Wednesday, November 20, 2024

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: MR. MARI’S GIRLS (1967) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD

Mr. Mari is a suave bastard who sits in his swanky New York apartment and preys upon girls in trouble.  Have a gambling debt?  Mr. Mari will erase it.  Are you a junkie in need of a fix?  Mr. Mari has the horse you need.  Need some quick dough for a back-alley abortion?  Call on Mr. Mari!  Do you need a priest so you can marry your lesbian lover?  Mr. Mari’s your man!

This paste-up low budget sexploitation flick is comprised of a series of loosely related vignettes.  Even though the segments are wildly different, things often feel repetitive due to the structure.  It features lots of echo-y narration, dream scenes, and flashbacks inside of flashbacks.  None of this really ever comes together to make a cohesive whole (the segment about a girl trying to escape the clutches of some low rent hoods feels like it came out of an entirely different movie), but fortunately, since the running time is only an hour long, it zips by at a reasonable rate. 

There's a decent amount of skin here too, which I guess is all that really matters.  There’s sex, nude photo shoots, showers, junkie chicks stripping, gratuitous disrobing scenes, nude painting, and naked telephone conversations.  Best of all is the clothes-ripping battle royale cat fight amongst all the girls Mr. Mari has “helped” that serves as our climax.  Overall, there’s just about enough naughty bits to keep you interested, but not quite enough to make it a winner. 

There was no cast listing for this one, but I did recognize Doris Wishman regular Sam Stewart as a sketchy bookie.  Sadly, I’m not sure who the actress was that played the pregnant teen.  All I know is that she had one of the biggest butts I’ve ever seen in a ‘60s sexploitation movie.  So, if you’re a tush man, feel free to add an extra Half-Star to the rating. 

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