Mona: The Virgin Nymph

Mona the Virgin Nymph was the first pornographic film to receive a full theatrical in America in 1970. While it may not have earned the recognition and merited the cult impact of Debbie Does Dallas and Deep Throat, Mona paved the way for a great deal of contemporaries, many of which, admittedly, of better quality, and was a landmark film in defeating America's tight grip on pornographic and "obscene" content.

Had it not been for this tidbit of information, I'd say Mona the Virgin Nymph wouldn't be remembered for much else other than an earlier, shoddy American pornographic film. The film is a sloppy, third-rate production all around, with a bare bones plot and scuzzy sex scenes that can barely pass for entertainment, let alone being watchable. The pale plot revolves around Mona (Fifi Watson), a young woman who is about to marry her finacee Jim (Orrin North), but makes the promise to her mother (Judy Angel) that she will not engage in sexual intercourse until they are married. Mona's mother didn't have sex until she married Mona's now late father, so she expects the same good will of her daughter. This makes Jim antsy, desperately wanting to make love with his beautiful fiancée. However, Mona isn't totally inexperienced sexually, for she has a fascination and a passion for fellatios. She winds up frequenting alleys, movie theaters, and a wide variety of places to perform blowjobs on random men, keeping this a secret from her fiancée and mother.

Mona the Virgin Nymph's basic plot doesn't allow for the guilty arousal and deep-rooted ideas of Taboo to play out, the wit of Deep Throat that wound up being just as memorable as the sex scenes, nor does it have the same kind of arousing sex scenes as Debbie Does Dallas. For being a pioneer, Mona's simplicity doesn't allow for much of a cultural impact, or even an impact on its field, because of how generic everything about it is. It's low-grade videography give the film a dreary sepia toned hue, and the sex scenes are more often than not shot with extreme close-ups, with little concern for space or atmosphere.

Then there's the fact that the sex scenes occur with five minutes, give or take, between each one. During this downtime, we get little sense of the characters and aren't given much of anything other than cheap dialog to sneer at. Films of The Golden Age of Porn proved that sex can have plots, both fairly simple and subversive, yet still succeed in being arousing motion pictures. Mona, however, gets so simple that it winds up being forgettable almost instantaneously after it concludes. It has to be the least impacting pioneer in any field that I have yet to come across.

Starring: Fifi Watson, Judy Angel, and Orrin North. Directed by: Michael Benveniste and Howard Ziehm.

As it turns out, the makers of the legendary "Flesh Gordon" were also the makers of the first-ever theatrical hardcore feature. What's fascinating is that the genre has really not fundamentally progressed one inch past what they do here. Oh, some of the details may have changed, but we still get about fifteen seconds of plot every ten minutes, interspersed with the predictable carnal content. Which isn't bad, actually, and the plot stuff is better: charmingly forthright and silly. Admittedly the dominant image I'm carrying around afterward is of the unremitting full-screen vaginal closeups - probably because I saw it in a theatre; web porn has nothing on this scale of spectacle, not to mention the social component of watching it with a roomful of skeptical youngish middle-class types. (And let's not forget the peppy harmonica that accompanies these images on the soundtrack!) It's not particularly cool that the brief incest scene is played for titillation before it rotates into light irony. But for the most part this story of people of various ages and genders seeking out their various sexual relations strikes me as a positive statement, in its severely limited way. It looks like they're having a lot of fun!

Thing that I like- and older porn flicks are known for, is that they are made with some class and at least some effort got put into its originality. Besides, they often feature a real story and got put together by people with an obvious passion and interest for film-making. This often resulted in some great and classic genre movies, which mostly came from the '70's and '80's. Movies with a good look to them and some true originality. None of that really goes for this movie though.

This movie is also often regarded as part of the whole porno chic movement but quite frankly I don't see why. It's just as silly and bad in its buildup as a modern porn flick for instance and most certainly doesn't have a good or professional look to it.

It has an incredible cheap look and at times the sound just simply cuts off. Really not all that pleasant to watch. It still uses some good extreme closeups though, which I thought was a nice touch.

You could say that it attempts to have a story in it but it's just one of those stories that serves as an excuses to have sex scenes rapidly following up on each other. It still feels very random though, even while it's all being connected through its story. Of course nothing convincing or realistic about this movie but hey, that most of the time isn't anything people are looking for in an adult movie anyway.

The sex scenes themselves really aren't anything special neither though, in my opinion. Even though this definitely is a hardcore flick, it's still nothing all that graphic really. It just isn't filmed all that well and at times you can't really tell what's happening. You could say that the movie only truly gets graphic with its extreme closeups but there are only just a handful of moments in this movie.

It's of course also incredibly painful to see people trying to act in this. It's all truly bad and it's not hard to see why these people were in the adult business, as opposed to being in the 'true' movie business.

Most definitely not the best or most fun the genre has to offer, not even if you're into this, classic, old fashioned, genre stuff.

4/10

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