Troma is known for its steady stream of low-grade films over 4 decades in business, helping to foster the ridiculous "so bad it's good" movement favored by some ill-informed film buffs. But the company's roots are in pornography, of which SECRET DREAMS OF MONA Q is an above-average specimen.
Starring the beautiful (and under-appreciated) Monique Cardin and talented Wade Nichols, it is a free-form fantasy directed by Charles Kaufman and photographed by his brother and Troma chieftain Lloyd Kaufman with attention to detail generally absent from their later non- X-rated product.
Nichols plays a dull husband, typified by a CITIZEN KANE inspired recurring dinner table scene (with sepia tint to distinguish it from the sex stagings) where he's irritatingly slurping oysters and inexplicably ignoring his stunning wife Mona. Most of the film consists of her sexual daydreams, well-staged and imaginatively shot by Lloyd.
Prologue is set in a forest where various couples, including uncredited but major contributor Sharon Mitchell doing her lesbian thing plus a satyr, are humping to the accompaniment of romantic classical music.
Among Mona's dreams is an interesting wish-fulfillment where she's chief executive of a firm, lording it over her hubby, alternately putting him in bondage or servicing him. She also masturbates with a huge ribbed dildo here, all with wailing saxophone music playing. Another lover's lane fantasy has a novelty song "I'm gonna f**k you till you die" on the soundtrack.
But the best sequence is Wade's fantasy of girls tending to his every need in the office, nude and fitted out comically with gag devices making one a human lamp (guess where the on/off pull-chord is located) and another a human water cooler (again obvious where the spout for filling Dixie cups is situated). Wade signs a series of documents by shooting (off-screen FX) cum on each page instead of his signature. This imaginative low-humor sequence is a classic.
Cardin, who I've watched recently in minor assignments in films like BABY ROSEMARY and SENSUAL ENCOUNTERS OF EVERY KIND, is given her best showcase here and is terrific. One wishes the Troma brothers had stuck to porn, but they took the anti-creative schlock route instead.
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