I didn't like this vintage porn movie at first viewing, but returning to it recently, via an Alpha Blue Archives 3-fer that used a scratchy, well-worn print for telecine transfer, I was impressed. Also, the director was identified to be star Joey Silvera, in the interim.
Shot and set in San Francisco, this is a slice of life movie, shot in a rough and ready fashion but clearly a personal statement by the prolific actor. Unlike his recent scores of hundreds of fetish videos as a director (specializing in and nearly dominating the field of transsexual ladies having sex), this one packs a wallop.
Joey plays an alternate version of himself: an aimless porn model who fills in for $150 fee when an Adult director needs to replace a violent actor (Paul Scharf, quite convincing) in order to complete his latest low-budget opus. Joey fills in and delivers the money shot on cue after humping the leading lady in a bath tub scene, right after we've watched him cum on his beautiful girlfriend Linda Wong's posterior off-set.
The picaresque tale has him quite improbably teaming up with Scarf, at latter's beligerent haranguing him for a night on the town, first getting tossed out of a strip joint for drunken behavior. Scarf impulsively takes Joey into a laundromat to rape Candida Royalle, who merely wants to wash & dry her laundry, in a rough, quite vividly directed violent sex scene. Joey doesn't go through with the rape, leaving Scarf to deflower Candida after assisting him in corraling her.
At an all-night diner he is picked up by Leslie Bovee, who takes him home with her for some sex, interrupted by the arrival of her husband John Leslie (with hair greyed by the makeup lady at the temples to make him look older than the rest of the cast). They turn out to be a couple of swingers, and Joey enjoys some kinky sex at their behest.
While he's away Wong has been enjoying lesbian sex with Annette Haven (this is truly an all-star cast of its day), and Joey gets to hump Linda again the next morning on his return. The meaning of life comes up in their conversation, and protesting that sex is his preoccupation (and occupation), Joey ends by saying "What else is there?". The camera executes a fake crane shot up from their window to observe the panorama of Frisco from the rooftop, concluding the movie on an existential note.
For me this is particularly interesting, since I consider Adult Cinema as part of a continuum extending from the mainstream of movies, and for all its crudity and arbitrary structure, "Easy Alice" falls neatly in the wake of quality American films of the early '70s directed by Hal Ashby and Bob Rafelson.
Title is a cryptic catch phrase I'm not familiar with, stated by Scharf from his convertible early in the film when he's trying to convince Joey to go bar-hopping with him: "What's the matter, ain't Easy Alice going to pick you up tonight?".
