NAUGHTY
NETWORK (1981)Director: Howard Ziehm
Vinegar Syndrome
NAUGHTY
NETWORK (1981)Even porn channels scramble for ideas when sweeps month comes around in NAUGHTY NETWORK on DVD from Vinegar Syndrome.
Not content with the general success of his network, president Blackman (Harry Dreamz) wants to take on the major network and make adult programming number one in all timeslots. Executive Barry Hooper takes on the soap GENERAL HOSPITAL with "Genital Hospital" the pilot of which has patient Mike Ranger (TABOO) probed and probing his nurse (Nicole Black, PLEASURES OF A WOMAN). A gay executive (one "Pierre Phagaut") takes on "Wild Kingdom" with "Wild and Crazy Kingdom" in which a Penthouse pinup plays spread-eagled fly to another pet's predatory spider in a giant web. M*A*S*H meets T*R*A*SH when a sergeant (Kevin James, TABOO II) is sent to investigate the high recruiting figures coming out of Little Rock and is subjected to the particular screening methods of the local Lieutenant (Laurie Smith, MATINEE IDOL) and her willing Private (Plucky Reneé). Oddly enough, their approach to taking on "Hollywood Squares" is not a gameshow but classically-scored soft focus vignette in which a lonely woman (Penthouse's Delia Cosner) longs for her lost love, intercutting softcore sex and masturbation but failing to get the executives' juices flowing. DAYS OF OUR LIVES meets its match in "The Young and the Horny" in which "teenage" girls dreaming of the day when their princes will cum get an advanced education when Baby Sue Young pounces on salesman Ray Wells (Ray Wells, PULSATING FLESH).
Perhaps
the least imaginative and entertaining porn effort of Howard Ziehm (FLESH GORDON),
NAUGHTY NETWORK is crass, poorly (over)acted and badly-scripted with vignettes
of uneven quality. The "broad" comedy extends to a sponsorship add
for "Stinky Beans" with farts set alight and an "The End"
shot that would only get laughs from viewers too young to be watching it in
the first place. Ones "enjoyment" of the film is not at all helped
by the anamorphic 1.78:1 widescreen encode of the 2K scan of the original 35mm
camera negative which reveals that the film even at its best was harshly lit
and garish apart from the soft focus sequence with Cosner. The Dolby Digital
1.0 mono audio does what it can with the original audio mix in which music sometimes
overwhelms dialogue which itself can be recorded a bit hot. The sole extra is
the film's theatrical trailer (3:06).
(Eric Cotenas)