I decided to add my review of Inserts, because I want to provide a woman's point of view, and because frankly I was shocked by the film. I was shocked that big Hollywood stars like Richard Dreyfuss and Jessica Harper would make a movie with such explicit sexual scenes. Inserts doesn't have beaver shots (to use Boy Wonder's terminology) but it features a lot of meat: Jessica Harper and Veronica Cartwright topless and Stephen Davies displaying his manhood in one shot.
People who are looking for titillation will probably appreciate the extensive nudity, the subject matter of stag films and the sequence where Richard Dreyfuss fondles and licks Jessica Harper's breasts. I haven't seen many films with Hollywood big names actually groping and tonguing their female co star's nipples. It's usually simulated. There's little below the belt aside from a few shots of Stephen Davies' buttocks. Anyone looking for more real sexual scenes is going to be disappointed like Jessica Harper's character that Richard Dreyfuss' director hasn't turned the camera on for their reaching their peak.
Inserts addresses nudity, drinking, drugs and sex head on (aside from not showing a pop shot both in the film and in the stag film within the film) and tries to explore sexual exploitation and failure in Hollywood: there's much discussion of "real movies". Fans of the golden age of Holywood will appreciate the references to legends such as Wally Reid, who died in 1923 (he actually died of influenza, not from a drug overdose, but he was a morphine addict) and Jack Pickford, who died in 1933 from consequences of his alcoholism. Harlene, the star of the unnamed stag film, once starred in real movies but becomes another Hollywood victim of dope. The decline of Richard Dreyfuss' Boy Wonder due to alcoholism is heavily foreshadowed. It wasn't clear to me that his star has fallen because he can't adjust to the arrival of sound films. I thought he was shooting silent films because many stag films, made on the cheap, couldn't afford new sound equipment and the type of filming the sound cameras required especially in sound's early days.
Veronica Cartwright as Harlene is totally convincing as a 1930s starlet. I actually thought during the start of the showing of the stag film I was seeing a film from the era- she looks uncannily like a young Joan Crawford. With all the attention paid to detail in the set and costumes Richard Dreyfuss' anachronistic hair and appearance is distracting. I can see Boy Wonder as heavily unshaven but his hair makes him look like Dreyfuss just walked onto the set after throwing on his dressing gown.
The dialogue moves frequently from the coarseness of the sex film to Boy Wonder's attempts at digression about art which he's certain only he will understand. I thought the movie must have originated as a play and I was surprised to learn that actually the film was then adapted as a play.
I recorded Inserts from the Talking Pictures channel, which shows mostly TV series and British movies from yesteryear, many in black and white. Quite an eye opener for the channel to broadcast this frank look at stag films and Holywood, which is a time capsule not only of the 1930s but also of the time it was made. Well worth watching if you want to see this 1975 take on old Hollywood Babylon. Anyone hoping for smut will do better with the original black and white silent stag films. Joan Crawford was long rumored to have made several before she became a star, which is another reason why I thought for a moment Veronica Cartwright's Harlene was actually Joan.
People who are looking for titillation will probably appreciate the extensive nudity, the subject matter of stag films and the sequence where Richard Dreyfuss fondles and licks Jessica Harper's breasts. I haven't seen many films with Hollywood big names actually groping and tonguing their female co star's nipples. It's usually simulated. There's little below the belt aside from a few shots of Stephen Davies' buttocks. Anyone looking for more real sexual scenes is going to be disappointed like Jessica Harper's character that Richard Dreyfuss' director hasn't turned the camera on for their reaching their peak.
Inserts addresses nudity, drinking, drugs and sex head on (aside from not showing a pop shot both in the film and in the stag film within the film) and tries to explore sexual exploitation and failure in Hollywood: there's much discussion of "real movies". Fans of the golden age of Holywood will appreciate the references to legends such as Wally Reid, who died in 1923 (he actually died of influenza, not from a drug overdose, but he was a morphine addict) and Jack Pickford, who died in 1933 from consequences of his alcoholism. Harlene, the star of the unnamed stag film, once starred in real movies but becomes another Hollywood victim of dope. The decline of Richard Dreyfuss' Boy Wonder due to alcoholism is heavily foreshadowed. It wasn't clear to me that his star has fallen because he can't adjust to the arrival of sound films. I thought he was shooting silent films because many stag films, made on the cheap, couldn't afford new sound equipment and the type of filming the sound cameras required especially in sound's early days.
Veronica Cartwright as Harlene is totally convincing as a 1930s starlet. I actually thought during the start of the showing of the stag film I was seeing a film from the era- she looks uncannily like a young Joan Crawford. With all the attention paid to detail in the set and costumes Richard Dreyfuss' anachronistic hair and appearance is distracting. I can see Boy Wonder as heavily unshaven but his hair makes him look like Dreyfuss just walked onto the set after throwing on his dressing gown.
The dialogue moves frequently from the coarseness of the sex film to Boy Wonder's attempts at digression about art which he's certain only he will understand. I thought the movie must have originated as a play and I was surprised to learn that actually the film was then adapted as a play.
I recorded Inserts from the Talking Pictures channel, which shows mostly TV series and British movies from yesteryear, many in black and white. Quite an eye opener for the channel to broadcast this frank look at stag films and Holywood, which is a time capsule not only of the 1930s but also of the time it was made. Well worth watching if you want to see this 1975 take on old Hollywood Babylon. Anyone hoping for smut will do better with the original black and white silent stag films. Joan Crawford was long rumored to have made several before she became a star, which is another reason why I thought for a moment Veronica Cartwright's Harlene was actually Joan.
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