Vinegar Syndrome resurrects their naughty Peekarama DVD line with a pairing of the previously unseen version of FRANKIE AND JOHNNIE… WERE LOVERS and the rarely seen THE MISLAID GENIE.

Taking its basis from the popular American folk ballad previously recorded by Johnny Cash and Elvis among others, FRANKIE AND JOHNNIE… WERE LOVERS is the story of Johnnie (Ric Lutze, DISCO LADY), a computer programmer who dreams of building a high-tech safety car, and his up-and-coming singer old lady Frankie Lee (Rene Bond, COUNTRY HOOKER), who constantly bicker about whose career is more important when one or the other wants to stay in bed and ball. Frankie channels her frustration into song while Johnnie bangs women by the roadside on the way to or from work. Flashbacks take us through the highs and lows of their relationship, from meeting at a party that culminates in a threesome to Frankie standing up to her ex-husband Ray (John Barnum, THE ADULT VERSION OF DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE) and who knocks Johnnie around, to Johnnie knocking Frankie around and stealing money from her. Johnnie realizes he does not love Frankie for anything but her money and is willing to keep using her to realize his dream, but she warned him once before not to fuck her over, and when he gets sidetracked by her best friend Alice (Cyndee Summers, PANAMA RED) on the way home…

Made at a time when both Bond and Lutze were well into their prolific porno careers, FRANKIE AND JOHNNIE… WERE LOVERS is a softcore oddity that seems biographic in some ways, what with Bond's singing career on the side and what more she might have wanted to make of it, and her rocky relationship with Lutze (they divorced in 1972 when this film was likely shot), although it would probably be foolish to ponder whether any of the emotion onscreen was real. The party scene, though, has a slice of life feeling to it, and one wonders if Bond did indeed throw parties and sing with the band… before wandering off to the bedroom. Attempts at characterization are let down by bad acting (and a bit of post-synching) with both Bond and Lutze coming across badly when trying to be emotional, and the film's digressions become incredibly frustrating. It is as if director Colberg had just discovered the flashback technique, since any inking of forward momentum in the plot prompts an extended flashback, sometimes stopping a scene twice to show the memories it prompts in both characters. This is especially annoying during the climactic car chase which becomes long and drawn out that the explosion comes as a relief rather than a shock. For a softcore film as it was originally released, the film was quite explicit when it came to male and female nudity and the bumping and grinding quite authentic-looking. The recently rediscovered hardcore version reveals that the former was not a cut-down version but that the hardcore shots were always inserts (although filmed at the same time as the rest). The hardcore version is the alternate version engineered in such a manner that shots could be inserted in the place of other cutaways (the orgasm during the office scene replaces the ejaculation shots with shots of Johnnie's super computer going haywire).

Only slightly less rare than the hardcore version of FRANKIE AND JOHNNIE… WERE LOVERS is the comedy THE MISLAYED GENIE in which virginal high school student David (Franklin Anthony, AN ACT OF CONFESSION) discovers that his penis is a magic lamp when he rubs it and out pops genie Goliath (Tobar Mayo, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK) who offers him jewels and palaces but is bemused to discover that all David wants are girls. He gives David the choice of Bathsheba, Fatimah, and "delicious, delightful Delilah" but David is more interested in classmate Cathy and things seem to be going well without the genie's help until she accidentally rubs him off. After David and his pals are kidnapped by bank robbers and they are rescued when the gun moll (Tricia Opal, EROTIC ARTIST) rubs him with her tongue, David uses his next wish to expose the bragging of his friends about their conquests as lies but then helps them live out their fantasies with their comely classmates. David also uses Goliath's powers to liven up their teacher's (Rene Bond again) camping trip film in which they get to see what she really did with her Canadian Mountie friend (Paul Scharf, HER LAST FLING), turning the entire class into an orgy. David still only has eyes for Cathy, and decides that whisking her away to some magical land is better than sticking around and watching his parents have sex.

Taking a very tired pornographic film scenario and stretching it out over ninety minutes with an unlikable, "adolescent" protagonist, THE MISLAYED GENIE was perhaps deservedly lost, but it is a fortune find if only for Mayo's amusing performance which suggests he did a lot of improvising as his dialogue goes so far over the heads of the other characters and perhaps the audience. The sex scenes are quite odd, with Anthony and a few other lesser knowns actually having unsimulated sex while others may either be faking or the production did not bother to shoot inserts for these scenes or simply ran out of film before they could. The classroom orgy feels particularly interminable as a series of long shots without any "coverage" while Bond does not engage in any hardcore action in either the film-within-a-film played as a silent romp riffing on the Nelson Eddy/Jeanette McDonald vehicle ROSE-MARIE, or in the classroom scene. The film really has nowhere to go afterward, and ends with another pair of softcore scenes. Con Covert (A SCREAM IN THE STREETS) pops up, but as David's father rather than the gay hitchhiker David mistakes for a female hippie from a distance and Goliath ravishes magically with a series of celluloid-scratched laser rays and a closer encounter in which neither performer shares the same frame or is even seen in physical contact. Director Eric Jeffrey Haims also helmed the equally obscure softcore THE JEKYLL & HYDE PORTFOLIO (also with Bond) and the grating Yiddish comedy A CLOCKWORK BLUE in both softcore and hardcore versions (both films of which were previously released by Vinegar Syndrome in a limited Blu-ray/DVD combo with the hardcore version of the latter and a standard DVD featuring its softcore version).

FRANKIE AND JOHNNIE… WERE LOVERS was released theatrically in its softcore version, and this was negative that Something Weird Video had access to for their videocassette release and their later Image Entertainment DVD with THE TEASER as a "Rene Bond Double Feature" running 73:17. Transferred from a 2K scan of 35mm archival elements, the hardcore version of FRANKIE AND JOHNNIE… WERE LOVERS runs 76:28, although the film itself ends at 73:16 followed by three minutes of outtakes set to the instrumental version of the theme song which may either be where credits were supposed to have been superimposed (the opening credits are only the title, the two leads, and the director) or just a jaunty outro. The hardcore version's progressive, anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen transfer looks a little less crisp and grainier than the Image DVD with some damage here and there while the Dolby Digital 1.0 track seems subject to the original recording conditions (particularly during the live music moments), but this may be the only source for this version of the film. The only extra is a promotional still gallery (1:04).