Bible! (Wakefield Poole, 1974)

I greatly admire Wakefield Poole and his place in hardcore porn history. And I'm glad, nay, overjoyed a film as recondite as Bible! exists. But it's far more pleasurable to ponder than to actually sit through.

Poole is best known for Boys in the Sand (1971), the earliest gay hardcore feature success. According to Jeffrey Escoffier, it was the first porn film of any kind reviewed in Variety. Bible! is a softcore heterosexual feature consisting of three stories from the good book: Adam and Eve, David and Bathsheba, and Samson and Delilah. Why it received a X rating is beyond me. There are no meat or money shots and no tumescent penises that I could determine. Apart from one line uttered by Eve, there's no dialogue either. The soundtrack consists mostly of classical music. And the entire project was clearly an attempt to capture an even wider mainstream audience. 

But it comes off as a failed art movie instead, quite possibly American hardcore porn's first film maudit. The Adam and Eve section is punishingly dull, the comedic David and Bathsheba sequence painfully unfunny. Poole intended an Orson Welles homage in the latter story (at least in one shot). But the result is more Benny Hill than Citizen Kane. The Samson and Delilah chunk works best because it's the closest to pretentious art cinema, with Felliniesque creatures and abstract sets. But it's impossible to shake the feeling that all this posing is the end product of someone aiming way too high. 

Still, Bible! is one of cinema's most inconsumable objects - too soft for the hardcore crowd, too middlebrow for the art crowd, too dull for the camp queens. In fact, I'm not even sure it's camp at all except insofar as what I like is camp and what you like is kitsch (check out the screen grab below and judge for yourself). Needless to say, the film was a gargantuan flop which presumably taught Poole not to spend a reported $100,000 on location shooting and intriguing costumes. But any time someone hoists a flag for this impossible thing, I'll be there to salute it.

Grade: B-minus