It's a Code Red 35MM ALL NIGHT GRINDHOUSE MARATHON on Blu-ray with this two-disc set of rare sexploitation flicks.

In THE TALE OF THE DEAN'S WIFE, a gang of students leady by ascot-wearing Peter (Edward Blessington, CAGED MEN) have meetings in the woods, but the list of demands he has formulated to present to stuffy dean Calvin Walker (Roger Gentry, GALLERY OF HORRORS) takes a back seat to a love-in where partners are paired by lottery. Virtuous Martha (Prudence Smythe, THE HEAD MISTRESS) is with the group on the principle of student rights but holds a high opinion of her brother-in-law the Dean. Little does Martha know, however, that her respectable sister Grace (Luanne Roberts, THE AFFAIRS OF APHRODITE) is a swinger who feigns headaches to avoid sleeping with her husband and instead beds the male half of the student body when not engaged in Sapphic trysts with the Swedish maid Annabella (Lynn Lyon, THE PSYCHO LOVER). Grace initially has a change of heart for her husband when he masterfully stands up to Peter and the gang, but he is still just to square for her as he then slaps her around after she engages in an academic demonstration of sadomasochism with Calvin's colleague Professor Clove (THE LOVE BUTCHER himself James Lemp) and his wife (Jeanette Mills, HER ODD TASTES). A spurned Peter decides to show the dean just how much of a deviant he is by spiking the man's drink with an LSD sugar cube and staging an orgy with blackmail photos taken by one of their own (Marland Procter, THE CUT-THROATS). In the aftermath, the compromised academic decides to blow his mind in an entirely different manner.

Blessed with an utterly saucy premise, THE TALE OF THE DEAN'S WIFE is alternately sleaze and as stodgy as the old dean. There's drugs, lesbianism, whipping, and plenty of bare breasts, but all of the sex scenes are laughably staged with the men in boxers and tighty-whities rolling around with the nude actresses while at pains to keep their groins apart. The behavior and hallucinations under the immediate influence of LSD also seem to come from a middle-aged imagination (men hallucinate in color tints with electronic music stingers while prim women turn into instant nymphomaniacs). One can imagine that a director like A.C. Stephen might have kept dialogue scenes equally static and bland but would at least create some heat during the sex scenes. This film was one-and-done for director Benjamin Onivas who may or may not be a pseudonymous identity for writer/producer L.K. Farbella (HOLLYWOOD BABLYON). The presence of cinematographer Henning Schellerup – who dabbled in both exploitation and sexploitation along with family-friendly documentary like many of his Sunn Classics colleagues – makes one wonder who else might have been working behind the scenes on this film. The basic plot suggests that the filmmakers might have seen the just-released college drug film MICROSCOPIC LIQUID SUBWAY TO OBLIVION in which a professor's unethical experiment to make a heroin-addicted student go straight results in the junkie targeting his wife (DEATH LAID AN EGG's Ewa Aulin, who also produced).

Released theatrically by Marvin Films (CINDY AND DONNA) and on VHS from Something Weird Video, THE TALE OF THE DEAN'S WIFE was first issued on DVD by Code Red in a different six-film DVD collection with MARK OF THE WITCH, ALL THE YOUNG WIVES, THE SWINGIN' PUSSYCATS, THE TONGFATHER, and CRYPT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Code Red's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen transfer sports some nice detail under some light green vertical scratches while some fading on the left side of the frame for minute or so after the credits is likely a light leak in the camera rather than fading. This version runs 62:15 while some editions ran roughly ten minutes longer. The first deletion includes two minutes of stock footage of a student protest followed by a presentation card before the title (the Code Red begins with the title) but the rest of the deletions seem to have been done to speed up the film, possibly for triple-billing as the explicitude of the sex scenes does not seem to have been toned down. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track has some audio splices but it does not appear as though anything more graphic was cut out compared to the longer version.

