My Sinful Life (1983)

Carlos Tobalina in his waning years as filmmaker addresses incest head on in MY SINFUL LIFE, a typically sloppy movie from the prolific pornographer. He misses the point entirely, but at least delivers some diversion for the hardcore fans.

Incest can be treated lightly, say as in the classic TOM JONES, but Carlos takes this approach to the extreme, in which the taboo subject is just another topic like stamp or coin collecting. This takes the oomph out of the movie, but there wasn’t much there to start with.

Danielle, with very little makeup on (makes her fit the young role) stars as a teen who goes to stay with her aunt, complaining (in endless flashbacks) that her adoptive parents have been sexually abusing her for years and years. The fact that she’s adopted is delayed (auntie mentions it about the third or fourth reel) so that we can watch wondering about these incestuous parents, played by Rita Ricardo and Don Fernando as “loving” (double meaning) folks.

Expanding on this theme, Danielle lets slip that her brother was also victimized by mom & pop, and a very young Tom Byron pops up as bro, to deliver three quality money shots (good enough that Carlos uses his instant replay gimmick to magnify their effect) before the film is done.

Aunt is a plain Jane type, and she too gets into the sex action, humping both Danielle and Tom for some more incest content. Main plot line has Danielle’s best new friend at her new school, Brooke Fields, getting her and later both brother and aunt, lucrative jobs working at the local whorehouse. Helga Sven, billed here as Helga Gabor because here character is named Zsa Zsa, is the madam, a role usually reserved for Liz Renay, but in this case it calls for XXX participation so the great Helga was recruited. Later breast worship accorded her is among the movie’s highlights.

Never a master of dramaturgy or film structure, Carlos telegraphs his own TOM JONES style finish way too obviously for it to be effective, as when Danielle pours out her life history and wish to find her real parents, Zsa Zsa immediately mentions how she gave up her own boy and girl offspring 20 years back as her favorite client (the daddy) was away in Africa. Guess how that coincidence turns out at the finale.

The client bores guest star Jamie Gillis with a cock & bull story of how he was kidnapped by pygmies in Africa and held for three years while he was forced to impregnate all the of -age women of the tribe, due to his impressive 6’6″ height. This absurdly tall tale (pun intended) has the makings of a dirty joke, as does Tobalina’s entire film.

Being a Troy Benny (his fake name) movie, there is of course an orgy thrown in, this time very poorly introduced and staged midway through the proceedings. Upshot is that Martin, the tall guy who hung out with pygmies, humps everyone including the pair who turn out to be his long-lost kids. Add in Helga’s humping and the incest has been maximized. The tall old guy also contributes closeups humping Danielle in which his white pubic hair is something of a distraction.

As usual the director shows up in a cameo, here a quite tasteless one (and he delivers his dialog carelessly with a thick accent that garbles its content) as the guy who’s hunting down Danielle’s parents for her. He asks for lots of money and when she can’t cough it up, he takes sex instead (fortunately off- screen).

Overall, the carefree tone of this nonsensical film presages the throwaway approach of several thousand ’80s videos that were cranked out after filmmaking gave way to the ugly but cheap shot-on-video substitute. Carlos stuck to film, and this one bears a 1985 copyright, even though IMDb and distributor Vinegar Syndrome incorrectly date it 1983, before the known span of Helga’s career.

Sitting through the tedious film I was rewarded at last by a dirty original song celebrating incest near the end, with lyrics as follows (expurgated by me): “I love my father, I love my mother, I love my brother and we f*ck one another. I suck my father…we suck each other, whoa, oh, whoa, oh, oh”. Kind of catchy, or is that kitschy?