I consider Kemal Horulu's SOME LIKE IT VIOLENT one of the best "obscure" '60s indie features. But his subsequent THE ALL American HONEYMOON is obscure for a different reason -it stinks.
Clearly a vanity production from the team of writer Sidney Antesi and producer Joshua Antesi, it delivers all the minuses of softcore porn without any of the redeeming plusses. The dialog is smutty and vulgar, but there's no sex, despite subject matter crying out for same. Similarly, two leading ladies disrobe but barely a momentary topless shot is delivered for the audience's delectation. It constitutes anti-entertainment and was wisely never released (until Something Weird dredged it up recently for us "fans of the unseen").
Tony Brande, a journeyman actor and bit player, is immensely unappealing and overbearing in the lead role, taking a subway with bride Anne Linden, to stay at his brother's apartment for a weekend honeymoon.
Their non-adventures, hardly worthy of a 10-minute sketch on "Love American Style", run a bloated 85 minutes, with non-stop yammering in a script so lowbrow it often approaches the level of pidgin English.
Basically a two-hander resembling a one-act play, this boring exercise is interrupted occasionally by visits from neighbors, only marginally less dull than the main event.
The chubby landlady is a talkative bore at the outset; a drunken guy keeps popping in pointlessly, and the chief interruption is when an outraged husband (with buddy in tow) burst in to manhandle Brande in a case of mistaken identity. He talks his way out of this jam, but then the guy's estranged wife shows up, just to kill another reel and provide a brief tease of some skin.
The film does provide quite a bit of camp value, notably in the way scripter Sidney Antesi posits Brande's reaction to various novelties of technology. He is presented as incredibly stupid, so we get to see him marvel at the wonders of a miniature TV set, a tape recorder (he can't even figure out what it is without wifey's help), an automatic gas stove in the kitchen, etc. Perhaps a remake in our current era of planned obsolescence would be in order.
Though she overacts throughout I found Anne Linden as the bride appealing, though having to play off the creepy Brande is a lost cause. Her film credits are pretty appalling, mostly slaving away for Andy Milligan.
Film is very cheaply made, with the sound effect for a telephone ringing sounding like a doorbell (the actual doorbell has a different doorbell sound). Camera-work is strictly functional, surprisingly executed by Bill Godell, who shot two of Joe Sarno's all-time best films (MISTY and ABIGAIL LESLIE) as well as serving as camera operator on Brian De Palma's SISTERS.
