Deep Throat Part II (1974)

It boggled my mind to learn that the adult cult classic Deep Throat spawned five sequels. Right off the bat, the original film was unheard of and it's beyond clear that they just couldn't leave the idea alone. Deep Throat: Part II is, in short, miserable; a pointless exercise that even a devoted fan of the original could hate, as it trudges by in eighty-eight minutes, giving newfound respect to softcore films shown late on Cinemax that actually show something. I speak not as a person wanting to be pampered with intimate closeups of breasts and other body parts, but when a pornographic film feels so scared to show a simple breast on screen is where the line needs to be drawn.

Deep Throat was, in short, a fun movie. It was funny when it needed to be, corny practically all the way through its runtime, and somewhat arousing, even as its scenarios and lines of dialog were blatantly asinine. Deep Throat: Part II is about as soulless as modern pornography and, frankly, feels more like making a regular film than a pornographic one. This is fine by me, any day, if the film (a) didn't borrow the name, actors, and strange humor from its predecessor and (b) didn't have such a lackluster, unfathomably uninteresting storyline.

The film stars Linda Lovelace, once more, who, during Deep Throat, boldly exercised the rights of sexual freedom and women's choice. She plays herself again, working as a nurse for the sex doctor named Jayson (Harry Reems, who returns in a far less amusing role), with the goal to get all of her clients to have some sort of pleasure during sex that either never existed or was simply never recognized. Her latest man is a geek named Dilbert Lamb (Levi Richards), who is working intricately with the government to run a powerful computer that stores unprecedented amounts of confidential and personal data. In order to obtain the data, Linda must become romantically involved with Dilbert, leading to chaos and uncertainty with organizations like the CIA and the FBI that are heavily guarding the computer.

It would appear that the plot got the best of Sarno (also the writer), as he seems to show more of an interest in finding out where a story like this could go rather than providing some levels of arousal, humor, or consistency in the story. I continue to run into the quandary of trying to grade Deep Throat: Part II as a piece of erotic filmmaking because not only is there nothing erotic about it but it doesn't even seem to want to be known as softcore film, despite its label, title, and actors.

Even if I try to grade this as simply a B-movie with mild erotic undertones, I run into a complete lack of interest with its material and writing. The only thing more depressing than watching a bad movie is seeing clearly cheery actors succumb to the bad material on screen. After watching Lovelace and Reems bring incomprehensible hilarity and fun to the original Deep Throat, seeing them half-baked (which may not be just in terms of their performances) and lackadaisically going about their similar characters again with a Z-grade script is entirely disheartening.

This is an uncompromisingly boring, horrifically inert softcore movie that makes you question and rethink calling it a "softcore movie." A softcore movie, by definition, contains scenes of sex that are shot with a sense of conservatism, being that they do not show all of the human body at work in bed. For as sex-obsessed as its predecessor was, Deep Throat: Part II shows no signs of compassion or interest in its subjects or the sex they could potentially be having. Even a scene of three characters getting dressed is burdened by an unnecessary speed-up in editing. If only the entire film could be burdened by that style of editing.

Starring: Linda Lovelace, Harry Reems, and Levi Richards. Directed by: Joseph W. Sarno.