Xaviera Hollander puts it all on film when THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES HOLLYWOOD, on Blu-ray from Scorpion Releasing.

Warkoff Studios' ailing head W.B. Warkoff (Phil Silvers, IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD) is opening a new theater and needs a hit to keep his company afloat. He pits executives Lionel Lamely (BATMAN'S Adam West) and son-in-law Joseph Rottman (LEAVE IT TO BEAVER's Richard Deacon) against one another to secure the rights to Xaviera Hollander's autobiography "The Happy Hooker" with the winner also a shoe-in to take over the company. Xaviera (Martine Beswick, SEIZURE) is doing well for herself running an upscale New York brothel, so she is more flattered than anything about the prospect of having her life adapted to the big screen. Arriving in Los Angeles, however, she is put off by the liberties Rottman wants to take with her backstory and is more charmed by Lamely until she discovers that he has other motives for wanting to bed her. She declares war against Warkoff when she decides to produce the film independently with his grandson Robbie (Chris Lemmon, JUST BEFORE DAWN) adapting and directing. Warkoff sends Lamely and Rottman to sabotage the funding but they cannot figure out where the money is coming from, forgetting that Xaviera is an enterprising businesswoman who has brought her stable of women from New York to barter for services and crew the film while Robbie surprisingly sees little action in the casting office. When Warkoff tries to sabotage the production again with a vice squad bust, Xaviera cooks up a plan to get him right where she wants him.

The third Cannon "Happy Hooker" film – the earlier two featuring Joey Heatherton (BLUEBEARD) and Lynn Redgrave (MIDNIGHT) as the titular character – THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES HOLLYWOOD is definitely an improvement over the other two, although that may not be saying much. There is more nudity, the supporting cast is entertaining – fitting in bit parts for Dick Miller (BUCKET OF BLOOD), Jack Perkins (FUZZ), Edie Adams (THE APARTMENT), Ian Abercrombie (ARMY OF DARKNESS), Herb Vigran (SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL GUNFIGHTER), Lyman Ward (FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF), Golan-Globus regular Yehuda Efroni (DELTA FORCE), and columnist Army Archerd (CALIFORNIA SUITE) – and the film is stuffed with plenty of incident to keep the pace quick. It's not exactly a comedown for West to roll around naked with Beswick or to stroll around in drag with Deacon considering some of his less-than-stellar eighties feature credits, Silvers throws himself into his role without any sense of embarrassment, and Jack Lemmon's son is an affable co-lead. Also distinguishing the film from a sleazy quickie are the conflicts set up by the script with the amoral Hollywood types imposing their prurient projections onto Xaviera's story and lifestyle and her decision to commit to the film despite being not particularly passionate about it only because she does not like to be pushed around. The downside is that Xaviera is pretty much the only well-rounded female character in the film apart from THE NEW MIKE HAMMER's Lindsay Bloom as Lamely's washed up lover vying to play Xaviera despite insulting her to her face. Xaviera's girls are pretty much interchangeable despite being played by some familiar seventies and eighties faces like DAYS OF OUR LIVES' Tanya Boyd, THE RETURN's Susan Kiger, and SAVAGE BEACH's Lisa London among others, and the sex is still relatively tame given the subject matter. Director Alan Roberts had a past in hardcore films with THE SEXPERT and PANORAMA BLUE – the trailer of which highlighted a sex scene in a moving roller coaster which was actually executed with back-projection – and would later helm the softcore YOUNG LADY CHATTERLEY II (also with West) and also edited some films for Cannon including THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN.

Released theatrically by Cannon and in the early 1980s by MCA (and briefly reissued in the nineties by Warner before the library went to MGM), THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES HOLLYWOOD debuted on DVD in a trilogy set from MGM in 2007 (the first film on a single disc and the two sequels on a flipper) with anamorphic transfers. Scorpion's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray thankfully comes from a newly-created HD master in which textures and saturated colors of the wardrobe pop and bare skin is brought into fleshy relief apart from a couple diffused sex scenes. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is clean and clearly conveys dialogue and scoring while the optional English SDH subtitles are generally accurate apart from one punchline in which "the policeman's ball" becomes "the policeman's board."