Naked Came The Stranger (1975)

Studio: Distribpix
Theatrical Release: May 21st, 1975
DVD Release: Jan. 1st, 2012
Rating: X
Directed by Radley Metzger (as Henry Paris)
Review by Craig Sorensen




Based on the famous best selling hoax novel, Naked Came the Stranger follows Gilly (Darby Lloyd Rains of The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann) and Billy (Levi Richards, also of The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann) as morning radio hosts.  Gilly finds out that her husband Billy is having an affair with their assistant Phyllis (Mary Stuart of Thunderbuns), so she decides to go on a sort of sexual walkabout and sleep with as many people as possible.  That’s the whole plot.

Naked Came The Stranger is a huge leap in quality compared to Metzger’s first Henry Paris film, The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann.  That film felt kind of cheap and rushed (I still enjoyed it) where this film feels more like a real Metzger film.  That playfulness is in full effect here.  Honestly, most hardcore films just don’t appeal to me.  It’s not that I’m morally opposed to it or anything like that, it just seems that most of what I’ve been exposed to (no pun intended) just seems to go out of their way to be sleazy and kind of mean spirited.  So the Henry Paris films have really been a breath of fresh air.  I mean, they are full of sex, and I suppose they are dirty but they never really feel trashy to me.  Like I said, there’s a playfulness to the films and that helps a great deal.  It’s nice to see people actually have fun with sex, rather than the mean spirited, quasi power play that constitutes most smut these days (it seems to me anyway).

This also has some of the best acting in an adult film that I think I’ve seen.  Darby Lloyd Rains  is great in the lead role.  She seems to be having fun with the ridiculousness of the whole thing and has quite a lot of screen presence.  I’m surprised that she didn’t have at least a little crossover appeal after this.  She gives the standout performance in the film.  The other actors do a fine job but none of them really make the impression she does.  Levi Richards and Mary Stuart are funny in their parts but they really are kind of one note characters, which I guess shouldn’t really surprise I suppose.  Of course, the thing that really ties everything together is Radley Metzger’s direction.  For people who don’t watch a lot of ‘adult’ pictures, this is a real film.  Metzger plays a lot with the form with this, constantly breaking the fourth wall (such as directly addressing the audience).  It’s obvious that he’s having a great time playing with the freedom that working in low budget smut allows and that seems to infect all the different parts of the film, from the actors to the lighting and cinematography.

Distribpix has done a great job remastering Naked Came The Stranger.  I can’t imagine that the film was in the best shape but it’s been cleaned up really nicely.  There are a few scratches here and there but I didn’t really find them all that distracting.  It’s presented in it’s original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and I believe it was transferred from the original Super16mm camera negatives.  You get the choice of the original mono or a newly remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks.  Both sound great.  Dialog and music sound good and there’s no hiss or pops to be heard.  Of course, Distribpix outdoes themselves again in the extras department.  You get a pretty good commentary with director Metzger and a “Film Facts” subtitle track.  Then there’s the short featurette “Locations” which compares the film’s locations (duh) now to how they looked in the film.  I find it a little depressing to see all the character stripped from New York but it’s still interesting.  Up next is a short comparing the soft core and hard core versions of the film via split screen.  It’s kind of surprising how much they can actually show in the soft core version.  After that there is a featurette on all the restoration work that went into the DVD.  I always like it when companies pull back the curtain a bit and let us in on how much work actually goes on in bringing things like this to video.  You also get a selection of deleted scenes and trailers for this film, Maraschino Cherry and The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann.  And lastly, you get radio spots for Naked Came The Stranger and Maraschino Cherry, a still gallery and an ‘ephemera’ gallery.