In THE VELVET TRAP, Julie (Jamie Karson) is a looker making a living in a roadside diner pouring coffee and getting ogled by the clientele. Her drunken short-order cook boss is jealous of every man who looks at her and accuses her of sleeping with them. When he rapes her, Julie flees into the arms of Brad (Alan Jeffory) a photographer who has been wanting her to pose for him. No sooner does he abruptly marry Julie and they head off to Vegas than he tricks her into doing a bikini photo shoot (when the non-existent model does not show up). On their wedding night, he also snaps some photos of her while she is showering and then runs off with all of her money in the morning. Julie pawns her wedding ring for $7.50 and buys a bus ticket but she is then robbed by a purse-snatcher. The man who comes to her aid (in league with the purse-snatcher we discover) offers her a ride and takes her to a desert bordello where she is forced into prostitution. And then her first client dies...

THE VELVET TRAP's femme-noir setting is a world where "love is the king of four letter words," and women do not so much "get what they deserve" for being tempting so much as they are assumed to be whores from the outset and the rightful prey of conniving men and complicit women. Without exception, the men in Julie's life use and abuse her for money and kicks. Things are grim and stay grim. Nudity is rather chaste for the most part. The shower scene is the film's big peek-a-boo moment in which what seems to be a hose sprays water onto a glass plate in front of the nude Julie who never seems to get wet. All of the interiors are transparently sets (very likely the same ones redressed) and while that means controlled lighting conditions resulting in a nice-looking film, the settings also lack a palpable squalidness and the lighting looks very much like a sixties TV show rather than the grim nudie noir piece it wants to be.

Released theatrically by Craddock Films (PASSION IN HOT HOLLOWS), THE VELVET TRAP was unavailable until Code Red released the film on a SATURN DRIVE-IN double feature with HOT NIGHTS ON THE CAMPUS. This appears to be the same great-looking source material with 1.33:1 pillarboxed credits and the rest of the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC encode framed at 1.78:1 widescreen. The film looks better than it deserves with a monochrome noir look giving a bit of luster to the sets and bodies while the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track sounds fairly clean. The title card appears to be newly-created with an artificial fade to black but there do not seem to be any alternate reissue titles in reference sources.

In HOT NIGHTS ON CAMPUS, country girl Sally (Gigi Darlene) heads to New York to start college. John, a friend of the family and professor at her college, has arranged for her to share a large apartment with several other girls. Sally quickly discovers that college parties are racier than anything she has ever encountered before as her roommates conduct an orgy in the middle of their apartment living room while she makes small talk with sensitive athlete Stan. John tells her that this is all part of growing up and that she will have to face it before putting the moves on her. Pretty soon Sally is seeing both John and Stan who separately meet her for encounters in the apartment that always seems conveniently empty despite the fact that five other girls live there. When Sally's funds run low, she models for a men's magazine and discovers that her attack of nausea is not from guilt. She is pregnant and she does not know whether John or Stan is the father (especially without Maury Povich's DNA paternity testing available).

While not as well-made as THE VELVET TRAP, HOT NIGHTS ON CAMPUS – which only ever shows us the same campus exterior and two blank walls for a classroom – is shot in real New York interiors and grabbed exteriors, and has more of a time-capsule quality to it. Star Gigi Darlene looks a bit like eighties Madonna (including the pointy bra) while the rest of the cast are generally attractive but not called on to do much emoting since the entire film is narrated ostensibly by the protagonist (with the exception of the opening narration by an authoritative male voice warning of the temptations to the youth who flock to college towns every year). Shot in 1966, the sex and nudity is still very much of the teasing variety but was probably quite surprising at the time and considered abundant by those standards. While the film alone might not make for the most stimulating viewing, intellectual or otherwise, HOT NIGHTS ON CAMPUS works well as a co-feature (and it probably was when shown back in 1966). Director Tony Orlando is not THE Tony Orlando but a sixties filmmaker with three nudie features to his credit (including this one) and the cinematographer/editor was the prolific C. Davis Smith who collaborated on several works by prolific sixties female exploitation director Doris Wishman who also utilized narration and entirely post-recorded dialogue with the camera never focusing on the mouths or sometimes even the faces of the actors during spoken exchanges.

