The legendary Gerard Damiano was innovating in porn even with his very first feature film WE ALL GO DOWN, but this forgotten programmer has serious defects in characterization and direction. The sexual content is strong for its time, nonetheless.
It's essentially a cautionary drug tale, presaging Abel Ferrara's work, but with a sexual emphasis all Damiano's own. Bill Doukas, handsome in the manner of now-forgotten TV idol Gardner McKay (I grew up addicted to his escapist series ADVENTURES IN PARADISE), stars as Pete, a New Yorker addicted to heroin and amphetamines -not exactly a desirable combo.
He's introed hitting up Nancy (lovely Alice Haley) for money to feed his habit. The tortured acting and harsh lighting of this opener are pure Damiano, followed by a lesbian scene between Nancy and Peggy (Justine Simmon). Full frontal nudity, expected but not guaranteed in 1969, is delivered.
The nastiest character in a generally unsympathetic cast is Burt (Bob Shoffuer), introduced in a topless (and bottomless) bar scene with Pete's best friend Rick (Daniel Mage). They're planning to attend a party at a beach house lent to Pete by some rich pal, but Burt has nothing but disparaging remarks to say about Pete. Scene is reminiscent of Joe Sarno's work (especially THE LOVE MERCHANT), and it is likely that Damiano was familiar with same.
Burt hosts a free-loving party of his own, in which a busty girl and her boyfriend have sex right in front of everybody. As is his wont, Burt insists on hounding everybody to drink and/or take drugs at every opportunity -a sign of weak scripting in its too-obvious painting him as "the baddie" (film bears no writing credit at all).
Next party is at the beach house, with some exterior scenes breaking up the film's claustrophobic interiors. Rick and Burt arrive with a sleazy pal named Jay, who immediately hits on Carrol (Ada McAllister), Pete's sympathetic girl friend. Just as the behavior of Burt was overdrawn, Jay's one-note lothario routine is instantly tiresome, and needed a couple of rewrites by the anonymous scripter. He rapes an underage girl, Carrol's visiting cousin Sandy, at the party -just another day at the office in Damiano's crowded with ugly incidents film.
The film's continuity pretty much falls apart at this point (where's my storyboard?), as Pete shows up and keeps exiting and returning to the party willy-nilly, with day and night interchangeable in adjacent (and presumably coterminous) shots and Pete's scenes presented seemingly out of order. This is not New Wave/Alain Resnais time, just sloppy filmmaking by a neophyte director.
SPOILERS ALERT:
It's clear that Pete is 100% controlled by his drug habit -earlier we saw him shooting up (heroin?), and now when he goes to his pusher (Jayson Troy in an effective vignette -photographed by Damiano talking first-person to the camera (repping Pete) in search of amphetamines (Pete's called an "A-head" over & over), he ends up with LSD instead.
Back at the party Pete has a bad trip. This is presented in black & white (no "burst into color" LSD sequence here), and stresses s&m/bondage imagery as Pete imagines himself strung up in chains and shackles, with a girl (looks like Nancy from the prolog) sticking a huge hypodermic needle in his chest. This sequence is most unusual in containing a sustained superimposed tight closeup of a split beaver shot, the type of explicitness just becoming viable in 1969/1970 sex films and an indicator that even then Damiano was always on the cutting edge.
When folks try to help him, nasty Burt prevents this, just insisting it will wear off, just leave Pete alone. Instead, Pete cuts his finger off (!) and Carrol rushes him to the hospital finally.
Nancy receives a mysterious visit from a guy who claims that she's been "sold to him", not so much white slavery, but the result of that earlier scene where Pete obtained the LSD. The pusher promised him amphetamines too, in exchange for... -it was left hanging, but it turns out drug-crazed Pete sold his girl friend for a bag of pills, and the creepy pusher in turn sold her to the current creep.
Typical of this being a sex film, and not a real movie, Nancy cynically acquiesces rather than protests and has a strong, simulated sex scene with Mr. No Name, treated as the film's highlight! Coda shows Pete all slicked up in a white outfit, clean for an entire month and ready to face his future. Old pal Rick approaches him but is rebuffed -Pete walks away for an open ending as cheerful music plays. Finis.
There are many interesting and even powerful moments here, but unlike his later XXX masterworks DEVIL IN MISS JONES, MEMORIES WITHIN MISS AGGIE and THE STORY OF JOANNA Damiano fails to knit it together into a convincing, cohesive whole.
Bill Doukas as Pete is a strong, self-destructive central figure and it's a shame he never got a break in the biz. I got to know him briefly in the '80s, when he was working as an independent filmmaker (FEEDBACK in 1978 had gotten some attention), but his career didn't take off.
The rest of the cast is using pseudonyms -Rick was a sympathetic character -he's a dead ringer for the young Nicholas Turturro (John's brother), but since Nick was only 7 years old at the time WE ALL GO DOWN was made -it wasn't him! The female cast is quite beautiful but I didn't recognize most of them from other films, except Alice Haley who costarred with Damiano in C'MON BABY LIGHT MY FIRE and Ada McCallister as a veteran of Andy Milligan outings -ouch!
