Existential Smut

(By the way, none of the screenshots included in this review come from the Blu Ray. They are all crappy screenshots from the VCA DVD).

CAFE FLESH – I am reviewing the UHD/BD Slipcover Edition sold by Mondo Macabro. It is currently out of stock, but I expect that Mondo Macabro will sell a conventional UHD/BD edition in July 2025. Restored Movie Trailer.

Note: There is a low-resolution video of Cafe Flesh on archive.org 186MB total, based on the VCA VHS.

MY Rating: A+, Two Thumbs Up, *****, Fully Erect or whatever.

Introduction

In my 2024 ebook Existential Smut 2 I included a long essay called Notes on Cafe Flesh. I wrote the essay in 1993, revised it in September 2024 and published it online. As luck would have it, I learned a week before publishing it online that the director Stephen Sayadian had been working with Daniel Bird on a full movie restoration for a 4K/Blu Ray release.

No movie has been more deserving of a high-quality restoration. When I wrote and revised my essay, I used only the VCA DVD (which was basically the same as the low-res video copy on Archive.org). Since I have already talked at great length about the movie in my essay, I thought I’d write a separate review of the Blu-Ray release — focusing mainly on the picture quality and the revelations from the director’s commentary and other extras.

I have already watched the movie dozens of times for my essay. Certain things will pop out for me that 95% of the viewers would never notice or care about. The section Revelations (Major Spoilers) probably should only be read by people who have watched the movie.

Interestingly, although obviously the DVD is inferior to the blu ray on so many levels, I still found the experience of watching Cafe Flesh on DVD to be extraordinary. The colors and compositions and sets were incredible, as was the music and writing and acting.

Visual Details

The outfits and the colors were striking in the 4K/Blu Ray release. From the DVD I knew that someone with a really good eye had chosen all the clothes, and that Rinse Dream had lots of experience with photo design, and so all these details were carefully chosen. But wow! I never realized that Moms’ outfit had so many sequins and spangles or that Silky’s plaid suit looked so tacky. Outfits of sex performers and even Max Melodramatic all had a flashy theatrical quality, while Lana had a simple elegance. Of course, all the Sex Negatives (i.e, the extras in the audience) already had a striking catatonic presence, but their outfits were colorful and bizarre. As Jacob Smith mentioned in the commentary, the film’s look and style was so eclectic that the result was a “postmodern pastiche of times and styles and eras.”

Similarly the makeup and finger nails were rich and stylized. The theatre is bathed in a bluish light and all sorts of fog and smoke. All the females (Negatives and Positives) had bright red lipstick and theatrical makeup and colorful fingernails. For the first time I noticed the texture of the shag carpet in the Ratman tableaux, the green astroturf in the Oilman tableaux, the oval-shaped matt that the military lesbians recline over and the blue florescent light in the space underneath it.

The actors in this movie were uncharacteristically good for an 1980s porn flick, and the restored colors provided lots of contour and fleshiness. Max Melodramatic’s performance (played by Andy Nichols) was always extraordinary, but in high definition, we see the full range of Max’s facial expressions and the fleshiness of Max’s face as it sneers and lusts at the audience. In the military lesbian scene, Max’s head was enclosed in a cage while the two females pose and make lesbian gestures. In high-def, the man in the cage always remains in tight focus. Lana (played by Michelle Bauer) had the right balance of wistful curiosity and dreaminess. Her husband Nick (Paul McGibboney) plays a combination of emasculated hurt and cynicism. Other strong performances include: the Angel the beautiful and naive virgin (played by Marie Sharp), Moms (the MILFy club owner played by Darcy Nichols), Mr. Joy (the sarcastic doorkeeper played by Paul Berthell), Spike (cool-headed bartender who was Nicky’s friend played by Dondi Bastone), Silky (the short and greedy talent scout/pimp) and many others. The movie was made 43 years ago, but it’s unfortunate that none of the main cast were available to do an interview for the Blu Ray release. I would have loved to hear their perspectives.

I’ve mentioned before that the sex scenes were stylized and carefully choreographed. The first Milkman tableaux had slight variations in picture quality, but generally the picture improvements were considerable. Not necessarily brighter; the movie kept a dark and eerie atmosphere, but the skin tones of all the bodies looked great and had an appropriate amount of fleshiness. Pubic hair and orifices and bodily fluids were focused and inviting, and the veins on phalluses were clearly visible (as were the normal blemishes and pores that might typically appear on the skin of any human body). Yes, breasts and penises and pussies in the Blu Ray seem solid and three dimensional in the way that they weren’t in the crappy DVD.

There’s a scene where Angel is dragged out of the club by the enforcers. It’s shocking and scary. As the camera pans out the door, there is a quick shot of Moms sitting down, relaxed and smiling at what was taking place, as if the kidnapping were just part of the show. In the restored version, this unexpected moment really stands out.

An important part of the movie were the reaction shots from Sex Negatives in the audience. They were mostly impassive, except for slight emotions and slight twitching movements. The nuances of their reactions are more visible in the blu ray. (At one point, I could clearly see a tear coming out of one of the Negative’s eyes).

