A dispatch from the Weird Porno category, worthy of being classified alongside other 1970s adult movie oddities like THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS and F…AND LOTS OF IT! SODOM AND GOMORRAH: THE LAST SEVEN DAYS hails from 1975, and was made by the notorious porn-meisters James and Artie Mitchell. The Mitchells’ history is, frankly, much more interesting than their cinematic output (see the well-received Mitchell Bros. biographies X-RATED by David McCumber and BOTTOM FEEDERS by John Hubner, and the Emilio Estevez directed cable TV adaptation of the former), and certainly more so than SODOM AND GOMORRAH: THE LAST SEVEN DAYS
In the mid-1970s the brothers were coming off BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR (1972), their biggest-ever success, and did what successful auteurs often do: they indulged themselves to the fullest on an ill-conceived and vastly over-expensive (a reported $750,000 was expended, as opposed to the $60,000 spent on BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR) follow-up. With this film James Mitchell apparently sought to become the “Cecil B. DeMille of porn” (and indeed, the finished product was equivalent to DeMille at his crappiest), but its failure largely scuttled the Mitchells’ filmmaking ambitions.
The odd three-pronged opening gives a good idea of what to expect. We begin in outer space, over which a narrator intones “spaceman, nature’s clubfoot, ruthless spoiler of the landscape!,” then cut to an obscenity trial in which a poorly played judge proclaims that the Mitchell Brothers’ films “would have been considered obscene by the community standards of Sodom and Gomorrah,” and then to “Near Sodom” (actually Castro Valley, CA) in “1980 B.C.” We’re introduced to Lot, a modest fellow who decides to settle near Sodom, apparently a “decent place to raise a family.” Meanwhile a spaceship, whose crew includes a monkey who talks in a John Wayne voice, nears the Earth.
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame musician Mike Bloomfield scored the music. The movie is age restricted but the link below is actually just the theme song.
What follows is a great deal of pornographic silliness—a guy banging a woman in a tree dripping jizz on a passerby below, another guy masturbating while watching a couple get it on, a naked man and woman having some fun with a cucumber—as Lot and his family arrive in Sodom. Here, amid cardboard sets (and a cast that includes CRIMINALLY INSANE’S always-compelling Priscilla Alden), they’re confronted with mass orgies and depraved violence. Lot grows fed up and decides to leave, and that determination only increases when the aliens give word that they’re going to destroy the place.
Narrative-wise there’s very little here, and given the nature of the film we probably shouldn’t be too surprised (or disappointed) that an off-screen narrator is lazily utilized to fill in certain plot points. I think we can complain, though, about the indifferent filmmaking, littered with scenes that have a tendency to begin in pointed fashion only to grow increasingly incoherent, and also the “comedic” elements (porno comedy is among the most deadly in existence) and lackadaisically presented, unerotic eroticism (undertaken by extremely hairy performers).
There are some compelling moments here and there. A scene in the alien spaceship in which a man, desperate to copulate with a woman enclosed in a glass cage, frantically rubs his member against the glass definitely compels attention, as does the disturbing violence and torture of the climactic scenes. So the film may ultimately have some interest, but that doesn’t change the fact that, simply, it sucks.
Vital Statistics
SODOM AND GOMORRAH: THE LAST SEVEN DAYS
Cinema 7/Mitchell Brothers Film Group
Directors/Producers: Artie Mitchell, James Mitchell
Screenplay: Billy Boyer
Cinematography: Joe Fontana
Editing: E.E. “Russ” Mitchell
Cast: Thom Glardon, Raffles, Priscilla Alden, Tom Bowden, Sean Brancato, Deborah Brast, Jacquie Brodie, Stanley Kernel Cobb, Gina Fornelli, Giovanina, Tyler Reynolds, Will Jackson, Abe Kalish, Johnnie Keyes, Nina Laurie, Yank Levin, George S. McDonald, Robert Simon, Mark Us