Michael Pataki

To describe this 1977 oddity directed by Michael Pataki as a soft-porn musical-comedy Cinderella is hardly to do it justice. It’s a burlesque-style spoof, cheerfully stupid in a way that’s almost witty. I saw it around 25 years ago on Cinemax or whatever, and was pleasantly surprised and charmed by it. It’s been hard to acquire on DVD, though. Every few years I look for it, and found a copy once that turned out to be 3D and unplayable. But checking again after seeing “The Glass Slipper” last week, I found it as a Full Moon release on Amazon. It holds up (so to speak). The movie finds a good-natured tone between leering and ingenuous, it has much more energy and assurance than any kind of porn normally does, and everyone knows exactly what movie they’re in. The songs aren’t Cole Porter, but they’re clever in their racy dumbass way.

Cinderella (Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith) is blonde and not too vacuous, with a passing resemblance to Joan Hackett. More than the glass slipper, what she really has going for her is a “snapper,” bestowed on her by her Fairy Godmother, a Black man and a thief (Sy Richardson), whose shuckin’ and jivin’ manages to suggest mockery rather than clowning. The stepmother and stepsisters are all made up as Divine and they are delightfully horrible, mugging furiously as they exult in their rottenness. The women are all insatiable. (The stepsisters make Cinderella pedal a Rube Goldberg machine that operates their sex toys.) The men are flaccid and hapless. The court chamberlain is a stolid manly type who caresses the ends of his lavish moustache just before falling down staircases. The King has been impotent for 20 years and when he wakes up with a rare royal boner he gleefully orders: “Fetch me my baggy pants! I’m taking this one into town!” The Prince, already sexually jaded at 21 (he sings “My Kingdom Won’t Come”), is played by glam rocker Brett Smiley with a wonderful exhausted style of smooth enunciation. He is never enthusiastic about anything, at least until he finds Cin (no one ever lets her finish saying her name) and shouts “She’s my SNAPPAH!” Even the boinking music is good, a lightly funky jazz.… (mais)