The cafe is littered with all kinds of Sex Negatives who stand quietly and motionlessly to watch the action. I had always wondered about the mystery of the motionless nude woman sitting in a cubbyhole beneath the bar. In the restored version, I was startled to realize that she was also enclosed in glass (and could even see the reflection on the glass). Also, this woman was holding a tarantula spider in her hand, a surreal detail I had never noticed before. (According to the diretor’s commentary, the person playing this character also performed in the military lesbian scene later).

Other visual details jump out in the Blu Ray. During a quarrel scene where a female Sex Positive claws at Max Melodramatic, I am amazed to discover that the Sex Positive was wearing a plastic mask. In the military lesbian tableaux, I was finally able to read the full graffiti message on the backdrop; it said “Jump over the wall and join the party” (swiped from Berlin Wall graffiti). (Before, I could only see the words Join the Party (or was it Arty). In the first Milkman tableaux, the milkman has a long tail and a phallus-shaped nose, the nose actually appears to wiggle when excited (a nuance I had never noticed before).

Almost all those scenes had great lighting and color. Many of the scenes had fog and smoke (the movie makes frequent use of smoke from cigarettes, etc.). The high def restoration gave more visual depth to the scenes. At times it almost seemed that I could even see the smoke suspended in space.

Revelations (Major Spoilers)

I had already read Jacob Smith’s revelatory essay about the style of Sayadian’s films, but in the interview and audio commentary, Sayadian revealed a lot of remarkable things.

First, I had discussed at great length the question of whether Lana had always been a Sex Positive or whether she had become transformed into Positivity by the Cafe Flesh experience. Sayadian reveals unambiguously that he intended Lana to be faking her negativity from the very start (and had been faking being sick at home with Nicky). I have already written at great length why I think the question remains unsettled, but there is no denying the director’s intent.

In my essay I discuss the gendered nature of the movie and how it seemed impossible that the roles of Nicky and Lana could have reversed so that Nicky could have been energized to go onstage. Sayadian reveals in his commentary that he had intended for there to be a hardcore sex scene of male-on-male sex, but ultimately that decision was vetoed by the film’s financiers. Maybe it doesn’t show in what the film turned out to be, but this confirms the idea that Sayadian believed that the transformation from Negative to Positive could have occurred with either gender.

Before watching the blu ray, I had already read that Sayadian wanted the ending to have Nick to chop off his own penis during the performance or hang himself. This struck me as a rather far-fetched idea even for a porn film; it sounded like one of those ideas which are talked about but never seriously considered.

The director’s commentary reveals that Sayadian and Stahl had seriously played around with various horror scenarios like this. Sayadian wanted to show blood dripping down Nicky’s leg — he fought hard with the financiers to make this horror ending. He even envisioned a scene of Sex Positives attacking and raping Nicky just for the fun of it, causing Nick to become violently ill as a result. Ultimately though there was no room in the budget to shoot these erotic horror episodes even though he had already done several Hustler photoshoots in that same spirit. Later Sayadian made another movie (Dr. Caligari) with these stylish comic horror elements. But for Cafe Flesh, Sayadian’s impulses were restrained by his financiers, and so the final movie become less horrifying and more brooding and ambiguous.

I mentioned in my essay that I’d seen two different endings on VHS and DVD. The VHS copy showed Max Melodramatic laughing at Nicky and then being choked and kicked by Nicky’s friend Spike. But in the VCA DVD version, that choking/kicking scene is omitted and all we see is Spike dragging a catatonic Nicky out the door. For the restored blu ray, the scene of Spike beating up Max Melodramatic was restored (which is perhaps not surprising given the other extreme horror endings which Sayadian had been considering).

Sayadian expressed regret at several points at not having the chance to shoot a few more scenes and make the movie longer. He never really saw himself as a maker of porn movies but viewed porn simply as a way to get funding and more creative freedom. He had definitely been open to removing the hardcore scenes and adding more non-sex parts. He had actively shopped the movie around with distributors while looking into the possibility of expanding it into a longer R rated version. Everyone liked the movie, but just didn’t know what to do with it, and so ultimately a hardcore version of the movie was released with very limited distribution. Eventually it found a place on the midnight movie circuit and met wide success.

Surprisingly, many of the sex performers had never done a sex scene before, and Sayadian had told them that whenever he sensed that a performer was getting too much into the sex, he was going to yell “cut.” Lana (played by Michelle Bauer) was okay with nudity and lesbian/softcore stuff, but her husband didn’t want her doing any hardcore, so the final shot was made with a combination of Bauer herself and a body double for the explicit sex. Sayadian reveals that it was a conscious decision to omit any foreplay and go straight to the hardcore action for all the sex scenes. As a result, all the sex tableaux have big theatrical setups, but the actual hardcore sex takes place quickly (usually in a couple of minutes).

Sayadian talked a lot about the actors and the extras. He found many of the actors through local theaters, and the extras from musicians and punks around his neighborhood. Sayadian talked about the limitations of his budget and shooting schedule. With the $90,000 budget, he shot the tableaux first and then the non-sex scenes. Because he and Mark Esposito had made storyboards of each scene beforehand, they accomplished a lot with the limited shooting time and resources they had.

