Hung Jury

The late Joe Sarno disowned the scores of hardcore films he directed in the '70s and '80s, and for good reason. Rarely does the style or care that personifies his softcore movies appear in these strictly-for-the-bread jobs, and except for completists they are mainly worth ignoring.

Though not as bad as another of his Heather Hunter vehicles, the execrable "Coming On America", HUNG JURY is nonetheless barely watchable. Even its punning title is a misnomer, since to save on extras the film concerns a trial featuring judge only, no jury.

Cast as Judge Doright is the lovely but vertically challenged Tami Monroe, who even on high heels looks about 3'9" tall. With very poor sound editing, she makes voice-over wisecracks from the bench which are invariably stupid. It's a divorce case involving Heather Hunter, not playing herself but rather a fictional Heather Hunter (?!), and her handsome husband Max, portrayed by the once-NYC porn regular Scott Irish (I used to see him on the subway on the way to work back in the '80s). The lawyers are named Mr. Shyster and Mr. Barrister -pretty funny.

This is all an excuse for sex scenes, which take place in either an all-purpose flashback bedroom (used for various locations, the same lousy set) or in the judge's chambers. The set for the main courtroom is incredibly under-dressed and unconvincing -this being 1989's answer to the 1-day wonders circa 1971.

Hunter goes through her hardcore motions with obvious disinterest and even the photography is poor -with some very jittery closeup shots as if cameraman "Sandy Beach" was high on crack during the shoot. Inept color grading doesn't help either, when cutting between different camera angles. Hard rock musical score is annoying, but at least it drowns out some of the poorly recorded dialog.

The only thing that diverted my attention were the end credits, which roll "backwards" (you have to watch it to see what I mean) in a manner I hadn't noticed since George Lucas's novel THX 1138 credits.