TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE (1970) Blu-ray/DVD Combo
Director: Edward D. Wood, Jr.
American Genre Film Archive/Something Weird Video

Ed Wood's once lost film TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE comes to Blu-ray from AGFA and Something Weird.

When their daughter Shirley (Donna Stanley, FIRE IN HER BED) runs off, stuffy Frank (Duke Moore, NIGHT OF THE GHOULS) and Evelyn Riley contact private dick Mac McGregor (Michael Donovan O'Donnell, VIXEN) to find her. Although she is of age, they are worried that she is associating with people below her station and are willing to pay Mac to find her. Mac naturally takes advantage of daddy footing the bill to pad it with vacation expenses, taking trips to the world's pleasure dens in between pursuing leads. With the likelihood that pretty girls who run away to Los Angeles end up in prostitution, Mac slaps around Sleazy Maisie Rumpledinck (Nona Carver, REVENGE OF THE VIRGINS) for some direction, followed by a visit to transvestite Alecia (Wood himself). Alecia does not take kindly to being "manhandled" and warns Mac's next leads, butch couple "Paul" and "Henry" but their "housemother" Ruth is unable to resist Mac's charms. Learning that a detective has tracked her down to Madame Penny's Call-at-Home service, Shirley conspires with her fellow prostitutes to give Mac the sort of welcome that Wood himself might have found pleasurable in real life.

Like most films thought lost and rediscovered, TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE – the title also the one-joke film's punchline – may prove disappointing to those who were under the impression that it was a Holy Grail. Taken instead as a hole in his filmography – his prior directorial effort having been THE SINISTER URGE in 1960, although is pulp novel career during that decade (including A.C. Stephen's adaptation of his ORGY OF THE DEAD) pointed to the more smutty direction his 1970s, largely uncredited shorts would take. At just seventy-five minutes, the film seriously tests the patience of the prurient-minded viewer. While Wood's cutaways to Mac's vacation jaunts on the Rileys' dime are almost comically rendered with foreign-language travel posters and the most threadbare backdrops, the film's "erotic" content is endlessly padded out of disparate bits spliced together and repeated to a cool psychedelic score. The effect is more mind-numbing than obsessive, and one wonders if the film was "unfinished" and pieced together from the plentiful outtakes; in any case, that's one more "lost" film recovered and made widely available. Monica Gayle (SWITCHBLADE SISTERS) is among Madame Penny's call girls.

Although picked up for distribution by MarJon Film Distributors, TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE was unreleased and thought to be a lost film. Roughly seventy minutes of outtakes turned up in the eighties and were released by Something Weird Video as a compilation VHS the following decade. AGFA's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen Blu-ray is derived from the only known 16mm print (more on that below) and it looks as though it may never have been projected. Apart from some negative marks and faint scratches, the transfer is very clean with stable, vibrant colors and textures that almost seem like 35mm (well, cheaply processed 35mm). The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono audio track is also clean-sounding.

Extras start off with a new audio commentary by filmmaker Frank Henenlotter and Ed Wood biographer Rudolph Grey, with AGFA's Joseph A. Ziemba, in which they reveal that the whereabouts of the 16mm print utilized for the release were known for some time, having been owned by late associate producer/actor/stuntman Ray "Crash" Corrigan's son Tom but that no one wanted to pay the five thousand dollars to obtain it (they do not specify whether this is what Corrigan's son wanted for the film or a lab storage fee). They suggest that the film is equally inspired by Russ Meyer as LAUGH-IN, and that its skin content is more akin to a nudie cutie, while Wood might have been using his limitations of a gag with regard to the "travelogue" cutaways. They also point out props carried over from earlier Wood films along with performers like Moore whose filmography consisted solely of Wood films. The aforementioned outtakes are not only included in their entirety (70:05), but also newly scanned in 2K. The footage includes some blown takes, a lot of shots that prove that there was plenty more of the same shots of the prostitutes running up and down stairs to pad out the film to a longer length, as well as some surprising full frontal male nudity (including erections) that Wood and company were able to hide in the long takes they used in the finished film.

The other major extra is the bonus 1969 film THE LOVE FEAST (59:35) directed by Joseph F. Robertson - who went from producing THE CRAWLING HAND to a softcore and hardcore directorial career throughout the 1970s and 1980s before producing Stephen Sayadian's arthouse DR. CALIGARI – and starring Wood as Mr. Murphy, a bachelor who gets his jollies calling up modeling agencies and getting women to strip for him under the guise of being a photographer. Sometimes he gets in trouble, other times he gets rewarded with repeat business. Today, however, he is about to be in way over his head. After tricking one model into the buff to model see-through clothing, their tryst is interrupted by the arrival of a comely traveling psychiatrist who cannot wait to join in, followed by more models – among them future TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE extras like THE JOYS IN JEZEBEL's Casey Larrain, TURN-ON ORGY's Heather Starr, and THE TOY BOX's Neola Graef – a hunky cab driver, even more models, and a pair of plumbers with big tools. While his guests are slipping and sliding around in his bed, a worn-out Murphy retires to his backyard for a smoke only to then be accosted by a group of S&M chicks who "force" him into a dog collar, negligee, and panties for an initiation.

The most artful thing about THE LOVE FEAST is its title sequence with credits as part of the body art of a nude female model (Lynn Harris, UP YOUR ALLEY) to a groovy 1960s theme song. There is plenty of nudity and enthusiastic simulated sex between the supporting cast – Wood seems genuinely reluctant to doff his underwear and not okay with one female performer attempting to do it – but the film just goes on monotonously with even Wood (looking bloated and haggard in contrast to his drag appearance in TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE the following year) seeming genuinely weary of the goings-on, being thankful that he is not young anymore. The most diverting, and perhaps autobiographical, aspect are his scenes with the domnatrixes in which he is asked if he knows what boot-licking is, and replies "I was in the Service." Very little of the film is actually arousing, but it is an important part of Wood's latter day works in front of and behind the camera. Both films were shot by softcore talent agent Hal Guthu (THE SUCKERS), with TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE looking the more "slick" offering.

THE LOVE FEAST was previously released on DVD by Rhino Home Video under the title PRETTY MODELS ALL IN A ROW in a double-sided disc with the Wood documentary LOOK BACK IN ANGORA. The source here is less than immaculate shape and is described by AGFA's copy as a "2K preservation" with plenty of scratches, some dialogue-dropping splices, fading, and staining. The film begins with the "presents" card, clipping the distributor either due to damage or some exhibitor's idea of removing defunct copyright information. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is subject to the print damage that extends to the optical track, but dialogue is generally intelligible apart from some of the "improvisations" of the bed-tussling extras. The combo comes with a reversible cover and a booklet by Rudolph Grey discussing what little is known about the making of TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE, including the sources of its soundtrack. (Eric Cotenas)

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