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Happy Hooker Goes to Washington, The
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| Year: |
1977
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Director: |
William A. Levey
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| Stars: |
Joey Heatherton, George Hamilton, Ray Walston, Jack Carter, Phil Foster, David White, Will Hutchins, Joe E. Ross, Louisa Moritz, Larry Storch, Jerry Fischer, Rip Taylor, Billy Barty, Harold Sakata, Edy Williams, Sydney Lassick, Marilyn Joi, Dawn Clark
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| Genre: |
Comedy, Sex, Trash |
| Rating: |
  2 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Yet another sex scandal rocks Washington as a senator is found in the Senate building with a prostitute. Celebrity madame Xaviera Hollander (Joey Heatherton) for one is not surprised, but then she's an expert on sexual matters, and has to answer a multitude of questions from the public on the subject. Sometimes she is asked by people going up to her in the street, other times she has to answer her large postbag, but she always knows what to say. However, how will she be when she is called to a hearing, accused of moral corruption?
The original Happy Hooker movie starred an unlikely Lynn Redgrave in the title role, which made enough money to call for a sequel, this time starring a career-on-the-skids Joey Heatherton as the famous real life madame. Any resemblance between genuine prostitution and the kind depicted here was purely coincidental, as this was a comic romp first and foremost, with a bizarre roster of hard up celebs appearing in supporting roles, including George Hamilton as Xaviera's lawyer.
Scripted by Barney Cohen and Bob Kaufman, it starts out fooling the viewer that they might be seeing a proper plotline, only to dissolve into a series of tedious sketches. Sex comedies in America of the seventies seemed to be preoccupied with bringing down the great and good by exposing their hypocrisy, rather than showing overage "teenagers" chasing after each other as the eighties would. You can't really compare them with the British equivalent, as the thought of Robin Askwith and Linda Hayden marching on Parliament is not a credible one.
Not that it's especially credible here, either, with Xaviera appearing before the senators (Ray Walston is among them) to defend herself with the crowd of laughing-like-hyenas public behind her, both physically and supportively. Apart from the nudity, which Miss Heatherton does not indulge in, the chief point of interest is seeing those famous faces embarrass themselves, with Hamilton for example having to try and look as if he's actually in love with Xaviera in a subplot that goes absolutely nowhere.
The film builds itself up as an attack on the so-called "New Puritanism", but after watching this pathetic excuse for entertainment you're more likely to be on the side of the moral majority than the supposedly liberated Xaviera and her associates who come across as the lamest hedonists of their era. If you really need to see Billy Barty as a C.I.A. agent demonstrating explosives or Harold Sakata from Goldfinger beaten up by Walston in a Superman outfit, then I guess this is the film for you, but the painfully of their time concerns - yes, there's an oil sheik in here for Xaviera to seduce - merely have you wishing for the film to be over, and fortunately the endurance test doesn't last long.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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