Gentle reader, be forewarned: kitchy nostalgia be damned, this is a movie whose primary concern is a woman sticking her face, fingers or found objects in another woman's genital region. Repeat this concept ad infinitum for an hour, and you have a whole damn movie, which for the sake of this review we'll call FRAULEIN LEATHER. Since that's also the name given to this hardcore muffin-munchin' masterpiece by art-house sleaze auteur Nick Phillips, then we're right on track.

And although the title seems oddly redolent of an ILSA film, FRAULEIN LEATHER contains absolutely no casaba-breasted, whip-slinging Nazi bitch-queens setting naked girls' asses on fire. Sorry. Please see management about your refund.

Still here? Damn. Well, I'll explain the whole Nick Phillips thing. Seems old Nick built quite a rep in the late '60s and early '70s with art-house porn flicks like PLEASURES OF A WOMAN (featuring the chestacular Uschi Digart), utilizing a loopy, anything-goes style that leads me to imagine him emerging from the Stan Brakhage school of filmmaking only to ponder how he could appeal to his metaphysical cinematic sensibilities while simultaneously jerkin' his gherkin.

To wit: let's have a fuzzy, out-of-focus shot of some wind chimes; now, let's examine the supple lines of a pair of buttery leather boots; now let's see a huge dildo arranged oh-so-artfully on a chair. (In all great art, composition is half the battle.) Now let's go for a gauzy slo-mo frolic on the beach. All of the above material is accompanied by the most hilariously overwrought voice-over work in the history of skin-flicks. Of course, Phillips frequently discards his French New Wave delusion and shows us a cute brunette pixie wearing nothing but an aviator's helmet jamming the aforementioned dildo into... well, you get it, right? Stay with me here.

This Wank Art approach hangs on a plot device that would suck toasted turds in just about anything except a porn flick: that is, the dream sequence. As this is just such a film, it's not a problem, since it allows our urbane, cultured audience to enjoy 63 minutes of perpetual rug-chomping, free from the encumbrances of plot, logic, style, or who knows what else gets in the way of 63 minutes of sticky sappho sex.

The "dream," experienced by our lonely narrator "Suzanne" in the throes of guilt-ridden lesbian fantasy, is nothing more than a series of hardcore girl-on-girl romps taking place in what's presumably her beachfront apartment, intercut with lots of hilarious slo-mo frolics on the beach itself (in which Suzanne wears a coat with a horrifying 7-foot shoulder span). As with the earlier montage, there is no sync sound whatsoever, and no spoken dialogue; Suzanne's bizarre, pseudo-arty voice-over weaves in and out (pardon the pun) for the entire hour, accompanied by some nutty beat-club jazz flute improvisations.

Suzy's ramblings are all over the fucking place, but somehow manage to link every topic under the sun - from the Vietnam War to censorship to the bleak inevitability of nothingness - and bring it all together with phrases like "a symphony of steaming pussy." Granted, I talk like that all the time myself (usually in restaurants, and often loudly), but it's not much of a narrative thread, even for a bunch of strung-together fuck loops from 1970.

Now, you raincoat-wearing palm pilots out there, heed this interesting historic note: leather fetishes really haven't changed since the '50s, beginning with Irving Klaw and all that. They just couldn't depict the naughty extremes some fetishists will pursue for satisfaction - at least not outside of the stag-film underground. Only when XXX action gained some degree of hip sophistication in the "Deep Throat" '70s did kinky epics like this one find a somewhat wider audience, full of wide-eyed, sweaty aesthetes eager to see what those ladies can really do with 8-inch stiletto heels. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Okay, stop swabbin' yer knob and bring it back to the focus. I'm talkin' ART here! And what art it is, in all its 16mm, washed-out, scratched-all-to-fuck glory. I don't suppose a better print was available - in fact, I doubt it was ever clean to begin with. So it appears good old Media Blasters did their best to preserve the purity that is the Nick Phillips experience. Would-be aficionados of the smut auteur can find other examples of his cinematic oeuvre on the Seduction Cinema Label - often paired with SOV remakes starring perky sex lollipop Misty Mundae - but this is apparently one of the Blasters' first scoops of Phillips' 31 fucking flavors, part of their adults-only "Guilty Pleasures" line. (Their trashy pre-flick bumper looks like the prologue to a mid-'80s Poison video.) The mono track is appropriately hideous; the voice-over sounds like it was done on a Fisher-Price tape recorder, and the fluffy jazz flute sounds too much like something from "Sesame Street" for my sanity. No extras of note, aside from a couple of trailers for other "Guilty Pleasures" titles. The hard-to-navigate menus (can't... find... the dot...) feature a leathered-up goth chick who, although rather tasty, is nowhere to be found in the film.

So folks, that's FRAULEIN LEATHER, and I sincerely hope I've managed to gross you out completely. So lube up, grab the olive loaf and have a festive Holiday Season.

Visit xploitedcinema.com to pick this fine gem of a flick up.