New Wave Hookers

Undoubtedly, New Wave Hookers (1985) is a porn flick with a reputation that is more (in)famous than the actual quality of its content, namely due to the fact that the original cut of the film was forever removed from distribution in 1986 after it was revealed that star Traci Lords (Black Throat, Kinky Business) was actually underage when she made the film. As someone who has managed to view the original version of the film featuring Lords as a salacious she-devil, I cannot say that the edited/abridged version of New Wave Hookers really suffered from the deletion of those naughty underage teen scenes. Admittedly, my interest in New Wave Hookers came from the fact that it is a punk/new wave porn flick that, like Alex Cox’s cult masterpiece Repo Man (1984), features a score by the Latino punk band The Plugz, not to mention the fact that it features Hebraic hardcore superstar star Jamie Gillis (The Opening of Misty Beethoven, Through the Looking Glass, Water Power) in one of the lead roles as an over-the-hill punk pimp who speaks with a bogus oriental accent. Indeed, certainly a cream of the crop work when it comes to mainstream 1980s porn, New Wave Hookers was directed by Gregory Dark aka Alexander Hippolyte aka The Dark Brothers aka Gregory Brown (Let Me Tell Ya 'Bout Black Chicks, Sex Freaks)—a miscegenation-obsessed Anton LaVey-look-alike who is one of the few pornographers to successfully make the transition from the porn ghetto to Hollywood and who has been described as “the Steven Spielberg of the soft-core set” and “the Martin Scorsese of the erotic thriller”—so it benefits from having an actual aesthetic vision, if not a rather aberrant one. The surely sordid and thankfully politically incorrect story of an odd couple—a negro and a Jew—who both share the literal and figurative dream of becoming quasi-high-class punk pimps who whore out mostly Aryan new wave/punk chicks, New Wave Hookers works best as a racially-charged comedy that certainly could have benefited from less hardcore scenes and a more eclectic soundtrack. A porn flick that will probably most appeal to fans of old school punk films like Slava Tsukerman’s Liquid Sky (1982), Penelope Spheeris’ Suburbia (1984), Cox’s Repo Man, and even Surf Nazis Must Die (1987), New Wave Hookers also features racially-charged comic relief, especially of the oriental-parodying oriented sort, that is comparable to C-grade porn trash typical of the 1980s like Invasion of the Samurai Sluts from Hell! (1989). In short, New Wave Hookers has more to offer than merely Traci Lords’ teenage titties and twat as a work that makes a great argument that Jamie Gillis certainly would have made for a more likeable, charming, and humorous mainstream ‘performer’ than most kosher comedians. 

 Goofy jigaboo Jamal (Jack Baker) and his Jew boy buddy Jimmy (Jamie Gillis) are watching an interracial blue movie and the latter remarks to the former that he looks just like the mandingo negro in the fuck flick. Jimmy also remarks how he used to play tennis with spade pimps when he attended Berkeley College and how he has always wondered about the profession. Magically, Jimmy and Jamal fall asleep while watching the porn flick and somehow awake as pimps with different personas. While Jamal is dressed like a poser member of Devo, Jimmy sports an idiotic anarchy symbol shirt and takes on the personality of a stereotypically racist egomaniac Jap. On top of everything else, the two obtain their own personal guard dog (Steven Powers) in untermensch white boy form. Out of all the girls the two could pimp out, Jimmy and Jamal deal in ‘New Wave chicks’ that can only become sexually aroused by the sweet and sensual sounds of New Wave music, or as the black pimp states himself, “programs bitches to music to fuck.” Dressed quite similar to the Scottish duo from Strawberry Switchblade, the nubile and mostly Nordic new wave babes like riding on roller-skates and playing with shiny dildos. When not engaging in cross-species foursomes with their two bosses and their loyal yet seemingly stoned man-dog, the horny hookers sell their sex to a variety of sexually deprived losers, including a towelheaded Arab Sheik (Peter North) and two virginal and seemingly bi-curious dork college boys. When the cops bust Jimmy and Jamal for “subjecting our bitches to a plot” (aka white slavery), the pimps bribe the police with their busty bitches, thus evolving into a magical multicultural orgy in a scene that makes for a great metaphor for the wacked-out cultural and racial mongrel that is the United States of America. Rather bizarrely but nonetheless humorously, black brother Jamal masturbates and yells “come on white boys, do it to dem bitches” while watching the cops break the law with the new wave hookers. Of course, all good things must come to an end and both Jimmy and Jamal wake up to empty 40oz. malt liquor bottles and not a single new wave hooker in sight. Disturbed by the fact that he had the same wild wet dream as his homey Jamal, Jimmy leaves his friend’s apartment and drives around fantasizing about the fantastic dream he had about being a pseudo-Japanese punk pimp. 

 Featuring great and highly quotable one-liners like, “Fuck you, Negro,” “Deadhead, rat’s ass, fool to boot,” “No nigger music, strictly New Wave,” and “Do you think a rat’s ass is as good delicacy for a Japanese gentleman?” New Wave Hookers is certainly more funny and outrageous than the average scatological bromance flick defecated out by Hollywood each month, even if it has its flaws and tends to drag, especially during the lackluster pre-condom sex scenes. Indeed, New Wave Hookers was so popular that it would inevitably sire no less than six sequels (with the first three also being directed by Gregory Dark), as well as a reasonably stylish, if not innately inferior, remake entitled Neu Wave Hookers (2006) directed by artsy fartsy ‘alt porn’ auteur Eon McKai (Art School Sluts, On My Dirty Knees). While New Wave Hookers director Gregory Dark would later become a monetarily ‘successful’ mainstream music director (directing videos for mainstream pop trash like Britney Spears, Mandy Moore, Linkin Park, etc.) and even directed an episode for the popular HBO TV series Oz (1997–2003), he would ultimately degenerate into a Hollywood hack responsible for helming such celluloid garbage as the horror flick See No Evil (2006) starring WWE fake wrestler ‘Kane’ and the crap comedy Little Fish, Strange Pond (2009) starring Matthew Modine and Zach Galifianakis. Indeed, while an undeniably humorous and audacious porn flick, New Wave Hookers seems rather tame when compared to the avant-garde fuck flicks of Stephen Sayadian aka ‘Rinse Dream’ (Nightdreams, Café Flesh, Dr. Caligari). While the sex of Sayadian’s films is typically nightmarish, nihilistic, creepy, and even anti-erotic, New Wave Hookers is packed with outmoded orgies with generic plastic Barbie doll babes and seemingly inebriated men who seem to have a hard time obtaining erection, thus I would be hesitant to describe the film as a masterpiece—be it of pornography or otherwise—but it is certainly a tastelessly charming classic of the quasi-iconoclastic and sardonic stereotype-driven sort. Part New Wave minstrel show, part retrograde race comedy, part slapstick vaudeville-esque fuck flick, and 100% culturally and artistically irredeemable, New Wave Hookers ultimately manages to epitomize everything that was aesthetically, culturally, socially, and politically revolting about the 1980s yet somehow manages to enthrall and for that reason alone makes it essential viewing for anyone that thinks John Hughes’ films were bullshit and that The Last Dragon (1985) was one of the most bizarre Hollywood films ever made. 

-Ty E