Feminist documentary on the pornography trade. As if the samples of the stuff were not sufficiently off-putting on their own (and these, although graphic, are doled out in too stingy a manner to give any enjoyment even to people who crave it), the didacticism of the movie squirts additional cold water. Filmmaker Bonnie Sherr Klein is ostensibly on a fact-finding and opinion-finding quest so as "to understand." Accompanying her as a sort of advisor and skirmisher is professional stripper Linda Lee Tracey, an ambiguous, both-sides-of-the-street personality who never quite goes through the character conversion that would give the movie a sense of drama. Many amazing or somewhat amazing facts are turned up (e.g., that there are four times as many adult bookstores-cum-peepshows in North America as there are McDonald's), as well as some revealing, amusing, and (mostly) depressing glimpses of porno purveyors and customers. Opinions, heavily on the denunciatory side, come from the likes of Susan Griffin, Robin Morgan, and Margaret Atwood; and these, though they give the movie a haphazard, almost lazy quality, provide some helpful, hand-patting reassurance that not everyone in the world is a crud. Produced by the National Film Board of Canada. (1982) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.