Café Flesh

Max Melodramatic. Get used to him.This movie was made in the early 1980s; a time when the porn industry was undergoing a transition from the expensive filmed productions of the 1970s to the dirt-cheap plotless fuck fests of the 1990s and beyond. In other words, people in the porn industry were still trying to be something more than just documentary filmmakers about mating habits. Anyone who would argue about the bygone golden age of porn would do well to strike "Café Flesh" from the evidence list.

"Café Flesh" begins with an opening narration to set up the contrived future world in which the film takes place. In a future where the earth has been devastated by nuclear apocalypse 99% of the population has been turned into "sex negatives". I consider myself fairly versed in the effects of radiation poisoning and to my knowledge no amount or type of radiation sickness makes people vomit when they start having sex. That aside, the sex negatives of Café Flesh puke whenever they start getting busy, and are forced to steer clear of any sort of hanky panky. To satiate their lust the titular nightclub caters to sex negatives by having sex positives perform live sex acts while they watch and mug for the camera.

Max Melodramatic, the incessantly abrasive emcee at Café Flesh, opens by telling everyone in the audience (including anyone watching the film) what a lame sack of shit they are. As Max rattles off a fast-paced introduction to the club he says "there's nothing wrong with being a sex negative" and then implies that there is everything wrong with being a sex negative. His staccato speech is inter-cut with shots of the gawping audience members who look like they just wandered out, pale and sweaty, from the most awesome Cure concert ever.

I would say it's porn on acid, but it's more like porn on huffing model glue.The first sexual set piece, performed on stage, involves a knitting house wife seemingly watching TV with a baby crying in the background. A man wearing a unitard, white body paint, and a rat mask enters and colored lights illuminate a synchronized trio of zombies in baby costumes. This is all accompanied by music that would be generously described as "the worst Tangerine Dream imitation ever". The guy in the rat mask, who is apparently also a milk man, prances around on stage for several seconds before the house wife takes an interest in his antics and approaches. She strips down to her underwear and then bends over on her hands and knees so the guy in the rat mask can clutch her ass and vibrate. Cut to the "dancing" zombie babies in the background and when we cut back the woman is rubbing the rat guy's big rubber tail all over herself. It's sort of like that scene in "Jacob's Ladder" when Jezebel is grinding on the demon at the party only that was meant to be horrifying and this, well, I'm not sure what the intent was here.

Before I continue let me explain something about women in porn in the early eighties as they compare to contemporary porn actresses. Women were just as beautiful then as they are now, but nowadays women are actually made for porn. Today there exists an entire species of surgically enhanced, shaved, oiled, and bleached women who naturally sprout tribal tattoos above their ass crack and form belly button piercings the same way a clam forms a pearl. These women inevitably soar to the heap of the porn pile. Back in the 1970s and 1980s women in porn were basically good looking women who were willing to fuck men on camera. Their vaginas were covered with thick (even by normal standards) mats of hair, their breasts were able to sag, their nipples could be too big or too small, and they didn't always have perfect rows of teeth. Porn has evolved to such an extent that these women have more in common with obscure 1920s pornographic photos than they do with today's startlets. Many people prefer this look to the sculpted and sterile porn of today, but it does have its downsides.

Back to the rat man and the house wife. They begin grappling awkwardly on the stage, with her performing a mediocre blowjob on him while he mauls her vagina. Little good can come from a man in a rat mask licking a vagina and I just kept thinking of what new versions of medieval plagues might be spreading through her uterus. The intercourse portion is cursory, quick, and almost robotic. The rat man sticks his penis in her for maybe 45 seconds and then ejaculates onto her stomach. More time is spent on the rat man prancing around, the woman rubbing his tail on her body, the babies pounding fake bones on their high chairs, and long reaction shots.

Nick and Lana and some buttisnki share a moment.Following the action on stage we are introduced to the film's main characters; sex negatives Lana and Nick. Nick seems frustrated with his sex-puking status and Lana is entranced by the idea that Johnny Rico will be performing at Café Flesh. There's also the world's ugliest dwarf and the doe-eyed Angel. Following some wooden exposition about how much it sucks to be a sex negative, a new "performance" begins on stage.

Max Melodramatic has changed out of his white tuxedo and is now sitting on a swing and wearing a little girl's costume and Raggedy Ann makeup. Believe me; it's worse than it sounds like. Max singles out Nick and Lana for some special treatment, leaping off his swing and insulting him directly. He moves on to Angel, intimidating her, then jumps back up on stage and does an Elvis impression while an Eraserhead-like mechanical sound churns in the background. The set is revealed to be a vague office setting with a woman in lingerie doing exercises on a desk as a man in a pencil costume wanders around while a naked woman takes robotic dictation. It's the sort of lame and impenetrable performance art you would expect to see a bunch of freshman college students doing as a class project. This goes on for a couple of minutes before the pencil man spreads the woman's legs and exaggeratedly mimes intercourse with her while the typist robotically intones "do you want me to type a memo?" over and over.

