The porn industry has always been rife with playful knock-offs of big budget movies, and Dave considers this XXX piece by Gary Graver to be worth your time.

After Gary Graver spent a decade working under renowned adult film producers Sidney Niekerk (aka Sam Norvell) and Ted Paramore (aka Harold Lime), the wild west nature of the ‘80s started to attract increasingly mysterious groups of money men. For 10 ½ WEEKS, Graver’s self-penned riff on Adrian Lyne’s steamy sensation that starred Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger, the financing came from one ‘Sonny Francis’.

An alias of notorious mobster Sonny Franzese, perhaps?

Unconfirmed, uncorroborated, and pure conjecture of course – but it makes for a fascinating ‘what if?’.

The former underboss of the Columbo crime family, Franzese spent his life dealing in racketeering, fraud, and loansharking. He received a fifty year prison sentence in 1967 for a series of bank robberies but was out after only eleven years. Where does the porn aspect come in? Well, Franzese helped part finance Deep Throat (1972) – and a couple of years later he even invested some cash in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Mob ties to the adult films of the ‘70s have been well documented, but throughout the ‘80s, especially at the dawn of the highly profitable VHS era, the mafia’s involvement in the XXX business was just as strong. It was a suspicion confirmed at the Meese Commission hearings by Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates who estimated that 85% of the porn industry was controlled by organised crime.

Fanciful hypothesis aside, 10 ½ Weeks is pretty much business as usual for Graver – stylistically at least [1]. The familiar cityscape open narrows down to central San Francisco where we’re introduced to a young fashion designer called Ashley (Barbara Dare). Her stunning good looks have attracted the attention of a wannabe actor, Kyle (Jerry Butler), and they embark upon a wild and passionate affair that pushes them to the limits of their sexual dexterity.

As with 9 ½ Weeks (1986), it’s the male protagonist who’s keen to flex the boundaries of this fledgling couple’s sexuality. Although Graver didn’t quite have the budget to include fancy locations like lavish hotels or equestrian stores, 10 ½ Weeks still follows a similar path with Kyle keen to see how far Ashley will go, be it BDSM; posing for naked Polaroids; or roleplay that includes his ‘wife’ bursting in mid-coitus. Graver, however, is no out-and-out mimic so, in a dark twist of fate, Ashley takes her revenge on Kyle’s continual perversity by arranging for her ‘brothers’ to show up to the apartment. Dressed like a pair of New Wave pimps, Butch (Tom Byron) and Buttercup (Jon Martin) – so called because he, ahem, ‘brings the butter’ – descend on the bedroom for a cuckold orgy that teaches Kyle a lesson or two about dominance.

It’s both ours and Graver’s first encounter with Butler during this ‘Robert McCallum’ odyssey, and he’s a memorable lead. A Chuck Vincent regular, both in hardcore and mainstream fare – notably the thriller Deranged (1987) – Butler hit the tabloids when he married Lisa Loring, the former child actor turned make-up artist best known for playing Wednesday Addams on The Addams Family. Ironically, they met on the set of Traci’s Big Trick (1986), which was the porn industry’s flailing attempt to expose Traci Lords as a master manipulator.

In his autobiography, Butler stated that Dare had a “commanding screen presence” despite her small physical stature [2], and it’s obvious that they had a good professional relationship that ran across several features. Indeed, Dare is a powerhouse here, and one of the few adult actresses who could carry Ashley’s journey with an air of authenticity.

The notion of 10 ½ Weeks might yield a resigned eyeroll – but in a business where lazy mockbusters (a ‘not’ prefix, and a ‘XXX’ suffix) have become the order of the day, Graver’s imaginative cash-in is due some love.

USA ● 1986 ● Adult ● 86mins

Barbara Dare, Jerry Butler, John Leslie, Keisha, Joey Silvera, Tom Byron, Jon Martin ● Wri./Dir. Gary Graver (as ‘Robert McCallum’)

[1] And some might say musically too: the kickass opening track from Suzie Superstar (1983) makes a welcome reappearance in a couple of scenes.
[2] Raw Talent: The Adult Film Industry as Seen by Its Most Popular Male Star by Jerry Butler, Prometheus Books, 1990.