Porn journeyman Bob Chinn gives us a disparately entertaining "two for the price of one" double feature in HARD SOAP, HARD SOAP and DISCO LADY, on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome.

In HARD SOAP, HARD SOAP, housewife Penny (Laurien Dominique, HOT LEGS) is unhappy because her well-hung therapist husband John (John Holmes, CALIFORNIA GIGOLO) is too tired when he comes home from work to pleasure her. Suspecting something is going on at the office, she begs new neighbor and fast friend Linda Lou (Candida Royale, SUNNY) to pose as a patient to see if he is cheating on her; however, she has never met John and ends up screwing another patient (Peter Johns, ORIENTAL BABYSITTER) while Penny attempts to help the milkman (Carl Regal, BLAZING ZIPPERS) with his marital problems by seeing if he measures up. Linda Lou stumbles upon that encounter and then witnesses Penny's therapeutic masturbatory performance for voyeur paperboy Willard (Jon Martin, HOT LUNCH) and assumes that Penny is just having fun when her husband is away; but Penny has decided to ignore her own personal problems and throw herself into helping out others sexually, even going so far as to conduct an unorthodox group therapy session while her husband is away at a conference. Penny becomes discouraged in her new direction not by Linda Lou – who has a recreational lover (Ken Scudder, THUNDERCRACK) in addition to her horny husband (Blair Harris, LADIES NIGHT) – but after an attempted rape by a janitor (Paul Thomas, LUCIFER'S WOMEN) in her husband's office. While John may not approve of his wife's approach to therapy, a part of him may turn out to be quite useful when she takes on the sexual trauma that lead to her sister's (Joan Devlon, ALL NIGHT LONG) hysterical blindness and preference for transsexual best friend Glenda (Sabrina).

Not so much a pornographic parody of soap operas as a parody of the soap opera satire MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN, Bob Chinn's HARD SOAP, HARD SOAP is not as funny a comedy as his HOT & SAUCY PIZZA GIRLS but it does benefit from the winning performances of Dominique and Royale who bring the right amount of pep to an otherwise deliberately dreary and mundane setting (in keeping with the film's model) and other performances that range from low key to amateurish. The laughs are few when the two leads are not onscreen, and the rape scene between Thomas and Dominique seem to have come in from another film tonally, while the group therapy session which includes a sexualized enactment of "Peter and the Wolf" is as weird to the protagonists as it is to the audience. Fans of Bob Chinn's other films may be surprised at how this film looks compared to his considerably slicker eighties works but it might be seen as a transitional work between the Johnny Wadd pics and his later comic-tinged features.

The club DISCO LADY is all the rage on New Year's Eve. Pimp Candyman (Alan Colberg) picks up hitchhiker Carla (Rhonda Jo Petty, TINSELTOWN) and puts her to work in the club restroom with a promised cut and all the "nose candy" she can snort. Rick (Ric Lutze, FRANKIE & JOHNNIE WERE LOVERS) and his wife (Robin Savage) go out dancing on their anniversary. When a waitress (Tiffany Ladd) spills a drink on Rick and takes him into the back for clean him with her tongue, his wife decides what's good for the goose is good for the gander and drags a stranger (Mike Ranger, TABOO) into the ladies room. Shop girl Sherry (Ming Jade, TASTE OF SUGAR) and car salesman Johnny (Rob Rose, LOLLIPOP PALACE) also make use of the back room. When Angie (Angel Ducharme, RITES OF URANUS) discovers her husband (producer Damon Christian) has been cheating on her, she goes out to the club to have some fun, but she is not the only one in danger when her husband follows her with a gun.

Produced back to back with HARD SOAP, HARD SOAP, Chinn's DISCO LADY is a far more shapeless effort, not nearly as clever as it needs to be for its setup of several diverse characters coming together and intertwining on New Year's Eve at the titular club. The setup is belabored with cuts away from the club to introduce characters as far as three-quarters through the film when they should have all been presented up front. At barely an hour long, the film meanders in spite of delivering the requisite sex scenes with a reasonable amount of heat from some recognizable performers that nevertheless appear to be bored. The only truly novel aspect is the slow-motion climax, although even that is ruined by the grain and underexposure of using a higher framerate without compensating lighting-wise. It is workable as a B-feature but totally worthless on its own.

Released theatrically by producers Freeway Films and on video by Caballero, HARD SOAP, HARD SOAP comes to Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray in a 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer that derives its first reel from a CRI element that looks considerably grainier and contrastier than rest of the presentation sourced from the 35mm original camera negative. The audio fares better for the most part, although five minutes had to be sourced from VHS. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided. Previously released on VHS from Wonderful World of Video, DISCO LADY's 2K-mastered 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen transfer looks generally crisp in the well-lit moments while the gel-lit club scenes tend to look grainier (particularly the slow motion climax) while the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is clean enough to notice that the production did not have enough disco music, looping the same bits throughout. The optional English subtitles also transcribe song lyrics.

NOTE: The first pressing of this release froze on the Blu-ray side at roughly twenty minutes. A replacement disc was issued. The second disc froze at twenty-five minutes on two of my players but this problem has not been mentioned of the replacement elsewhere so it may just be this particular disc.