Eventually the pencil man gets a blowjob from the workout woman and then penetrates her hairy cove. Just like in the previous segment it is mechanical and almost an afterthought to the ridiculous office antics. They hump for two or three minutes tops and then the pencil man ejaculates into her thick forest of pubic hair. Angel is amazed by seeing people doing it and Nick continues to gripe until Lana agrees to leave.

That's right, we want 500,000 dollars to shoot this movie.Back in the shadowy apartment of Nick and Lana some vague pretense of a plot develops, highlighting Nick's hatred of the Café Flesh and Lana's addiction to the performances there. It is all heavy foreshadowing that Lana is secretly a sex-positive, if you actually fucking care. They try to kiss but Nick gets sick and Lana acts sick. I don't really understand how the mechanics of this work, they can sit there and watch people fuck, and supposedly get turned on although I really don't understand how, but kissing each other makes them sick.

Back at Café Flesh it's a monster mash! Oh, that's just the black-lipsticked patrons of the club. This time the set is supposed to be a war or the apocalypse or something. This is represented by air raid sirens and women in panties with American and Soviet flags on them. This sequence is the film's lesbian scene, although it's so poorly lit that you can hardly see anything that's happening and when you do, you usually just catch a glimpse of a greasy and excessively hairy vagina. Throughout the whole ordeal the air raid siren blares and Max Melodramatic cackles with laughter. The crowd stares, mugs, and bites knuckles so they must be getting their money's worth.

Following this repulsive display Max confronts newcomer Angel. He insists that she is a sex-positive and despite Nick's vague denial she gets seized and carted through a bank vault door to perform.

The next night at Café Flesh the new star appears on stage. Angel's debut involves arms extending through holes in the floor snapping their fingers, women with their backs turned holding telephones, and two guys in masks sliding Angel back and forth on the top of a fake TV with a naked woman inside it. It's like they held a contest to see who could come up with the stupidest fucking idea for a set piece ever. After a few minutes of sliding around on the TV and Nick and Lana looking really hot and bothered the guys double team Angel. Even though there are three people involved the sex still only lasts maybe three minutes, which is too bad because Angel is actually attractive and does not have some disturbing characteristic like giant pubic hair or bizarre greasiness.

HAW HAW HAW!Finally we meet Johnny Rico, who looks like one of the members of Devo and is apparently the hottest thing on skates. He gets a blowjob from a woman that might be Angel - I can't tell for sure because it's so poorly lit and filmed - and then Lana is convinced to go onto the stage by Max Melodramatic making hand motions. She and the other woman engage in a surprisingly lengthy lesbian sequence and then she gets drilled by Johnny Rico. It's not particularly sexy but it's the closest to normal porn this movie gets. Of course it has to be completely spoiled by frequent cuts to Nick who watches angrily while Max Melodramatic cackles with laughter. In fact, Max's hammy cackling is probably the most disgusting thing in the entire movie, and I'm including that midget that looks like his face is made out of plaster. I could almost smell his tooth decay through the screen.

The best part is that after several minutes of Max laughing some sort of zombie guy starts choking him and then beats him up. Nick flees, unable to watch Lana's violation any longer, and the movie freezes abruptly on Lana's expression of detached pleasure. Roll credits.

The Horror: There is a lot of horror to be had in Café Flesh. It can be horrifying to those of you who are repelled by pretentious shit art, it can horrify anyone who is afraid of a vagina with more hair around it than most people have on their heads, and it can horrify anyone who would even consider watching pornography to be sexually aroused. The single most horrifying thing is definitely Max's laughing and subsequent zombie choking, but if I were to pick out the most horrifying and damaging thing in the movie it would be the crowd. Every single scene features a multitude of cuts to the crowd and every member of the crowd is New Wave hideous, with black lipstick and the kind of pallor you can only find in protogoths and Jews working in concentration camp crematoriums. Needless to say cutting to these freaks constantly disrupts any chance, albeit very very slim, that you might find anything erotic in this movie.

The Bottom Line: I have known about this movie for years and have heard it mentioned by hipsters who are too good to admit to watching pornography but too stupid to realize just how bad it is. I even sort of gave it a chance, but before Max was done with his opening and repellent monologue I knew this was one of the worst pieces of porn ever made. The most amazing thing about Café Flesh is that it manages to achieve this dubious distinction without featuring any real depravity. I guess the rat costume could be considered a furry thing if it hadn't come out in 1982, but even if it was furry I have seen Japanese porn in which a guy ate an omelet he made from an egg he gave a woman as an enema. That was more erotic than Café Flesh, and I say that with an absolute loathing for any porn that involves things coming out of people's asses and then being eaten.