Revisionism of porn history is well underway, and one of the casualties thus far seems to be Gerard Damiano. After his string of arguably the most successful and influential porn films of all time directed in the early 1970s, his later output has been cast by the wayside unfairly, while many hacks who were his contemporaries (I won't name them or IMDb will call this review abusive and drop it) have been elevated to pantheon status.
BEYOND YOUR WILDEST DREAMS bears a 1980 copyright and is among GD's most pretentious films. It was shot in Frisco, giving it a different feel than his East Coast work, but still bears many of the master's trademarks, thanks to using his great d.p. Joao Fernandes (Harry Flecks).
Aunt Peg (aka Juliet Anderson) is excellent in the leading role as a posh lady, speaking in affected manner, who with confidante Aaron Stuart lords it over a coterie of shallow, vaguely jet-set (porno division) people reeking of decadence and boredom. Carefully built up atmosphere combined with cryptic characterizations (or lack of them) created for me an atmosphere on screen I had not seen since reading J.G. Ballard's wonderful but little-known short story collection "Vermillion Sands". Ballard isn't writing his usual science fiction here, but rather one of his post-modern visions of a used-up human race going through the motions of still being alive - oh so civilized.
Well, Kubrick for some reason never got into Ballard, filming Clarke and Burgess instead, so I give Damiano credit for making the equation between genteel decadence (what on screen is often associated with Colonial Brits, like those stationed in India before independence) and sex. That makes BEYOND closer to Radley Metzger's masterworks than GD's prior purple- prose porn.
Chief protagonist is Jon Martin, who has fallen under Juliet's sway and is subjected to frequently cryptic hints as to what's going on by her amanuensis Stuart. It is difficult to discuss the film at all without spoiling the surprise, but essentially the film's dream-like mood and detail hints at what reality is all about for this large cast of characters.
Best roles go to Lysa Thatcher, emerging as among the most interesting actresses of the Porno Chic era -cast here as Juliet's maid and as sexy as can be; Blair Harris as a typical chauvinist stud and Mai Lin dominating the screen in her usual uninhibited manner. For literary fans the key to unlocking Damiano's mystery (I like to think he knew the novel but chances are slim) is E.R. Eddison's brilliant fantasy novel A FISH DINNER IN MEMISON, well- read back in the '60s (not just by me!) when Ballantine Books cashed in on the success of LORD OF THE RINGS by bringing back into print scores of other adult fantasy classics.
Of the film's many imaginative sex tableaux one sequence has Damiano experimenting (he and his wife are the editors as usual) with fast cutting of blow jobs in an accelerating fashion leading to a parade of money shots that is just one more innovation in a career marked by them. Other than Warhol (still unsung for his virtually inventing the format and structures of modern porn with his '60s experiments) Damiano created most of what fans of the Golden Age take for granted in quality porn films. I guess Warhol is responsible for the low-end with his demonstration that technique doesn't matter and his emphasis upon static camera and improvisation/confrontation in presenting minimal story/dialog set-ups for sex.
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