Sayadian mentioned some influences, including sci fi and musicals like The Band Wagon and Cabaret and after-shooting regrets. He mentioned being in close proximity to various punk bands (like Wall of Voodoo which provided a song for Nightdreams).

Insights

There was a ton of insights, both from the commentaries and the printed material included with this limited release.

The enclosed booklet contains several essays with fresh lively takes. Heather Drain‘s “Shadows and Sadness in the Fallout in Stephen Sayadian’s Cafe Flesh” shows appreciation for the Max Melodramatic character:

Think less Shakespeare or Our Town and more Brecht or Artaud. (No doubt, that Antonin Artaud would have, at the bare minimum, been a little entranced by the club’s emcee, who is like a walking one-man Theater of Cruelty acting troupe).

Expressing admiration also for Michelle Bauer’s character Lana, Drain mentioned that the

…last shot of her face is downright eerie. Any other director and writer would have had Lana in the free throws of rosy-cheeked lust. Instead, we see her sacrifice both her relationship with Nick as well as her now former life, all due to the dick-notizing effects of Johnny Rico. She looks less like a beautiful woman in a sex thrall and more like a revenant by the end. Factor in the fact that sex positives are forced to work in clubs like Cafe Flesh, and the lasting picture painted is anything but pretty.

Film restorer Daniel Bird provides an essay which relates Cafe Flesh to other artistic movements. He makes an interesting connection between Frank Zappa and Stephen Sayadian (who Zappa once hired to work on an off-Broadway production). Bird says that Cafe Flesh has roots in dadaism and surrealism and the later radicalism of Situationist International and even Charlie Hebdo‘s satirical art. Bird is correct to point out that Cafe Flesh is both kitschy and subversive, parodying the porn genre and trying to relate it to cinema of the past.

Writer & ex porn actress Stoya did a short video appreciation of the film with her own interesting take. In Cafe Flesh, Sex Positives don’t seem to be allowed to have sex in private, but the only way for sex to happen is to happen onstage. She also noted that not all people who say they would want to act in a porn movie could actually do it (in terms of performance, stamina, patience, flexibility and enthusiasm). In a way we are all Sex Negatives — perhaps we might find the idea of doing a sexual performance in public or for a camera appealing, but only a small percentage can actually pull it off.

It was surprising to learn that Sayadian was influenced by a lot of sci fi and mainstream Hollywood, but not much by the porn genre itself (aside from doing satirical nude photo shoots for Hustler magazine). Even though softcore and teenage sex movies were becoming a thing in the early 1980s, Sayadian seemed oblivious to them.

I have always been struck by the paradoxical nature of Sayadian’s approach to sex scenes. On the one hand, he did his utmost to make the scenes unerotic; he told actors to show no sign of arousal, to have no foreplay and keep the porn scenes short. By underplaying these scenes and making elaborate choreography for them, the movie creates anticipation and makes these scenes very re-watchable.

The script and story were brilliant, and Jerry Stahl created the amazing dialogue and Max Melodramatic’s edgy monologues. At the same time Stahl credits Sayadian for his vision and Froom’s music for providing the atmosphere.

This was a short pared down film with very limited interior locations. There really isn’t that much hardcore sex in it, and even though Sayadian clearly could have expanded the story and made it more graphic and extreme, financial limitations and pushback from his financiers kept it from becoming something bigger. You could even remove all the hardcore shots and still have a very watchable movie. For this reason — and also because the incredible luck of having Mitchell Froom’s musical contributions, the movie will endure, not just as a product of Sayadian’s dark and strange remarkable vision, but as a beautiful time capsule and a movie with memorable imagery and universal themes. Perhaps a more fully realized version of the movie might have leaned heavily on the surreal horror side, but the version that endures with this majestic restoration is hypnotic and alluring, but also restrained. The story is so short and simple that it feels like a fairy tale with humor, cynicism and longing.

See also: Stephen Bjork‘s Blu Ray review at thedigitalbits.

The author personally made all the screenshots from the 1999 Cafe Flesh DVD which was produced by VCA Platinum/VCA Classics DVD.

1. Procession Onstage. A transformed Lana (Michelle Bauer) is ushered forward by a line of animated Sex Negatives.
2. Nicky (Paul McGibboney), Lana and 2 Vamps sitting at a table between shows.
3. Angel (Maria Sharp) and Silky awestruck at having arrived at the Cafe.
4. Nicky (Paul McGibboney) and Lana (Michelle Bauer) after the show. Scattered light (fallout?) from the post-nuclear world rain upon their bodies in the bedroom.
5. Skull in the Cage. Max Melodramatic (Andy Nichols) reciting his soliloquy in the middle of the Military Lesbian tableaux.
6. Angel Transformed into a Sex performer in the Telephone Tableaux.
7. Oilman Tableaux. A catatonic secretary slowly types a memo while her boss is having sex.
8. Faces of Sex Negatives. Composite image made by Hapax Legomenon using VLC.