Motel Confidential
Motel Confidential (1967) is a low-budget, black-and-white sex comedy (or sexploitation) film produced and directed by A. C. Stephen. It stars Milton Kaye, Dora Lorber, Bunny Glaser, Colleen O'Brien, Barbara Norton, and Shirley Wood. Stephen made two other unrelated "Confidential" films: Suburban Confidential (1966) and College Girls Confidential (1968).
Johnny Legend's Legend House has released a double-feature DVD with Motel Confidential and College Girls Confidential plus several "nudie" short films and trailers.
Synopsis
This near-plotless tale concerns the sexual adventures of various guests, eight couples in all, who check-in at the Quickie Motel. There's a philandering husband and his secretary, a blackmail victim, a pair of newlyweds, and even a would-be lothario who picks up a transvestite. The only continuity between these episodic interludes is the comical motel manager who frequently makes wisecracks while looking at the camera.
Nudie cuties vs. roughies
The film is loaded with obligatory nude scenes (without showing any genitalia), with emphasis on large-breasted topless women. There is much groping and fondling in bed which passed for simulated sex in grindhouse films of this era.
The tone is light-hearted with frequent bits of comic relief in the style of the "nudie cuties" of the late '50s and early '60s. As a result, this film was already a bit old-fashioned by the time of its release in 1967.
However, Motel Confidential has one trick up its sleeve. It includes an incongruous and surprisingly sadistic spanking/belt-whipping scene that appears to be a concession to the "roughie" trend in exploitation films that were overtaking adult sex comedies. This new direction emerged a few years earlier in violent, hard-edged films such as Olga's House of Shame (1964), The Defilers, Tortured Females and RENT-A-GIRL (all 1965).
The spanking scene
Two con artists, a man and a woman, entrap a married man and blackmail him into paying them hush money. After he leaves the couple decides to make use of the rented motel room. After a hard embrace, the woman complains: "Not so rough – you'll bruise your playthings." The man asserts his dominance by throwing his girlfriend (naked except for lace panties) onto the bed and whipping her ass with his folded belt. She cries and begs him to stop, but he is clearly a sadist who enjoys beating her.
After eight hard strokes of the belt, he sits down and she meekly goes over his knee (implying this is a routine occurrence). He pulls down her panties and rubs her ass while pretending to apologize for hurting her. Then he gives her nine hard hand-spanks while saying "You know you love it". We see a closeup of the hand impacts plus a face reaction shot of the girl grimacing in pain. All in all, a surprisingly harsh and explicit spanking scene for its time.
This spanking scene can now be viewed at the Internet Archive.
Ed Wood and Orgy of the Dead
Bulgarian director A. C. Stephen (real name Stephen Apostolof) made over a dozen forgotten sexploitation films in America between 1965 and 1977. Many were written by his friend and business partner Ed Wood during his declining years as an alcoholic writer of pornographic novels. The Wood/Stephen films include Class Reunion, Drop Out Wife (both from 1972), plus The Cocktail Hostesses (1973), Fugitive Girls (1974) and The Beach Bunnies (1976).
Their first collaboration, Orgy of the Dead (1965), has been rediscovered and is now seen as a camp classic. This unique "nudie-horror" film features Criswell (from Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space), a bevy of ghostly topless dancers, and even two whipping scenes. Three cast members from Motel Confidential (Bunny Glaser, Colleen O'Brien, and Barbara Norton) perform ghoulish dance routines in a misty graveyard.
DVD bonus feature
The Legend House DVD release of this film includes a number of bonus items including exploitation trailers and vintage nudie short subjects.
These Girls Are Fools (1956) is a remarkable 20-minute film about an innocent girl lured to Hollywood. After doing an "art film" with nudity and skinnydipping she is unable to get any more film offers and has to work as a nude model for trashy girlie magazines. Near the end, a photoshoot has her wrists bound, lash marks on her back, and a man menacing her with a whip. The basic story of corrupted innocence would be used in countless roughies in the following decade.
This film can be watched online at the Internet Archive