Doomsday Reels: Cafe Flesh

Cafe Flesh (1982)

The Director

Rinse Dream

The Actors

Paul McGibboney (Nick), Pia Snow (Lana), Andy Nichols (Max Melodramatic), Darcy Nychols (Moms), Marie Sharp (Angel), Kevin Jay (Johnny Rico), Dondi Bastone (Spike), Dennis Edwards (The Enforcer), Richard Belzer (Uncredited)

The Trailer

The Cause

Nuclear War

The Story

"Able to exist, to sense... to feel everything -- but pleasure. In a world destroyed, a mutant universe, survivors break down to those who can and those who can't. 99% are Sex Negatives. Call them erotic casualties. They want to make love, but the mere touch of another makes them violently ill. The rest, the lucky one percent, are Sex Positives, those whose libidoes [sic] escaped unscathed. After the Nuclear Kiss, the Positives remain to love, to perform... And the others, well, we Negatives can only watch... can only come... to... CAFE FLESH..." - opening text crawl

The Rundown

The last time I reviewed Left Behind I felt it only fair to follow it up with a review of something completely profane, crass, and tasteless. That movie was Drew Bolduc and Dan Nelson's The Taint and I still recommend the review and the movie quite insistently. But movies like The Taint don't come around very often and while there are a handful of crass, tasteless apocalypse movies on the indie circuit, I found out a long time ago that my theory that there's a doomsday film in every genre to be true when I found out about a trilogy of x-rated films called Cafe Flesh.

The more I read about Cafe Flesh the more it went from a sophomoric thing I'd review just because I could to something that seemed like it might actually have some substance. At very least it would be a wonderful follow-up to that mortifying porn film that Wes Craven directed. So join me as I sink to a new low and review stag films for my pretentious film column. Fear not, though, since I know people read this site at work I've selected stills from the movie that aren't too racy. And just to add an extra layer of protection to keep our moral purity, Motion Picture Association of America President Jack Valenti will be assisting in keeping all images above board.

Cafe Flesh takes place in a future following a devastating nuclear war. Radiation has caused mutations that have made the vast majority of the population unable to have sex. The very act of physical intimacy makes them violently ill. So to exercise their frustrations they go to sex clubs where the few people who aren't afflicted engage in sexual acts in a sort of stylized burlesque-show type affair while frustrated people cringe in catharsis.

At this particular club, the titular Cafe Flesh, two of the regulars are Nicky and Lana, a couple of Sex Negatives who never miss a show. Nick has a clear distaste for the stylized spectacle on-stage but it's his only outlet for his frustrated feelings, Lana conversely loves the shows but they both share a severe frustration over the fact that the physical aspect of their very passionate relationship is over for good.

On stage, the MC Max Melodramatic is your typical loud-mouthed groan-worthy comedian. He kind of looks like a young Steve Martin with a bit more weight in the face and he has an actively abusive relationship with the audience, mocking them and taunting them for their frustrations.

All in all, if your goal is to justify a bunch of sex scenes, this is a pretty solid plot line.

And a solid set-up is easily all Cafe Flesh could be, but surprisingly it's quite a bit more. This movie is a legitimate Sci-Fi Drama and the hardcore elements don't undercut that at all. At the forefront of the story is Nick and Lana's story and the dystopian elements.

You see, in the world of Cafe Flesh, the sex clubs aren't just a hobby for the Sex Positives. According to whatever passes for government in this post-nuke world, if you are a Sex Positive you have to perform. One particular scene involves some government regulators, called Enforcers raiding the club and rooting out a virginal Wyoming girl (who is unimaginatively named Angel) and dragging her off to some sort of education camp. It's a genuinely disturbing scene somewhat undercut by her appearance later in the film though her later scenes are framed more as sexual liberation than slavery which is... something, I guess.

Mostly the story pays off in the wrapping up of the main arc. Normally I'd put a spoiler warning but since this is an x-rated movie and since it's hard to track down I'm just going to throw caution to the wind and tell you what happens. Throughout the movie, Nick and Max Melodramatic have an adversarial relationship much to the chagrin of the club's owner Moms. Moms forces Max to shame himself in front of the entire club as punishment.

