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.