DVD Review: The Telephone Book

You ever see a film that makes you think, "They don't make 'em like this anymore"? Of course you have. We all have. That's commonplace.

Much rarer than that sensation, though, is a film that makes you believe that not only do they not make 'em like this anymore, but they may have never made 'em like this to begin with. That's the world in which The Telephone Book inhabits. It's a product of the '70s New York City underground-cinema movement, but watching it is like stumbling across a transmission from another planet. Steven Pulchaski of Shock Cinema tagged it 'mind-roasting', and I'd say that's a fair assessment.

The Telephone Book is about a young girl named Alice (played by Sarah Kennedy from Laugh-In, who's fabulous). We first see her lounging around her apartment, waiting for something to happen. We discover that the girl knows how to decorate — her bedspread is an American flag, while her wallpaper is comprised of dozens of pictures depicting people having sex. Eventually, the telephone rings. It's an obscene phone call.

Rather than being repelled as one would expect, Alice is transfixed by the man on the other line. Something in his demeanor, the things he says, the sheer unmitigated audacity of his 24-karat calls just drives her crazy. After a couple more calls, she decides that she absolutely must meet this champion of dirty callers. The man says his name is John Smith, and he's in the telephone book. Alice's job? Find him. With that, the film dives into the world of sexual perversion circa 1970, and brother, if you're gonna follow it down, be forewarned that it ain't comin' up for air any time soon.

Naturally, Alice isn't going to find her man straight off, and that's where the film has its fun. Her quest leads her into the clutches of others who are eager to use her to satisfy their own sexual peccadillos. (Here, the film's X rating helps immensely; it's nice to see that there was a time when an adult rating could freely be used and embraced by adventurous filmmakers with something to say.) As you may have gathered, there isn't really a narrative; instead, we have a series of incidents. And yet it works, maybe because moment by moment writer/director Nelson Lyon's script is as sharp and funny as anything you're likely to see. It's a pretty pointed satire on sexual mores, and it doesn't leave anyone out.

Much like the Mothers of Invention's great album We're Only in it For the Money, The Telephone Book takes a subculture and mercilessly mocks all involved parties — the off-kilter people who've bought into it, the straight-world inhabitants who don't get it, and the poor souls who try to live in both worlds. The last category provides one of the film's best segments, wherein a psychiatrist who previously exposed himself on a subway to Alice tries to get her to tell a dirty story about her best roll in the hay and she responds with a long, strange story about a respectable businessman (played by William Hickey!) who wakes up one morning with an extraordinary case of what the medical community calls priapism.

Article Author: Steve Carlson

Steve Carlson, the proprietor of The Ongoing Cinematic Education of... since 2002, neither conducts electricity nor talks to reptiles. However, he knows someone who does both.

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