A Sweet Sickness (1968)

This represents a minor improvement over several other sexploitation films I've seen from this era, notably David Friedman's overrated oevre. Where Friedman's philosophy of sizzle-not-steak, coupled with his rather underdeveloped imagination, resulted in timid nudie-roughies that refused to get down in the muck with the audience, this film has moments where it feels like it was genuinely dredged out of a gutter. (The stripper auction is a sick'n'sleazy highlight.) Despite this, it's still no good anyway. I'm always impressed by the amount of useless padding a resourceful director can add to a cheapo film's slender running time -- in this case, a mere 67 minutes. You just want to tell the director, "Look, buddy, if you can't fill up an hour's worth of film without resorting to overlong, undercooked sex scenes and aggresively unerotic stripteases, then just do us all a favor and get the fuck out of the movie business."

Grade: C