This film, while utter trash from beginning to end, has tremendous camp value along the lines of "The Lonely Lady" and "Showgirls". For one thing, fans of the TV show "Dynasty" are REQUIRED to rent and watch this soft-core porn fiasco to see their beloved Alexis Carrington Colby Dexter (etc.), Joan Collins, boffing in the buff as rich-bitch disco maven, Fontaine Khaled (Fontaine is a forerunner of Alexis if ever there was one!). You could even say Fontaine is a sort of "Alexis Uncensored" -- Fontaine has all the glamorous window dressing of Alexis while tossing-off vulgar quips like, "Doesn't that give you a hard-on?" (Yes, you WILL howl when you hear the lines coming out of La Collins' mouth!). Wealthy wives who are bored silly, Fontaine and her corrupt girlfriend Vanessa spend their leisure time plotting trysts and comparing notes on sex while getting massages and applying make-up. It's all too, too FABULOUS! The so-called "plot" (thanks to Joan Collins' sister Jackie's bestselling novel) is thin stuff at best, almost arbitrarily following the whims and fancies of the rich-and-famous as they use and abuse one Tony Blake, a relatively attractive and ambitious young man who has foolishly resorted to hustling to pay the bills (played by Oliver Tobias, who would also run around naked in another tawdry production, "The Wicked Lady", co-starring Faye Dunaway, some five years later). It's the old "hooker with a heart of gold" story all over again; Tony becomes introspective over the course of the film and starts questioning his lifestyle. Without giving anything else away, your jaw will absolutely drop by the time the orgy scene rolls around. ASIDE: this is almost certainly the inspiration for 1980's "American Gigolo" starring Richard Gere as a hustler whose devil-may-care lifestyle finally catches up with him. Huge points are awarded to composer Biddu for the score to "The Stud". Some well-known songs punctuate the disco soundtrack which is unparalleled and truly captures the shallow, glittery period. I only wish it were available on CD (though the credits state an album was available on the RONCO label...). Good News: both THE STUD and THE BITCH have, as of February 2006, finally been released to Region 1 DVD in a boxed set! I've yet to watch either film, but have them on order, and will edit my comments accordingly sometime in March to say how the release turned out. Bad news: Thorn EMI's rather ancient VHS release (if that's all you can get your hands on, or if that's the level of technology you're currently stuck with) suffers from very bad sound. Dialog drops out from time to time, making nuances of the story irritatingly difficult to follow -- you have to keep adjusting the volume on your TV upward to hear what's being said, then down again so you don't get blasted to death by scenes in the disco. I've checked several commercially released copies of "The Stud" on VHS and they all suffered from the same sound problems, so it's Thorn EMI's fault. Which is too bad. "The Stud" is an example of bad film-making at its most obnoxious and should be witnessed by everyone who is either a fan of "bad cinema" or merely familiar with the work of Joan Collins.
Review of The Stud
