– XXX is Celluloid Dimension’s latest weekly column featuring the hottest and naughtiest side of cinema. –
Directed by Jim Clark
Written by Maria Minestra
Starring:
- Bambi Woods as Debbie Benton
- Robert Kerman as Mr. Greenfeld
- Christie Ford (as Misty Winter) as Roberta
- Robyn Byrd as as Mrs. Hardwick
Rating: 
Blonde bimbo cheerleader Debbie (Bambi Woods) wants to be a “Texas Cowgirl”; she’s charismatic and vivacious, has plenty of athletic talent but lacks money. And to pursue her dreams in Dallas she needs dough. Her high school cheerleader besties decide to get part-time jobs to raise money to help her and accompany her friend to Texas. High school girls teaming up to thrive and getting what they want is the premise of this saucy porno directed by Jim Buckley (as Jim Clark).
Unprejudiced sexual emancipation and 70’s feminist ethos pose nicely as the core philosophy of these cheerleader girls determined to get money just for the sake of sisterhood. Each female character gets a job that serves as the ideal insinuating frame that will inevitably segue into a gleefully kinky scenario. Their employers are all men, some young, some mature, some just plain old creepy. All equally nasty and want only one thing from these naughty girls. But Debbie and her perky squad of cheerleaders are no prudes either, and if these sleazeballs take advantage of them, then they’ll certainly take advantage of these dudes’ over-stimulated macho psyche horniness as well. Among these pervs is vigorous porn stud Robert Kerman playing a sports paraphernalia owner who is stupefied at the sight of Debbie’s large mammaries visible through her immodestly tight crop top. Long before Robert Kerman became one of the icons of Italian cannibal cinema, he was one of those hairy virile dudes you’d find on the grungy screens of the Pussycat theaters on Santa Monica Blvd. or some Grindhouse theater on 42nd Street in NYC during the ’70s. He is downright hilarious in Debbie Does Dallas playing a desperate deviant who possesses an uncommonly pornographic imagination. He bids Debbie 10 bucks to see her boobs, then another 10 bucks to fondle them and then 20 bucks to taste them. Every dollar for Debbie is one step closer to her golden ticket to Texas. Her friends do their thing too, with their carnal prowess, cajoling all types of men who think first with their peckers, then with their guts, and rarely with their brains.
It’s an adult romp made with the raunchy ideals that every movie from the golden age of porn should embrace. Not for nothing is Debbie Does Dallas regarded as one of the quintessential porno chic pictures, it’s arguably one of the finest because it doesn’t turn the salacious proceedings into an onerous task for either the filmmakers or the audience, it’s a depraved screwball comedy that oozes mirth and exuberance courtesy of the effervescently lousy performances but vigorous sexploits on permanent display as seen through Jim Buckley’s ludic camera. Watching it is a fun, snappy and tacky experience, but then mulling over what you’ve seen makes it all the more fucked up as you spell out the depravity. The main characters are supposed to be 16-year-old girls screwing adult guys; of course all the porn stars are legal age, but the pseudo-precocious acting and infantile mannerisms render the whole affair inescapably tasteless. However, seen from the farcical perspective and as a freewheeling provocation typical of the period in which it was made and released, this scabrous circumstance only enhances its mythology as one of the most influential of all the porn movies of the golden era. And there is nothing more mythological in the sleazy realm of pornography than the perennially disappeared since the mid 80’s, the enigmatic porn star Bambi Woods, who plays the eponymous idealist of this film. Bambi Woods is the frisky heart and soul of Debbie Does Dallas and although she is not a competent actress in the conservative definition of the word, under the low standards of her milieu, she is a lovely, charming starlet, with as many comedic chops as any other pro comedienne out there. She’s the kind of actress that turns composure into full-blown frenzy, and that’s precisely the essence of this twisted porn comedy.
Jim Buckley’s Debbie Does Dallas may have shallow pretensions to capturing the prurient sexual ecstasy of its self-assured female leads as a facile attempt at 1970s liberalism and feminist politics, but it’s still ecstatic stuff with equally ecstatic stars caught in over-the-top thrilling affairs that seeks to amuse in the most scandalous fashion imaginable. And I think that’s more than enough to make its salacious filmmaking a lurid but jocular entertainment all the same.
