That's Outrageous

If you're Gael Greene or anyone else obsessed with the late star Jamie Gillis, then Fred Lincoln's THAT'S OUTRAGEOUS is the movie for you. Others including yours truly may be less impressed.

Probably in the wake of so many successful European porn films and the glamorous Radley Metzger/Henry Paris epics, FJ Lincoln concocted this bit of a mish-mash about a fashion photographer (Gillis) and his goofy sidekick (good old Joey Silvera at his most scatterbrained) on the loose in Paris. Touristy local color shots and other photography delivers laudable production values and the brilliant Joao Fernandes (Damiano's genius d.p. on his classic films) shot U.S. scenes and studio work, including a massive set piece apparently filmed at the old Hellfire Club in the Meatpacking District.

Very flimsy story premise is XXX right out of a 1940s Hollywood screwball comedy (fortunately back then they didn't subject Rosalind Russell or Claudette Colbert to explicit sex scenes). Gillis has two apartments and two identities (Paul and Philippe) whereby he is two- timing two sisters Michelle and Martine (played by okay looking but not beautiful French actresses France Lomay and Natasha). Goofy wrinkle is that Jamie is intent on having sex with both of them together, basically a variation on the old porn standby of humping twins.

Though Joey doesn't like the idea he helps out his buddy and the resulting antics aren't very funny. Gillis eventually concocts the notion of a masqued ball, where with Silvera's help he can get the two gals together unbeknownst to them, but that stratagem misfires. Gillis used the same gimmick, successfully in the awful Carlos Tobalina film SENSUAL FIRE (1979), only that time to hump his step-daughter Dorothy LeMay without her catching on.

Along the way Joey improbably gets the beautiful model Anna Ventura to marry him, but even this film with its fine visual look is too cheap to stage a wedding scene - we just see them celebrate on a vista of the Paris skyline. One scene of the sisters wandering through Montmartre brought back memories of my own visit, so the movie is not a total loss.

But basically it is one Gillis sex scene after another, shooting his load on face, belly, posterior, you name it. If this had been a one-day wonder then he might be a money shot candidate for the Guinness Book of World Records.

My challenge is still open for anyone to sift through Lincoln's roster of 300 plus films and videos directed to fine one that is a great movie, worthy of mentioning alongside any of porn's all-time great auteurs. This rather sloppily constructed opus is better than most but only gets plus marks when compared within the FJ canon.

Its title threw me: I had the DVD sitting around for years before watching it, assuming it was just another compilation of scenes movie like That's Porno (or mainstream: That's Entertainment). No idea why they picked that moniker, especially since it bears no relationship to the smash hit indie movie of that era OUTRAGEOUS!, classic cross-dressing comedy with heart.