The place is a dingy, down-at-the heels bar, the air suffused with the acrid fumes of many smoldering cigarettes. A couple of guys play a game of pool while Joey Silvera makes time with a blond bim at a corner table. Joey, who plays a character called Billy Badnews, isn’t so tough, but, all the same, when he punches out biker boy Butler, he knocks him out cold and into a state of amnesia. “Itch,” the bartender, just keeps polishing glasses while a pair of whores fight over a john.

Barflies, Henri Pachard’s latest feature, is big on atmosphere and skewed plot development, but oddly unstimulating in the sex department. There’s also too many references in the dialogue to currently banned sex acts, mostly of the toilet-oriented variety. Of course, being a Pachard feature there’s the mandatory hump-in-the john. But it’s not hot as much as it’s merely gross. Victoria Paris in her one scene (lesbian), is delicious, and the superb photography by Jack Remy gives this pic a nice look. But the feature doesn’t generate the heat to match the packaging.