HOT NIGHTS ON THE CAMPUS was shot mostly on location and in a more careless manner compared to the prior film and the print source (not claimed to be HD-mastered) is in the condition one would expect for this type of film and for its age. There is some fading, a lot of vertical lines, a lot of grain, some damaged frames which cause jump cuts, but the interior shots always look considerably cleaner and clearer than the grabbed exteriors. The image is anamorphic but interlaced which is annoying with the abundance of handheld camerawork (the 1.78:1 matting looks okay). Audio has its share of noise but the narration and music (there is no actual synchronized spoken dialogue) are always audible. Since both films amount to just under 150 minutes and there are not extras (and only one menu screen), the compression on the singe-layer disc seems fine (I doubt a higher bitrate would make HOT NIGHTS ON CAMPUS look any better but a progressive transfer might have improved things).

In Joseph W. Sarno's MARCY, Marcy Wiggins (THE ULTIMATE DEGENERATE's Uta Erickson, billed as "Artemida Diannini") has lived alone on her father’s sprawling farm, and her decision to take in female companion June Rutland (Sheila Britt, LUSTING HOURS) sparks rumors of lesbianism among the narrow-minded locals. Still jealous of her husband Dalton’s (THE SEX CYCLE's Nick Linkov, billed as "Nick Dundas") teenage romance with Marcy, Sharon Christie (Barbara Lance, THE ODD TRIANGLE) brings up the rumor to needle him, but this has the opposite effect on Dalton who finds himself reconnecting with Marcy. Although Marcy and June are prone to tickling and wrestling with each other in the grass, neither seems to actually be entertaining lesbian thoughts; in fact, while Marcy is off wandering in the woods, June puts the moves on handyman Will (Alex Mann, MALIBU HIGH). It is not until the Christie’s housekeeper Carrie Sue (Linda Boyce, THE AMAZING TRANSPLANT) asks June about what lesbians do that June decides that she herself is interested in Marcy (after practicing with Carrie Sue, of course). Sharon finds the rumors of Marcy’s lesbianism comforting and now believes that Dalton wanders the hills for love of the land, but that doesn’t stop her from sleeping with Carrie Sue’s handyman husband Norbert (Aron Green, FLESH AND LACE). Marcy and Dalton rekindle their relationship in a cheap motel, but they realize that they cannot run away from their responsibilities. When June decides to seduce Marcy into a threesome with Carrie Sue, Marcy must choose between exploring her sexuality and a secret relationship with a married man.

How times have changed. In a film nowadays, a guy might take a new interest in an old flame because of her possible lesbianism rather than to dispel the rumor. MARCY was distributed by J.E.R. Pictures in 1970 and, unlike some of their other releases, had not been rescued by Something Weird Video. An early Eastman Color Joseph Sarno outing, it is neither one of his best nor one of his worst works. Flesh aficionados may be disappointed by the sparing display of it onscreen (the sex scenes are quite short for a Sarno film), and the pacing is not so much pondering as ponderous. Most of Sarno’s films feature minimalist music scores, but this one just seems cheap. Although his interiors still frame many of the erotic scenes in shafts of light – as in his black and white films – and there are plenty of scenes of characters in foreground staring off past the camera while another character needles them over their shoulder, many of the handheld exteriors look amateurish with shaky camerawork (there are, however, a couple nice exterior setups). Marcy is a far less interesting character than any of the other three females, and the screenplay does not quite make good on the poster’s boasts of “a woman forced by cruel rumor to choose between two worlds” and “A totally new, totally real experience in the exploration of human emotions, passions, and desires!” Much more impressive than the film itself, are the CV’s of its cast. Several of the cast members could be termed Sarno regulars – at least of this period – with Erickson, Boyce, Mann, and Green all having previously appeared in PASSION IN HOT HOLLOWS but also having worked with the likes of Michael and Robert Findlay, Barry Mahon, Joseph P. Mawra, Doris Wishman, C. Davis Smith, and the Amero brothers.

