I reviewed this film elsewhere last year, both theatrically and on DVD, and it's still a quite recent release, but I thought I'd revisit it again since this non-fiction flick about the most financially successful independent movie of all time (if you want to really get down to it) is a transformative, engrossing overview of both a “dirty,” singular phenomenon and an entire era. Co-directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato — the team behind the equally revelatory The Eyes of Tammy Faye — Inside Deep Throat takes a look at the sexually explicit film that dragged pornography out into the light of day, and made both celebrities and then, in an instant, social pariahs of its two stars, Harry Reems and Linda Lovelace, né Linda Borman.



When it released in the summer of 1972 (back then, before VHS or DVD, adult movies still actually unspooled in seedy movie houses) Deep Throat touched off a public frenzy, largely because it was the first such mainstream depiction of its titular sex act. Downtown met uptown (Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and others) at screenings, and in a time when word-of-mouth (not a word, folks) could actually trump the niche-marketed dollars of Big Advertising, Deep Throat became a cross-cultural smash, at the same time unintentionally jumpstarting porn’s headlong dash from the alleys of art to the highway of money, much in the way that the success of Jaws and Star Wars refined conventional Hollywood release strategy.

Narrated in gravelly tones by Dennis Hopper and studded with interview clips from Norman Mailer, Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, Peter Bart, Erica Jong, Bill Maher, Wes Craven, Dr. Ruth, Camille Paglia, Dick Cavett and many others, Inside Deep Throat is on one hand an examination of the politics of suppression and reactionism. While neither Reems nor director Gerard Damiano fit the bill of someone who can nobly wrap themselves in the Bill of Rights, that is of course the very point of the protections that document provides, and it’s hard to believe — and scary to think about — the fact that both faced the possibility of serious jail time not more than a couple of decades ago for doing (and watching) things that consenting adults across the United States do on a daily basis. While not artistically uncompromising First Amendment revolutionaries, they win our sympathy because of their sins, not in spite of them.

The film is also funny and at times darkly foreboding, though, as it details where the money from the film went (the Mob) and the sad postscript of Lovelace, who became an anti-porn crusader and rape activist before dipping into drug abuse. Also featured is a digressive sequence where a cuckolded old exhibitor’s wife repeatedly berates him for sharing too much information. It’s nothing more than a side serving, but certainly a glancingly hilarious one.