HONKY TONK NIGHTS (1978) **

Carol (Head) Doda stars as a former stripper trying to make it big as a country singer.  Carol gets her big break after saloon owner Georgina Spelvin fires the headliner (Serena) after she’s nearly raped by the bar patrons.  Her opening night is ruined when the audience begins chanting, “Take it off!” and a drunk rips the chesty Carol’s top off.  She then tries to regain the courage to go back on stage and sing her heart out.

Honky Tonk Nights is a crude sexploitation flick that cashes in on the country and western craze of the late ‘70s.  Its chief asset is the solid cast of porn starlets and ex-strippers trying to “act” while still getting naked at the drop of a hat.  (Well, Georgina keeps her clothes on, unfortunately.)  I’m not sure if you’ll care about the characters or their various hardships, but Carol and Serena are nude so much throughout the movie that it’s hard to completely dismiss it.  

Director Charles Webb, a vet of dozens of XXX movies basically approaches the material as he would a typical hardcore flick.  He keeps the yakking to a minimum and gets to the sex in short order.  Webb even manages to spice up the not-terrible country singing by introducing a little nudity into the numbers here and there when he can.

Honky Tonk Nights moves at a relatively brisk pace for most of the scant seventy-minute running time.  Too bad things pretty much fall apart in the third act.  The needless subplots involving sabotage at a local stunt show and a crooked businessman trying to steal Spelvin’s bar out from under her bog things down considerably.  Still, as far as “real” movies from porno filmmakers go, you can do much worse.