It's essentially a cautionary drug tale, presaging Abel Ferrara's work, but with a sexual emphasis all Damiano's own. Bill Doukas, handsome in the manner of now-forgotten TV idol Gardner McKay (I grew up addicted to his escapist series ADVENTURES IN PARADISE), stars as Pete, a New Yorker addicted to heroin and amphetamines -not exactly a desirable combo.
He's introed hitting up Nancy (lovely Alice Haley) for money to feed his habit. The tortured acting and harsh lighting of this opener are pure Damiano, followed by a lesbian scene between Nancy and Peggy (Justine Simmon). Full frontal nudity, expected but not guaranteed in 1969, is delivered.
The nastiest character in a generally unsympathetic cast is Burt (Bob Shoffuer), introduced in a topless (and bottomless) bar scene with Pete's best friend Rick (Daniel Mage). They're planning to attend a party at a beach house lent to Pete by some rich pal, but Burt has nothing but disparaging remarks to say about Pete. Scene is reminiscent of Joe Sarno's work (especially THE LOVE MERCHANT), and it is likely that Damiano was familiar with same.
Burt hosts a free-loving party of his own, in which a busty girl and her boyfriend have sex right in front of everybody. As is his wont, Burt insists on hounding everybody to drink and/or take drugs at every opportunity -a sign of weak scripting in its too-obvious painting him as "the baddie" (film bears no writing credit at all).
Next party is at the beach house, with some exterior scenes breaking up the film's claustrophobic interiors. Rick and Burt arrive with a sleazy pal named Jay, who immediately hits on Carrol (Ada McAllister), Pete's sympathetic girl friend. Just as the behavior of Burt was overdrawn, Jay's one-note lothario routine is instantly tiresome, and needed a couple of rewrites by the anonymous scripter. He rapes an underage girl, Carrol's visiting cousin Sandy, at the party -just another day at the office in Damiano's crowded with ugly incidents film.
The film's continuity pretty much falls apart at this point (where's my storyboard?), as Pete shows up and keeps exiting and returning to the party willy-nilly, with day and night interchangeable in adjacent (and presumably coterminous) shots and Pete's scenes presented seemingly out of order. This is not New Wave/Alain Resnais time, just sloppy filmmaking by a neophyte director.
SPOILERS ALERT:
It's clear that Pete is 100% controlled by his drug habit -earlier we saw him shooting up (heroin?), and now when he goes to his pusher (Jayson Troy in an effective vignette -photographed by Damiano talking first-person to the camera (repping Pete) in search of amphetamines (Pete's called an "A-head" over & over), he ends up with LSD instead.
Back at the party Pete has a bad trip. This is presented in black & white (no "burst into color" LSD sequence here), and stresses s&m/bondage imagery as Pete imagines himself strung up in chains and shackles, with a girl (looks like Nancy from the prolog) sticking a huge hypodermic needle in his chest. This sequence is most unusual in containing a sustained superimposed tight closeup of a split beaver shot, the type of explicitness just becoming viable in 1969/1970 sex films and an indicator that even then Damiano was always on the cutting edge.
When folks try to help him, nasty Burt prevents this, just insisting it will wear off, just leave Pete alone. Instead, Pete cuts his finger off (!) and Carrol rushes him to the hospital finally.
Nancy receives a mysterious visit from a guy who claims that she's been "sold to him", not so much white slavery, but the result of that earlier scene where Pete obtained the LSD. The pusher promised him amphetamines too, in exchange for... -it was left hanging, but it turns out drug-crazed Pete sold his girl friend for a bag of pills, and the creepy pusher in turn sold her to the current creep.
Typical of this being a sex film, and not a real movie, Nancy cynically acquiesces rather than protests and has a strong, simulated sex scene with Mr. No Name, treated as the film's highlight! Coda shows Pete all slicked up in a white outfit, clean for an entire month and ready to face his future. Old pal Rick approaches him but is rebuffed -Pete walks away for an open ending as cheerful music plays. Finis.
There are many interesting and even powerful moments here, but unlike his later XXX masterworks DEVIL IN MISS JONES, MEMORIES WITHIN MISS AGGIE and THE STORY OF JOANNA Damiano fails to knit it together into a convincing, cohesive whole.
Bill Doukas as Pete is a strong, self-destructive central figure and it's a shame he never got a break in the biz. I got to know him briefly in the '80s, when he was working as an independent filmmaker (FEEDBACK in 1978 had gotten some attention), but his career didn't take off.
The rest of the cast is using pseudonyms -Rick was a sympathetic character -he's a dead ringer for the young Nicholas Turturro (John's brother), but since Nick was only 7 years old at the time WE ALL GO DOWN was made -it wasn't him! The female cast is quite beautiful but I didn't recognize most of them from other films, except Alice Haley who costarred with Damiano in C'MON BABY LIGHT MY FIRE and Ada McCallister as a veteran of Andy Milligan outings -ouch!
