A couple of journalists have stayed late at the office, maybe a little too late as the male half, Harry (Clive Hearn), has fallen asleep in the toilets, leading the woman he's meant to be working with, Libby (Angela Menzies-Willis) to wake him up and insist he joins her. They are meant to be writing the newspaper's advice column Dear Collette, but aside from the interest in what the correspondents' problems are, the overall feeling is that this is a chore, especially as the column attracts so many crazies. It's going to be a long night...
When Fantasm was the hit it was, a sequel was the obvious way to go, and sticking to the formula of before was the order of the day. That previous film had been so successful because it presented sex and nudity in a manner not often seen on Australian cinema screens before thanks to relaxing censorship standards, but the producers, led by Anthony I. Ginnane, had found that not too many Aussies were keen to take off their clothes for the camera and instead they looked to the pornographic casts of American hardcore to fill out the ranks of their performers, hence the reason they all have American accents.
When the two actors in the linking segments are speaking in their Oz accents, that is. Although why a paper from Down Under would be answering letters from the other side of the globe is not something that goes explained, but most of the audience would not allow this to detain them much. Not that Fantasm, like its predecessor, was a full on sexually explicit phantasmogoria, as it was softcore all the way, so if you wanted to see porn stars not actually doing what they were famed for aside from removing their clothes, then these works were the ideal option for you. Naturally, with porn so prevalent nowadays stuff like this has fallen way out of fashion.
Still, for the nostalgists there is an appeal, particularly as these two movies were latterly described as Ozploitation thanks to that documentary raising the profile of the exploitation efforts from that continent, so there were a few whose interest was piqued enough to track stuff like this down. Whether they'd be satisfied with the Fantasm films was a moot point, as they detailed supposed sexual fantasies that presumably every Australian has had at some stage, and the second instalment was considered a letdown after the first by those who judged themselves to be experts in such material. To the layman, it was hard to tell much difference between either of them in terms of quality.
The stories that the journos are supposedly reading out and replying to range from the type of thing a male screenwriter hoping for an easy paycheque would pen as long as his name isn't on the final product to... er, well that's just about all they are. It was directed by Colin Eggleston, a toiler at the coalface of Aussie TV and cinema whose best known film was probably the revenge of nature semi-classic Long Weekend, but here he helmed things far more anonymously. As to the content of those vignettes, they featured what you'd expect: lesbianism with Uschi Digard, John Holmes roped in with three women in a swimming pool, Candy Samples in an incest yarn (dodgy), Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith in a rape sequence very much of its time, making you thankful that we've moved on since then. It was billed as a comedy, but the punning title was about the level of wit undertaken, although the potentially funniest bit with the naked gymnast is more unintentionally amusing, about the most you can hope for here. Music by John Mol.
