A has to be see to be believed homage to Hollywood comedies of the 1950s that also happens to be an XXX rated porno flick, as the ads put it "if you liked Deep Throat and Singin' in the Rain you're gonna love Blonde Ambition". Directed by the infamous Amero Brothers who'd been making their own quirky brand of sex film, both straight and gay, since the early 60's, the Ameros somehow get away with marrying both genres rather wonderfully, as well as providing a showcase for the comedic talents of its two stars Dory Devon and Suzy Mandel.
"Dory Devon" is something of an enigma, possibly British, or at least able to do a convincing accent, and not a bad actress at all, yet appears to have no other film credits at least not under that name. Less of a mystery, Suzy Mandel had risen from being a Benny Hill girl to becoming one of Britain's top sex comedy actresses, before emigrating to the States in 1979. Suzy was considered such a box-office good luck charm that one film producer even went as far as naming a racehorse after her. Albeit a castrated male horse that its not unfair to suggest may have suffered from some gender confusion issues on account of being castrated and called "Suzy". Long legs aside, its hard to see the resemblance.
Blonde Ambition centers around the Kane sisters, a struggling British vaudevillian duo who have somehow found their way to performing at a rundown saloon in Coyote Fang, Wyoming. Candy Kane (Dory) has the brain cells, while Sugar Kane (Suzy) has the squeaky voice and one-liners, together they are
. spectacularly bad. Their awful stage act consisting of bumping into each other level choreography, tuba playing and tuneless wailing of a song that ends with them proclaiming "up yours" to a clap free response. Seeking the big time the Kanes hop foot it to NYC, where among other things they become implicated in the disappearance of a priceless brooch, dress as drag queens in order to gatecrash a gay bar where Sugar exposing herself on stage causes a leatherman to faint, and embark on a film career culminating in them appearing in a porn remake of Gone With the Wind. Only for things go once again pear shaped when Sugar, a delightful combination of Monroe dizzy blonde ('Sugar Kane' being the name of the Monroe character in Some Like It Hot) and Suzy's own Playbirds/Benny Hill girl persona, has a 'blonde' moment and accidentally blows up the set, leaving a fuming director (Jamie Gillis) to shout through his megaphone "frankly my dear I don't give a damn, you're fired".
As Blonde Ambition is itself a hardcore film, the Kanes end up in several below the belt adventures as well, Candy is torn between the dashing Stephen (Eric Edwards) and mustachioed lothario Max (Wade Nichols). Sugar meanwhile, when she can work out of the difference between the front door and the broom cupboard, manages to seduce a gay neighbour ("just try and think of me as a man") and catch the attention of a swinging couple in an elevator. In by far the weirdest scene in the film, and of Suzy Mandel's entire career, the swinging couple's living room doubles as an ice rink, on which Sugar strips and ice skates at the same time before ending up in a threesome. It warrants a mention that Suzy used a body double for such hardcore scenes, and 'stunt' private parts and a women wearing a large, feature disguising blonde wig were on hand to relieve Suzy of the dirty work. Still her scenes with porn fixtures George Payne and David Morris are far more explicit than anything she ever got up to back home, and as her British films generally co-starred such the not quite in the same league male totty as Bob Todd and Alfie Bass maybe thats not a bad thing.
Campier than a row of pink tents full of gay men doing camp things, the episodic narrative is held together by some priceless narration "there's nothing like a riot in a fag bar and a night in the slammer to ensure show business immortality", and a storyline that has the Kanes pursued around NYC by Stephen's Aunt Sybil, a charity loving aristocrat in public, and expletive spewing gold digger in private marvelously played by Molly Malone seemingly as a combination of Edith Massey and Barbara Cartland.
Although the Amero's humour at its best when its also at its most bawdiest, and as a result several set-pieces like the Gone with the Wind gang bang have to be seen in the full version to be fully appreciated and some of the best lines, thinking especially of Sugar's remedy for "keeping the hornets away", are sadly unquotable here, Blonde Ambition actually works well as a straightforward comedy and reportedly had a life outside of porn finding success as a midnight movie and in a not quite hardcore, not quite softcore version prepared for cable TV. By rights it should have lead to a career in mainstream comedy for the Ameros, much as Polyester did for John Waters. Unfortunately their follow up film R.S.P.V, fails to recapture the same magic, leaving Blonde Ambition the Amero's crowning sex comedy moment.
For Suzy the film lead to several minor roles in an eclectic bunch of films, as well as a walk on in The Love Boat. Before she embarked on an American acting career, she had actually enrolled in a famous method acting school with disastrous results. When -in a scenario that wouldn't be out of place in Blonde Ambition- her attempts to portray the role of a wheel barrow resulted in an accident that left her with three slipped discs and one leg temporary shorter than the other. Given such calamities, maybe its just as well she eventually left acting, but we've always got stripping on ice to remember her by.
