Bear with me. You know how they stick insert shots into movies, usually close-ups, to make the point? Sometimes it's a close-up of a gun? Or a key in a lock?
In the '70s and '80s, when porn wasn't so available on the internet, they would sometimes reconfigure foreign crime films, sometimes with sex already in them, with hardcore inserts to sell them to new markets where such things were accepted. This was a way to recycle old material, exploit the punters and not go the expense (and possible legal cost) of actually producing an entire porn film.
Just add the good bits.
Being a film-nerd/porndog, I've seen my share (plus) of old sexy melodramas sexed up with fake inserts. They have their charm and their conflicted
mise en scene, internal illogic and forbidden spectacle in fragmented glory. And recently,
here, in Jess Franco's
Lilian (The Perverted Virgin) (1984, Spain) I've found the most amazing insert shot I think I've ever seen in an otherwise tame, closer-to-R-rated, thriller.
Bear with me. The scene is about 27 minutes in, and we're recounting how Lilian fell into the immoral world of sex and debauchery. She's been picked up by a couple, Irina and Emilio (played by Franco confidant Lina Romay and Jorge Miranda) and it starts with a bedroom scene in which everyone's had one too many wines and laughs and she is placed on top of the bed covers and starts getting more attention than she's ever gotten before.
Suddenly Franco cuts to a rather typical extreme close-up, around 27:16, clearly not what's actually happening in the room, with no warning:
A shot inserted that lasts until about 28:07, almost a minute if in and out, until he cuts to a couple odd cut-ins of Lina, who's now (apparently, the blocking hasn't been covered well) watching:
...as well as close-ups of some fingers in another pussy, presumably hers:
(Besides the awkward bluntness of this insert (and this isn't the insert I'm talking about yet) we have it on good authority that these
are actually close-ups of Lina Romay's crotch. We saw it in
Doriana Gray: dead match.)
Franco goes back to the back-of-ball-sac shot, until about 30:25. This is porn. 3 more minutes of a cock moving in and out of a pussy.
And finally, he cuts away. To a light. We're moving away from the fuck scene apparently.
Except - we're not.
Now Franco starts a different insert, also too close, also pretending the actors in the scene are really fucking.
But they can't be. No way. Now she's doggy style, her ass is in the air. It's some other shot from some other filming. An insert! An insert that's so close we can't see any faces.
Yet he's still does the occasional cut-aways to Lina's face. Sure. Sell it, Uncle Jess.
Around 32:00 the pumping goes faster...and the dude, whoever the stunt cock is, finally pulls out:
And he cums on her ass.
And Franco cuts back to Lina around 32.35 because he has to establish that she's still watching the guy fuck Lilian. And then Lina smiles a bit and moves out of camera range, out of the shot.
And back to the cock and ass - a hand comes in and rubs into the cum. We see her face - it's Lina!
No cut, the insert is continuing, still in close-up as Lina licks the cock as well!
It's not actually an insert! It's actually on set, and the star, the wife of Jess Franco, the woman in the establishing shot way 6 minutes ago, is there to lick the cock that just fucked the ass and eat the cum.
By 33:35 the scene is over and we finally cut back to the face of Lilian, who's ass presumably was not the one that has cum on it (and if it was how did she turn back around so fast?).
Franco has set up his
mise en scene to duplicate exactly the construction of typical late '70s and '80s foreign films that would have hardcore inserts cut in, sloppily with different lighting and disoriented angles, lulling the viewer into a sense of non-engagement when in reality the star was there, not only willing to participate but
participating with tongue and x-rated interaction. After 6 minutes of build-up.
He's set up a false sense of disappointment (he'll probably just cut away to a long shot when the sex stuff is done) and then pays it off completely at the end by simply holding his insert.
No tricks, no cheating. Camera runs as Lina comes in and finish the guy off with her mouth.
The sequence plays against all expectations by surprising in the least flashy way possible. By doing nothing and showing everything.
Thereby becoming the best insert shot ever.
