[A] valuable document of a cultural shift.
Inside Deep Throat (2005)
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Reviews Counted:39
Fresh:26
Rotten:13
Average Rating:6.5/10
Consensus: A documentary on the film that brought smut mainstream, Inside Deep Throat is gaining praise as an entertaining look at a pop culture milestone. However, some critics say the film could have gone a little deeper into the people involved.
Rated: NC-17 [See Full Rating] for explicit sexual content
Runtime: 1 hr 32 mins
Genre: Education/General Interest
Theatrical Release:Feb 11, 2005 Limited
Box Office: $479,143
Synopsis: After focusing on the decadent club scene of the 1980s with their film PARTY MONSTER, filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato travel further back in time for this documentary on the cultural... After focusing on the decadent club scene of the 1980s with their film PARTY MONSTER, filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato travel further back in time for this documentary on the cultural impact of the '72 movie DEEP THROAT. When director Gerard Damiano unleashed the film--a witty, yet explicit X-Rated movie starring Linda Lovelace as a fellatio-crazed woman with a clitoris located in her throat--audiences flocked to it in droves. The film was a cut above standard adult fare, and attracted an unusually high percentage of female viewers who reveled in seeing a female character attain sexual satisfaction in the male-dominated world of adult films. With the public's interest piqued, controversy followed, and a court case against the movie prompted the government to try to ban the film outright. This only drew more people to it, and its combined box office is estimated at $600 million--an incredible return on the original $25,000 investment. Or was it? Damiano never made a cent from the film, while Lovelace and co-star Harry Reems made $1450 between them. Lovelace complained bitterly about her treatment on the set in her memoir--the appropriately titled ORDEAL--and Reems had to go through his own obscenity trial, during which he succumbed to the temptations of alcohol and narcotics. Damiano and Reems return to talk about their experiences here (Lovelace passed away in 2002), while the indelible impression the film left on a shocked early-'70s society is fleshed out by comments from Hugh Hefner, Germaine Greer, Camille Paglia, and many others. A truly arresting film, INSIDE DEEP THROAT offers a fascinating lesson about how little the world has changed in regard to pornography and censorship in the 33 years that have passed between Damiano's movie and this documentary. [More]
Starring: Gerard Damiano, Harry Reems, Linda Lovelace, John Waters
Starring: Gerard Damiano, Harry Reems, Linda Lovelace, John Waters, Hugh Hefner, Germaine Greer, Camille Paglia, Norman Mailer, Erica Jong
Director: Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato
Director: Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato
Producer: Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato, Brian Grazer
Studio: Universal Pictures
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Reviews for Inside Deep Throat
The absorption of Deep Throat into the political melodrama that was Watergate seems to have led to some grandiose statements in Messrs. Bailey and Barbato's documentary.
Deep Throat bore an X certificate. Inside Deep Throat is an NC-17. Neither is suitable for grownups.
Although the film starts out with a clear thesis, by the time its 90 minute running length has expired, it is grasping at themes and topics that are beyond the limited scope of what a superficial documentary can achieve.
Might be more entertaining than instructive, but it manages to return us to a time when the world seemed crazy in a different sort of way.
A fascinating look back both at a time when sex wasn't discussed in polite circles, and at Deep Throat itself.
Offers a diverting tale of erstwhile indie filmmaking and the power of porn to generate change -- both at the box office and in the bedroom.
Bailey and Barbato aren't interested in classic documentary filmmaking. They're trendy dabblers in waste management, picking through the pop-culture trash to see what they can recycle for kitsch value.
It's a good blueprint for people who don't know about the movie and what a huge impact it had. It doesn't do much more than that.
To me, at least, Inside Deep Throat felt drearily long (it's only about 90 minutes), and anyone who survived the anti-porn crusades of the '80s or the 'sex positive' porn of the '90s will find the arguments on all sides depressingly familiar.
Bailey and Barbetto have mined this all-American circus for all its mindbending absurdity and legitimized it with a who's who of cultural critics.
This feeble documentary ends up perpetuating the very hypocrisy it means to probe.
The free-speech agenda is so entrenched that the concept of pornography exploiting women seems to catch the directors flat-footed.
This trip down memory lane seems to have no agenda and treats principals on both sides of the conflict with respect.
The documentary has no great overriding argument it wants to make -- neither about the politicians-turned-censors who thought the world was coming to an end nor about those who saw Deep Throat as the apotheosis of American liberty.
Latest News for Inside Deep Throat
September 20, 2007:
Anna Faris to Star in Linda Lovelace Deep Throat Biopic
After a string of comedic roles in films such as Just Friends and the Scary Movie series, Anna Faris is ready to get deep. Deep Throat, that is. More...
March 28, 2005:
Courtney Love to Play Linda Lovelance
More...
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