Something Weird Video resurrected this lost title from the Golden Age of soft porn and it proves to be a really strange hybrid: a Ross Hunter-style weeper combined with late '60s eroticism.
Opening reel is all narration, no dialog, as the voice-over authority with a Texas twang tells us about young war vet Johnny West (earnest thesp Michael Stoddard) returning home to small oil town Ermaville, population 70,000. He's a former rodeo rider, singer in a rock band and classical pianist (!), yet we see him first hobbling with a cane to meet a cute brunette and bed down with her in a steamy soft-X sex scene. Film was rated X by the MPAA back then, likely due to full frontal female nudity in this scene (and again in a later sex scene with another girl).
Jump cut (footage evidently missing) to Johnny getting married to a pretty blonde, no longer limping, and we never find out the character's identity played by this mysterious but hot uncredited actress. Either this and the later sex scene were added to the picture to spice it up, or the plot structure was garbled due to wear & tear on the extant 35mm print.
Buoyed by narration, the story careens rapidly forward with new bride Kay West (blonde actress also gets no dialog and is unidentified) spending Johnny's money right & left and taking up adulterously with oil tycoon Peter Van Carter. Soon she & Van Carter die in an off-screen car crash represented on screen by the duo guzzling champagne in the front seat in a decidedly unwise move.
Narration continues as Johnny is down and out, with the conventional film beginning 10 minutes in, as he SPEAKS! Receiving a phone call, he agrees to bring his band to a charity gig, where he quarrels bitterly with Van Carter's widow Pat (Nancy Zala, a polished if overly histrionic stage actress), when it comes time for payment.
After this bitter confrontation between the two protagonists united by the sudden death of their respective (cheating) spouses, the two of them soon realize their is a natural attraction despite their obvious age difference. (Zala would have been in her early 30s when FULFILLMENT was shot, but convincingly looks to be in her 50s.)
Johnny comes to Pat's dinner party attended by his blonde date Gloria Grayson (another unidentified thesp given a large speaking part which she handles well) and Pat's family physician kindly Dr Banks (Merrill Graham, a DeForest Kelley type). Johnny plays piano for the group and displays a pleasant singing voice belting out the title song.
Writer-director Conner at this point steers the film into extremely strange waters, as the endless after-dinner conversation is so overwritten, stilted and frankly antiquated that we seem to be watching a 1930s Ronald Colman film. The cast is talking about the eternal battle of the sexes but the drawing-room comedy dialog is abysmal.
Johnny longs to write and play great music, and Pat wants to help him. Perhaps the movie's campiest moment occurs when Pat visits Johnny at a garage where he's working on cars, and she rubs motor oil all over her sweater (breasts lurking unseen beneath) in order to literally "get dirty".
An elliptical scene with Dr. Banks has him giving Pat bad news regarding her health (we in the audience are not permitted to hear it, presumably for suspense purposes), cuing her plans to marry Johnny ("so little time").
At this point this strange film cuts to Johnny in bed humping a voluptuous blonde worthy of Russ Meyer (LORNA-style) stardom, with big nipples and more on-screen display of pubic hair for the fans. While the duo are smoking cigarettes apres-sex, Pat knocks on the door and gets Johnny to elope with her to Mexico by private jet that very afternoon, He comically gives the busty blonde the kiss-off and she gets mad (but again no screen credit).
On the way to the airport Dr Banks insists on telling Johnny about Kay's illness (again the details are NOT conveyed to the viewer), but cannot deter him from going through with the marriage, and this being a low-budget film, a couple of superimposed titles reading Mexico and SPAIN represent the zero production values of the duo whisked off for their honeymoon.
Protracted final reels of the film are pure glossy (minus the budget) Ross Hunter style soap opera: during their honeymoon in Spain Pat gets music impresario Dr. Brookshire to listen to Johnny at the keyboard, and he agrees to launch him on a European tour. Johnny resists, not wanting to part from dying Pat or subject her frail health to the rigors of acccompanying him.
Film stumbles as Johnny gets a sudden phone call, hops in their Jaguar and drives to the hospital, where a Spanish doctor informs him his wife is dead. This ineptly directed anticlimax is fatal to the movie.
An extremely tedious denouement consists of the reading of the will, after Johnny's pretty stepdaughter Jessica (another blonde) tries to seduce him without success. She and her lawyer contest the will, which leaves Johnny many millions and her just a pitiful stipend, claiming he was a golddigger. Johnny produces a letter from the authorities declaring Pat died by committing suicide, and in true cornball fashion he gallantly donates the fortune to charity, heading off on a piano tour but still soggily sentimental regarding his time with Pat. This nonsense includes Jessica's lawyer grossly flubbing one of his key lines, but no retake - it's left clumsily in the final print.
I guess SOMETHING WORTH REMEMBERING (certainly an ironic title for such a completely forgotten film) is the result of itinerant filmmakers not knowing how to make a movie and falling back on an indigestible combination of antiquated techniques married to up-to-the minute (1969 explicit standards) sex content which was knocking 'em dead at the box office.
