User Reviews

Vivid Video director Paul Thomas seemed to know what he wanted to accomplish with this film, and for the most part he succeeded. Some of the sex scenes were too dark and detracted from the warmer and more humorous parts in the film, but still well-done for an adult feature. One of Vivid Video's more watchable titles with adequate production values, acting, writing, and directing.

Paul Thomas' "Bobby Sox", shot on film (like John Leslie's excellent "Dog Walker) stars Jamie Gillis, who won Best Actor for his performance, as a washed up alcoholic actor making a comeback in "My Alien My Love" playing in a small town theater for a week. While there, he comes across a young woman Sheri (Nikki Tyler) having problems with her boyfriend (Steven St. Croix) while Gillis himself becomes involved with Sheri's mother (played by Shanna McCullough, who also won an award) all leading to a satisfying, if predictable ending. By far, the best film Paul Thomas has ever done, followed closely by "The Masseuse" and "Enchantress". Also features the sexy Chloe in her heyday.

A great movie. No question about it. Nikki Tyler steals the show everytime she is on screen. One of the first adult films I saw that actually had quality to it. My first adult film star crush came when in an early scene where I saw a young blonde by the name of Jenteal. A good adult actress and even though she didnt have any other scenes in the movie she played a big part in it. Nikki by far though was the top blonde. A killer body with extreme talent. Chloe has a couple of good scenes too.

Beyond the ridiculous 6 awards and big-deal promotion, Paul Thomas's "Bobby Sox" is a very slight feature film, hardly figuring with his best work as some IMDbers contend. It's the stuff that "overrated" is made of.

For starters, the award given to vet Jamie Gillis is absurd, as he brings little to his stereotyped role as a washed-up movie star, now an alcoholic out on the road to do ballyhoo for a crummy monster movie (he plays the monster yet) accompanied by his handler, Jon Dough. Dough's performance is even worse, as he recites his dialog as if under protest and is just as stereotypical as Jamie, playing the one-note womanizer.

Small-town setting might have made for some interesting Americana, one of my favorite Adult genres (see instead Red Ezra's or Brad Armstrong's or Michael Raven's features in that vein, like "Roadblock", "Crossroads" and "Adrenaline"), but PT and his talented scripter Raven Touchstone settle instead for the requisite sex plus some in-jokes about their profession. Shanna McCullough is a welcome sight as the local movie house owner sponsoring the promotion, with Jamie & Jon casting some local gal to help promote the opening of their picture for a 2-week run. Again, this plot line should have generated some interesting material for genre movie fans closer to the mainstream than XXX, as in the roadshow and huckster approach that typified exploitation movies in the golden age of the '30s, '40s and '50s.

Star Nikki Tyler as Shanna's busty blonde daughter (no family resemblance whatsoever, and looking way too old & mature to be Shanna's offspring -SM being 35 years old at time of filming) is okay in the tease and humping department, but lacks jail-bait potential. She's the choice for the "damsel in distress" as drunken Jamie in his monster costume pretends to grab her and carry her off while the townsfolk laugh at his slapstick moves, unable to properly lift the hefty young gal off Terra Firma.

Her boyfriend, yet another stereotype as Steven St. Croix is less incisive than usual as a James Dean in leather jacket styled j.d., is quite possessive, and concocts a plot to get Jamie in trouble as his response to Nikki dallying with the old guy. He enlists a well-cast Chloe (who at age 24 really looks like a nubile teen) as "team mascot" in a dumb plot to fake C's kidnapping, blame it on Jamie and get him thrown into the hoosegow. Just as silly, Nikki and the local soda jerk Bobby Vitale hatch an instant plot to spring Jamie, using buxom Kimberly Kummings to divert cops T.T. Boy and Jay Ashley while they whisk away Jamie to safety. He holes up, vodka bottle ever in hand, at Shanna's home, and PT has diverting kink content of Gillis trying on Shanna's clothing and then becoming a willing sub as she whips him and indulges herself in some S&M.

Shooting in 35mm and on a week-plus schedule gives the film some quality, but it really doesn't amount to anything. Chloe is clearly far more talented and appropriate to the show than leading lady Tyler, and Vivid has one of its famous contract girls, Jenteal, thrown into the mix for a casting-couch style three-way with Dough and the distinctive looking Chelsea Blue.

Worst bit of inside-stuff, inaccurate at the time and hopelessly dated/misleading now, has Nikki in charge of mom's movie theater, showing Vitale (her real-life husband) unused 35mm projectors, noting that they only use tape now for projection. This is a mainstream movie theater, not a porn house, so that notion is way off-base, and merely tossed in so that PT can have her switching the current film in progress to a videotape of his "Blonde Justice Part Two" starring Janine, which is on screen in the background as Nikki and Bobby hump in the audience, for voyeurs to watch and jerk off to. This mish-mash of a scene plays stupidly just as sex filler and nothing more, but utterly confuses the history of film exhibition, with mainstream cinema houses switching over to digital projection a decade or so later in the 21st Century, never stooping to VHS video like the adult houses did back around 1983.