-XXX is Celluloid Dimension’s naughty new column, exploring the wildest spectacles ever to heat up a screen-
Directed by John Amero and Lem Amero
Written by John Amero and Lem Amero
Starring:
- Uta Erickson as Ruth
- Darcy Brown as Fashion M.C. / Dancer / Announcer / Hardcore Inserts
- Chuck Federico as Guitarist
- Lydia Burns as Fag Hag
- Patricia Kleb as Louise
- Roberta Scardera as 1st Model
- Pat Agers as 2nd Model
- D.B. Brown as 3rd Model
- Bruce Michael as Mr. Benson
- Donny Lee as Go Go
- Richard Jennings as Timothy
- Bernice Turner as Mother
- Larue Watts as Dancer (as LaRue)
- Ron Babin as Man in Coffin / 2nd Bearer
- Roberta Findlay as 1st Mourner / Voice Overs (as Anna Riva)
- Steve Gould as 2nd Mourner
- Michael Findlay as 3rd Mourner / Timothy voice (as Robert West)
Release Date: June 3, 1970
Rating: 
Softcore sexploitation’s inevitable slide into hardcore opened new terrain for the roughie filmmakers, many of whom seized the XXX momentum as a natural extension of their underground ethos, marking the end of guerrilla-style monochrome sleaze while ushering in the raw, early explicit era that predated the self-conscious gloss of porno chic. The Amero brothers’ first skin film — created by roughie pioneers who worked hand in glove with the Findlays — stands as a practical benchmark for identifying when the transformation became undeniable: the movement from playful pretense to literal penetration, from staged orgasm to the now-mandatory visual proof of ejaculation: the money shot.
The offbeat Bacchanale marks the collision point between ’60s tease-heavy sexploitation and the blunt coital visibility of early ’70s porn, splashed with a surrealist flair that feels more downtown avant-garde than Times Square grindhouse. Picture Dante’s Inferno unfolding inside a NYC walk-up, where instead of descending neat metaphysical circles, you climb down fire escapes into progressively stranger chambers. The grand threshold of damnation becomes a rowdy apartment bash — fetish gear, naked bodies, flesh in abundance. Uta Erickson isn’t Dante, but as a certified darling of 1960s exploitation she hardly needs epic credentials, particularly with a shadowy guide in black leading her through the supposed abyss. Strip away the literary dressing and what you’re left with is a barrage of hardcore action dressed up as infernal allegory.
What the Ameros cook up is avant-garde porn with delusions of metaphysics, loosely hanging off the bones of the Italian narrative poem but fueled by mystical overtones that push it beyond garden-variety XXX sleaze. Their extravaganza runs on pure chromatic delirium, with those inexplicable, almost phantom-like color filters bleeding in and out depending on the emotional temperature, as if a silent-era melodrama got hijacked by a skin crew. From that alone, the dreamy, libidinous stretches slip into a full-on trance state — hypnotic but never dull — transforming the thin plot and barely-there logic into something that plays less like straight carnality and more like a sleazy spiritual trip.
Loaded with outlandish set pieces — sex in a fog-choked crypt, bodies writhing like they’ve wandered into a dime-store séance — and escalating into brazen perversity, including a dominant woman sodomizing a man inside a cavern dressed up as hell, the film recycles the core sexploitation DNA the Ameros practically codified in the 1960s, only now unleashing it inside the raw arena of 1970s smut. Add to that a distinctly homoerotic gaze, reflective of the brothers’ gay sensibilities, and the sensual spectrum widens considerably — remarkable considering this is their first plunge into hardcore. It may feel erratic, even gleefully absurd, but the ideas unravel with a mischievous, deviant vitality.
Frame by frame, it unspools like a confession booth for forbidden cravings, each image another flare of repression erupting into guilt and delicious turmoil. This isn’t about scrubbing away sin — it’s about diving into it, savoring the fall. Yet beneath the depravity lies a thread of awakening: a grappling with desire, with the hunger that drives it, whether society stamps it approved or obscene. If watching Uta Erickson stimulate a corpse in its coffin — complete with post-mortem ejaculation — doesn’t faze you, and if the twisted, dream-logic surrealism doesn’t throw you off balance, then Bacchanale stands as a dirty picture operating a notch above the usual mechanical choreography of skin flick convention.
When you’re dealing with incest, repression, nightmares, guilt, and raw desire — all building toward sapphic and homosexual sex drenched in blood-red visuals — the highbrow aspirations can feel a little overstated. Still, for a first plunge into porn by a pair of 1960s sexploitation provocateurs, the result crackles with the right kind of underground defiance.
