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The Pamela Principle

The Pamela Principle

Released Jan 31st, 1993
Running Time 96
Director Toby Phillips
Company Imperial Entertainment
Cast Troy Donahue, Frank Pesce, Shelby Lane, Veronica Cash
Critical Rating Not Yet Rated
Genre Alternative

Rating


Reviews

Ironically, Greg Dark, known to adult film fans as the progenitor of some of the sleaziest and most eccentric adult films ever made, is now producing and directing the best alternative adult film product on the straight-to-video market. Many of Dark's projects (including Animal Instincts) have been reviewed on these pages in recent months, but The Pamela Principle leads the way as the best of the current crop.

The alternative market simply doesn't get any better than this. The Pamela Principle is the perfect sex fantasy. It features gorgeous people (if you love blondes, this film is the motherlode of nubile bodies), an encyclopedia of screen sex tease, tons of female nudity, erotic body gropings, and a plot that's absolutely plausible. In fact, it's a situation that's probably happened to more men who have hit the "middle age crazies" than not.

Carl Breeding (J.K. Dumont) is a dress designer whose beautiful blonde wife (Shelby Lane) has a habit of rolling over and playing dead every time Carl wants to get frisky. This, of course, doesn't stop Lane from walking around naked or semi-naked every time she's in camera frame. Lane is the kind of woman that makes Shannon Tweed look like a tweed coat.

Carl kind of reminds you of "Married....with Children's" Ted McGinley playing Chew Chase's Clark W. Griswald with a Richard Widmark accent. Nice-looking guy, but you want to hit Carl on the head with a blunt object especially for his whining obsession over It's A Wonderful Life.

Speaking of which, the story takes place during Christmas, the season for contemplated suicides. Well, it doesn't go quite to that extreme here, but busted relationships do take their toll on the human psyche, and Carl begins having an affair with an equally zowie blonde customer named Pamela (Veronica Cash). Carl leaves his wife and moves in with twenty-ish Pamela to discover that the grass is a lot blacker on the other side of the fence, and the generation gap too vast a pasture to graze on. Pamela is a partying kind of babe, and Carl wants to stick to Jimmy Stewart family values. So why did he leave his wife, you ask? Don't ask.

There's more skin per minute in The Pamela Principle than any other film of its kind that I can recall. Cash and Lane are wonderful choices for their roles (also, look for K.C. Williams and Kym Wilde in cameos), and, fortunately, the script doesn't try to get too heavy or introspective. It's satisfied to play for the gratuitous erotic value, which should please video voyeurs immensely.

Carl learns quite starkly that beautiful young women are but ephemeral bursts of a bubble in an older man's life. Enjoy them while ye may. Sigh.

Note: There are two versions of The Pamela Principle available, the "R" rated and the "unrated". This review is based on the unrated version.



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