Matinee, Joe Dante's film about the barnstorming, tent hustling exploits of a monster movie promoter, provides grist for what must be considered a surefire best film candidate, Bobby Sox.

Though the title warrants an assumption that screams jukebox period piece, you'd be taxed beyond reasonable limits to find a duck's ass, doo wop, or a pack of Luckys anywhere within the city limits of this picture. Not that it matters much.

As a busty blonde with raging hormones who's caught in the stiffing inertia of a one-horse town without a horse, Nikki Tyler delivers some of her best sex scenes and certainly her best and most convincing role to date. On the other hand, Jamie Gillis and Shanna McCullough (exhibiting Olympic caliber tan lines as Nikki's mom) appear as though they're on track for Best Non-Sex nods. This, until a really kinky scenes at film's end figuratively screws them out of that consideration by way of some vaginal insertion, chin/sphincter play, testicle enslavement and a blow job. Sounds interesting, don't it?

But, we get ahead of ourselves. Gillis plays a dispassionately aging has-been who seems to have garnered life-s acting credits from the Clint Eastwood school of taciturn squinting and the Charles Bukowski school of hard drinking. With Gillis dressed like a space monster right out of a bad Mexican movie, he and acerbic road co-hort Jon Dough rig a promotional stunt to hype Gillis' pic, "My Alien, My Love." Gillis "kidnaps" one of the town lovelies (Tyler). Except that the scheme sours when Tyler's beau Steven St. Croix, acting like a daddy-o fugitive from West Side Story, has his coals of jealousy stoked enough to want to do some serious bodily damage to Gillis.

Will Gillis get his head out of the vodka bottle in time to stand up to St. Croix? Will Nikki get a Best Couples scene award or the Madison Avenue equivalent for wearing Calvin Klein briefs in her great movie theater fuck with Bobby Vitale? Will Gillis ever scoop out all the mashed potatoes he shoved up Chelsea Blue's asshole?

Agonizingly joyous tease sequences and spirited couplings radiate in this sexual joyride of eccentricity and wit. Imaginative, arresting and highly entertaining, Bobby Sox, as a wickedly sly '90's style Candide, looms to be the cornerstone of the ever expanding wall of Vivid film masterpieces. It's far and away Paul Thomas' best work to date and Vivid's crowing  jewel.