Released earlier in the decade on DVD by Code Red under its Deweyvision sublabel, MARCY comes to 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen in pretty much the same condition with continuous vertical lime-green scratches, damaged reel change points, audio drop-outs (some muffled dialogue seems to originate with the mix since the music and effects sound just fine during these parts), and much murk in some of the tinted sex scenes (the sort of condition seen on some of Image/SWV bonus features). Since the film was transferred from the only known surviving print source, it was either this or nothing. The DVD was accompanied by an audio commentary by adult filmmaker Gino Colbert which has not been carried over here.

The other two features on the second disc (a BD25) are in standard definition. In SEX AND THE COLLEGE GIRL, Larry (RYAN'S HOPE's John Gabriel) is a cabana club lounge lizard in Puerto Rico who performs by night, romances girls after midnight, and crashes on beach chairs in the morning since his room is currently being occupied by best bud Bob (Charles Grodin, BEETHOVEN), a sad sack who has been convinced a tropical change of scenery would increase his chances with the ladies. Although John is casually seeing infatuated model Vickie (Valora Noland, UP YOUR TEDDY BEAR) and another girl for the use of her sports car, he has become hung up on vacationing college girl Gwen (Luana Anders, DEMENTIA 13) and has been trying to fob off her roommate Susan (MATLOCK's Julie Sommars) onto Bob. Since Larry only visits his construction company owner father Devon, (Richard Arlen, ISLAND OF LOST SOULS) when he needs money, he worries that his son's musical career is just another thing he has started but will not finish in pursuit of the opposite sex. As the girls' vacation comes to a close, Susan worries that she has lost Bob's respect by sleeping with her – although he always wears that hangdog expression – while Gwen grows tired of Larry's jealousy towards anyone flirting with her while chasing other pretty girls. Will Larry grow up or fall back on his old behaviors.

Released in 1970 but produced in 1964, SEX AND THE COLLEGE GIRL may deliver on the goods it would have been expected to in the early sixties but it certainly would have seemed incredibly tame in the seventies (or even the late sixties). The film's morality with regard to Susan putting out dates it terribly next to any other film from 1970 onwards about vacationing college girls, an seems to have been mounted as a low budget answer to the AIP beach movies with cinematographer Floyd Crosby (THE HAUNTED PALACE) photographing while his key grip Charles Hanawalt served as production manager (he was also associate producer on Monty Helman's Roger Corman ventures) as a vehicle for Gabriel who wrote the lyrics to his songs. Gabriel went onto a career in episodic television with a couple other feature film side ventures like Al Adamson's HELL'S BLOODY DEVILS for which he also wrote a song. Gabriel is a handsome actor but his character is utterly detestable throughout, eliciting no sympathy from the audience even though everyone who knows him calls him out on his character flaws which he also acknowledges. Anders and Arlen are sadly wasted while the subplot relationship with Sommars and Grodin is actually more interesting. Music supervisor/producer Robert N. Langworthy followed the film up with Albert T. Viola's A WOMAN IN LOVE and the sex comedy CRY YOUR PURPLE HEART OUT (which Code Red released on DVD under its reissue title HOW TO SCORE WITH GIRLS).

Long unavailable after its belated 1970 theatrical release, SEX AND THE COLLEGE GIRL comes to Blu-ray in a standard definition, anamorphic 1.78:1 MPEG-2 widescreen transfer of a very beat up element. The film seems complete with no splices but the image is almost constantly crawling with vertical and horizontal green scratches which settle down after the first minute or so of each reel but never truly leave the image. The Dolby Digital 2.0 mono track is also rife with surface noise but that does not detract from the dialogue or the godawful lounge songs.