Retro Porn Review - The Girls in the Band

While the name of this movie might suggest a rock n’ roll story full of debauchery and hot groupie interaction, there isn’t one single live music moment in The Girls in the Band. There are girls, though! Lots of girls. And I’m guessing that was still the main appeal for the majority of its demographic.

The movie was written and directed by Andrea Scott, a person no one seems to know much about. It was quite a rarity for a woman to direct porn in 1976. Then again, it could have totally been a guy who took a female stage name to see if that had any public impact.

The Girls in the Band is not so much a cohesive story, as it is a series of random events — mostly involving sex — that happen throughout a New Year’s Eve celebration, and its morning-after continuation and parade.

It’s (sort of) centered on a TV news reporter named Bryce Allen (Keith Erickson), who not only documents the night’s craziness for the camera, but saves some of the best moments for his personal enjoyment.

After reporting from the streets, Bryce heads to a sex party and brings along his engineer and off-camera employee Johnny (John Holmes), who doesn’t seem to find the same luck with the ladies that his famous TV boss had, mainly coasting on his fame.

The party wasn’t going so great for Johnny. He was ready to cut his losses and simply prepare for next day’s parade, but as he was peeing in the bathroom, a woman peeked and noticed Johnny’s obscenely large penis and decided to get acquainted with it. Johnny barely had enough time to shake it before she put it in her mouth. Another girl walked in, saw her friend sucking this huge dick and very nonchalantly went to her knees and joined in. This is the party you want to be at.

And that is perhaps the most discernible attempt for a story, culminating with Johnny’s validation with the best line of the movie (not a tough pick, though): “When the engineering is perfect, the talent ain’t shit.”

The editing can get a bit annoying, as it cuts from the sex scenes often — either alternating with simultaneous sex scenes, or to illustrate the normality of the parade happening at the same time.

There’s a scene with a guy masturbating next to his sleeping girlfriend. The old Tonight Show is on the television, very visible and audible for us, and all I could think of was whether Johnny Carson ever watched this movie, and especially how this dude’s money shot happened with Carson’s face all over the background. I’d like to think he did. I additionally hope he thought it was “weird, wild stuff.”

The guys partied hard, but they were ready at the crack of dawn to report on that day’s events. But during the parade, sex tapes from the night before started being broadcasted instead of the parade (which got a few people thinking they should really attend that parade next year). There’s an uncommon interracial scene at that point that was perhaps one of the best of the film, visually speaking, though the overdubbing sort of kills the mood a little bit.

There’s nothing particularly special about The Girls in the Band, and its status as a forgotten film of the mid-70s represents that well. It’s porn, just not really the best.

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