Presence of Jamie Gillis and Lisa de Leeuw in the cast of CHOCOLATE CREAM shows who rapidly the great ones fall in the porn industry, as this early entry in the new shot-on-video mixed combo genre is a disaster. A much better feature film with this title was made in Frisco in 1977, and both are on the same DVD from Alpha Blue Archives.
Video begins simply enough, with Gillis picking up Black hitchhiker Mauvais De Noire and ending up in bed with her. They discuss the concept of mixed-combo action and come up with the idea of starting a dating service named "Matching Colors" -the basic storyline could be remade today as a couple of techies creating a new app.
Their misadventures as incompetent owners of a start-up business haven't changed much in 30 years, but the video is poorly made and the comedy unfunny, nay amateurishly so. The running theme is rather insulting (it would be hard to imagine a comedienne pulling it off today), as Gillis never seems to have the service coordinated, so he basically pimps out his partner Ginger (Mauvais) every time to service some horny white male customer. Lisa de Leeuw is injected in the mix when Black customer Billy Dee requests a bossy white chick.
Farcical nature of the proceedings is completely mishandled in a key scene late in the picture when everyone starts complaining and a small bedroom (typically cheap set) fills up with people leading to a cramped orgy. Notions like blocking and camera angles seem foreign to the anonymous director of this nonsense, which won't give Alan Ayckbourn any ideas. By the way, it's even worse, within its XXX genre, than Alain Resnais' final dud of a movie based on Ayckbourn, LIFE OF RILEY.
Things get so bad at the end that Lisa looks at the camera, and says to us hapless audience members (at home, recall this is already a video rather than a movie): "What are you doing watching - you know that's gonna cost you extra!" As a final insult, the video ends with a wraparound plug for the Adult Video News, then in its fledgling "looks like a mimeographed fanzine" state, later to become a useless industry fixture that everyone seems to kowtow to in order to curry favor. Yuck!