But when Moms acquires the super-star Sex Positive performer Johnny Rico, Lana becomes enamored with him. One night, Lana stays behind after the club is closed and practices a little self-intimacy, which unbeknownst to her is witnessed by Max. So in the film's finale while Lana is full of lust watching Johnny Rico perform on stage, Max leans over and tells her that he knows her secret. It seems that Lana is actually a sex positive and it's only her love for Nick that has been causing her to keep this secret all this time. The final scene happens in slow motion as she makes her way toward the stage, menacing music playing the entire time and begins "performing" with the other actors while Nick watches, stone faced.

It's not the cuckoldry that's upsetting about the scene but rather what he and Lana had is gone and he can literally never have that again. Lana is lost to him forever and he can't even have the catharsis of Cafe Flesh because now that she's outed as a Sex Positive she has to perform and seeing her there will only re-open the wound that he's well and truly alone. This would be a disturbing ending for any movie, but for a movie with the ostensible purpose of eliciting arousal it's a bold choice to say the least.

I've heard the "if they took out the sex scenes it could be a real movie" argument a few times and found it to be eye-roll inducing. I saw that shitty soft-core version of that Pirates of the Caribbean porn parody; no it was not good enough to watch for entertainment value. But I find myself surprised to be saying that about Cafe Flesh. In fairness this movie doesn't actually have a lot of sex in it, there's maybe five scenes in the entire hour and 10 minutes and only one of them is longer than five minutes. There's actually an entire movie worth watching in this one.

The acting ranges from okay to bad but even the bad acting fits with the whole bizarre aesthetic they're going for which is sort of Blade Runner meets Rocky Horror Picture Show meets Forbidden Zone look that feels automatically stilted and odd. The dialogue is all a little off-kilter and the sets look like surrealist paintings. One of the weirdest small details is a small bit-part by an un-credited and very young Richard Belzer as a jive-talking loudmouth.

I'm sure you're wondering how this weirdo aesthetic extends to the sex scenes and I daresay the rest of the movie seems downright normal in comparison. My original intention with the sex scenes was just to put my VLC player on 2X speed because I surely wasn't going to miss any nuance in these bits but I didn't end up doing that because the actual porn sections of this movie are banoonies.

In the first scene a housewife sits in a living room scene while three grown men dressed in bibs and baby bonnets wearing pancake make-up and monster teeth pound bones on high chair trays. A man in a white leotard with a rat mask and large phallic rat tail dressed as a milk man enters and performs oral sex on the woman.

In the second scene, a secretary in lingerie laying on a desk in front of a back drop of oil wells next to giant graph of showing a rise in sales is sexually gratified by a man in a business suit wearing a giant plaster pencil on his head while a naked stenographer in pasties types on a typewriters, occasionally pausing to look directly into a camera and say in a monotone voice "would you like me to type a memo?"

The next scene involves two women, one dressed as an army general in epaulets and an American flag bikini bottom, the other dressed as a sailor, having sex while the sounds of demented laughter, gunshots, troops marching, and an air-raid siren play in the background.

Another involves a woman sliding back and forth between two men on a phone booth which is sitting at an angle as if it has sunk into the floor of the stage, half-naked women to either side talk on pay phones while tuxedo jacketed arms stick out of the stage floor snapping their fingers in rhythm.

Sex happens in these scenes almost as an afterthought. Mostly you're just watching some sort of oddity stage show that would make David Lynch cock his head in confusion. I'm left to wonder if this movie was actually meant to be enjoyed in a pornographic context at all or the hardcore sex was put in as some sort of statement or protest that I don't understand.

Cafe Flesh is a surprisingly good movie, it's more of a cult film than a stag film and I honestly wouldn't mind owning an edited version that cuts out all the hardcore bits and leaves the plot. It's a moody, weird, emotionally devastating little film and I would recommend to everyone I knew if not for the fact that doing so would make me sound like a creep.

Since I'm not going to drag out this trilogy over a month the next two installments in this series will be up Wednesday and Friday respectively.

The Shill

Cafe Flesh can be found on DVD through Amazon. It can be found for cheaper on various websites that traffic in pornographic DVDs but due to the dubious trustworthiness of those sites I'm going to leave it to you guys to track those down at your own discretion.