature, stumbling over half the words like he's seeing them for the first time (he probably is).
Everything about this picture is dire. It seems to bear only the slightest relation to its purported topic (S&M), featuring a minimal bit of belt-whipping and nothing else out of the ordinary. While the blows on one woman are strong enough to draw welts on her buttocks (maybe the added realism was a selling point for desperate Frisco freaksters), that's all she wrote in terms of kink, save one of the girls being on her period (which initially led me to fear the fustigation was more intense than I'd realized!). The narration is risible - totally divorced from anything depicted onscreen - and the randomly selected passages from one-handed literature utterly unilluminating (not to mention subjected to far worse abuse than anyone in the film at the hands of our marble-mouthed narrator).
Clearly, the film purported to be more of a serious documentary at some point, as microphones intrude into the frame on several occasions despite the soundtrack being entirely post-dubbed narration and music. Who knows what happened to this original live recording (most likely a victim of technical incompetence, I'd wager), but the result is a garbled mess, a film that's not erotic or enlightening on any level. About the best thing you can say for it is the cast is moderately attractive, but their performances are so ill-treated by the film it renders their contributions moot. That this was rescued from the dust-bin of history while so many other, better films languish in oblivion is a perverse irony, though like the aforementioned BAT PUSSY, PAIN LOVER exists as a work of such singular, monumental incompetence it may perhaps provide some entertainment as a cultural curio.
The film has no plot at all, either as a narrative or pseudo-doc, which it purports to be; instead, it merely cuts back and forth between two couples, each spicing up their love life with a bit of whipping before engaging in pretty standard fellatio and vaginal coitus. Meanwhile, a narrator babbles on incoherently in an absolutely ridiculous voice, claiming to be the "Baron Erich von Spratt" and reading passages from pieces of public-domain dirty literature, stumbling over half the words like he's seeing them for the first time (he probably is).
Everything about this picture is dire. It seems to bear only the slightest relation to its purported topic (S&M), featuring a minimal bit of belt-whipping and nothing else out of the ordinary. While the blows on one woman are strong enough to draw welts on her buttocks (maybe the added realism was a selling point for desperate Frisco freaksters), that's all she wrote in terms of kink, save one of the girls being on her period (which initially led me to fear the fustigation was more intense than I'd realized!). The narration is risible - totally divorced from anything depicted onscreen - and the randomly selected passages from one-handed literature utterly unilluminating (not to mention subjected to far worse abuse than anyone in the film at the hands of our marble-mouthed narrator).
Clearly, the film purported to be more of a serious documentary at some point, as microphones intrude into the frame on several occasions despite the soundtrack being entirely post-dubbed narration and music. Who knows what happened to this original live recording (most likely a victim of technical incompetence, I'd wager), but the result is a garbled mess, a film that's not erotic or enlightening on any level. About the best thing you can say for it is the cast is moderately attractive, but their performances are so ill-treated by the film it renders their contributions moot. That this was rescued from the dust-bin of history while so many other, better films languish in oblivion is a perverse irony, though like the aforementioned BAT PUSSY, PAIN LOVER exists as a work of such singular, monumental incompetence it may perhaps provide some entertainment as a cultural curio.