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Review: Blonde Ambition (1981)




Tags: John AmeroLem AmeroAmero brothersvintage porngolden ageSuzy MandelDory DevonMolly MaloneEric Edwards


It chronicles the rise to fame and fortune of the Kane sisters, from one of the worst vaudeville acts possibly ever inflicted on an inebriated audience in a dive bar, through their humble beginnings in Coyote Fang, Wyoming, to becoming the celebrities of the Great White Way. Once the show is over, and encores are out of the question, Sugar (British softcore siren Suzy Mandel, who here uses body doubles for penetration scenes) runs to the barn, which doubles as her dressing room, to have fun with her cowboy boyfriend, the awkward and self-conscious Luke, while the level-headed Candy (Dory Devon, actually a New York stage actress who would use a pseudonym for her hardcore projects) desperately tries to find a way out of this mess. Possibly the funniest porn comedy ever made, after Radley Metzger's "The Opening of Misty Beethoven," and that's even though the majority of the sex isn't really the deciding factor in the film's greatness (at least not in the strict sense), as it doesn't seem to have been conceived for that purpose. It was the crowning achievement of the Amero brothers, two gay siblings whose cinematic credentials date back to '60s sexploitation, before they branched out into the hardcore realm with the '70s avant-garde oddity, "Bacchanale." However, nothing could have prepared the predominantly heterosexual adult audience for "Blonde Ambition," an unabashedly "queer" parody of classic Hollywood musicals, featuring big production numbers (well, as big as its $30,000 budget allowed), interspersed with intimate interludes that left little to the imagination.