Was anyone talking about bizarrely ambitious film projects? Well “Truck Stop” definitely belongs in this particular category, as it is a French soft-pornographic version of the legendary Greek poem “Homer’s Odyssey”. Sleazy soft core and Greek mythology form quite an odd combination, to say the least, but you can pretty much expect everything from writer/director Jean-Marie Pallardy. I have a weakness for this pleasantly deranged French cult filmmaker ever since I had the joy and privilege of watching his deluded 80’s action/trash vehicle entitled “White Fire”. That movie was totally unscrupulous and outrageous, whereas “Truck Stop” is still somehow unique and admirable.
I kid you not; this motion picture truly and honestly revolves on a more or less faithful macho trucker who desperately attempts to get back home to his beautiful girlfriend Pamela, the proprietor of a raunchy truck stop bar, but cannot because he repeatedly encounters “obstacles” in the form of sex-hungry women that want his body. That poor, poor guy! The role of the trucker was such an inhuman job that director Pallardy didn’t have any other choice but to play it himself. Whilst Ulysse and his loyal co-pilot try to resist the virulent sex attacks of scarcely dressed desert sirens and eye-patch wearing shop girls, his muse and her yummy truck stop employees continuously invent games to keep the horny truckers on a safe distance. “Truck Stop” obviously is an insignificant and totally redundant late 80’s sexploitation movie, but it’s undeniably entertaining and charming if you appreciate this sort of humbug. The tone and atmosphere are irresistibly light-headed and Pallardy’s screenplay actually contains a handful of ingenious and clever ideas. The games and contests held between the truckers in Pamela’s bar are particularly imaginative. For example, there’s are sequence where all the truckers are lined up, without pants and with a bell tied to their ding-dongs, and forced to watch two girls fondling each other. The contestant, if any, who manages to keep his bell from ringing under this severe sexual pressure, wins. In case you’re a connoisseur of 70’s European cult cinema, you might recognize several familiar faces, like that of Elizabeth Turner (“Waves of Lust”, “Cannibal Apocalypse”), Annik Borel (“Werewolf Woman”) and Evy Galleani (“Baba Yaga”, “Damned in Venice” and “Born for Hell”).
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| I Grossi bestioni Italy Truck Stop UK, soft |