Opening reel is all narration, no dialog, as the voice-over authority with a Texas twang tells us about young war vet Johnny West (earnest thesp Michael Stoddard) returning home to small oil town Ermaville, population 70,000. He's a former rodeo rider, singer in a rock band and classical pianist (!), yet we see him first hobbling with a cane to meet a cute brunette and bed down with her in a steamy soft-X sex scene. Film was rated X by the MPAA back then, likely due to full frontal female nudity in this scene (and again in a later sex scene with another girl).
Jump cut (footage evidently missing) to Johnny getting married to a pretty blonde, no longer limping, and we never find out the character's identity played by this mysterious but hot uncredited actress. Either this and the later sex scene were added to the picture to spice it up, or the plot structure was garbled due to wear & tear on the extant 35mm print.
Buoyed by narration, the story careens rapidly forward with new bride Kay West (blonde actress also gets no dialog and is unidentified) spending Johnny's money right & left and taking up adulterously with oil tycoon Peter Van Carter. Soon she & Van Carter die in an off-screen car crash represented on screen by the duo guzzling champagne in the front seat in a decidedly unwise move.
Narration continues as Johnny is down and out, with the conventional film beginning 10 minutes in, as he SPEAKS! Receiving a phone call, he agrees to bring his band to a charity gig, where he quarrels bitterly with Van Carter's widow Pat (Nancy Zala, a polished if overly histrionic stage actress), when it comes time for payment.
After this bitter confrontation between the two protagonists united by the sudden death of their respective (cheating) spouses, the two of them soon realize their is a natural attraction despite their obvious age difference. (Zala would have been in her early 30s when FULFILLMENT was shot, but convincingly looks to be in her 50s.)
Johnny comes to Pat's dinner party attended by his blonde date Gloria Grayson (another unidentified thesp given a large speaking part which she handles well) and Pat's family physician kindly Dr Banks (Merrill Graham, a DeForest Kelley type). Johnny plays piano for the group and displays a pleasant singing voice belting out the title song.
Writer-director Conner at this point steers the film into extremely strange waters, as the endless after-dinner conversation is so overwritten, stilted and frankly antiquated that we seem to be watching a 1930s Ronald Colman film. The cast is talking about the eternal battle of the sexes but the drawing-room comedy dialog is abysmal.
Johnny longs to write and play great music, and Pat wants to help him. Perhaps the movie's campiest moment occurs when Pat visits Johnny at a garage where he's working on cars, and she rubs motor oil all over her sweater (breasts lurking unseen beneath) in order to literally "get dirty".
An elliptical scene with Dr. Banks has him giving Pat bad news regarding her health (we in the audience are not permitted to hear it, presumably for suspense purposes), cuing her plans to marry Johnny ("so little time").
At this point this strange film cuts to Johnny in bed humping a voluptuous blonde worthy of Russ Meyer (LORNA-style) stardom, with big nipples and more on-screen display of pubic hair for the fans. While the duo are smoking cigarettes apres-sex, Pat knocks on the door and gets Johnny to elope with her to Mexico by private jet that very afternoon, He comically gives the busty blonde the kiss-off and she gets mad (but again no screen credit).
On the way to the airport Dr Banks insists on telling Johnny about Kay's illness (again the details are NOT conveyed to the viewer), but cannot deter him from going through with the marriage, and this being a low-budget film, a couple of superimposed titles reading Mexico and SPAIN represent the zero production values of the duo whisked off for their honeymoon.
Protracted final reels of the film are pure glossy (minus the budget) Ross Hunter style soap opera: during their honeymoon in Spain Pat gets music impresario Dr. Brookshire to listen to Johnny at the keyboard, and he agrees to launch him on a European tour. Johnny resists, not wanting to part from dying Pat or subject her frail health to the rigors of acccompanying him.
Film stumbles as Johnny gets a sudden phone call, hops in their Jaguar and drives to the hospital, where a Spanish doctor informs him his wife is dead. This ineptly directed anticlimax is fatal to the movie.
An extremely tedious denouement consists of the reading of the will, after Johnny's pretty stepdaughter Jessica (another blonde) tries to seduce him without success. She and her lawyer contest the will, which leaves Johnny many millions and her just a pitiful stipend, claiming he was a golddigger. Johnny produces a letter from the authorities declaring Pat died by committing suicide, and in true cornball fashion he gallantly donates the fortune to charity, heading off on a piano tour but still soggily sentimental regarding his time with Pat. This nonsense includes Jessica's lawyer grossly flubbing one of his key lines, but no retake - it's left clumsily in the final print.
I guess SOMETHING WORTH REMEMBERING (certainly an ironic title for such a completely forgotten film) is the result of itinerant filmmakers not knowing how to make a movie and falling back on an indigestible combination of antiquated techniques married to up-to-the minute (1969 explicit standards) sex content which was knocking 'em dead at the box office.
