Star Virgin

"After the resounding success of his outrageous parody FLESH GORDON, Howard Ziehm teamed up with producer Peter Locke (THE HILLS HAVE EYES) for six more explicit films – which, in contrast to the hastily shot films from Ziehm’s early days, had rather lavish budgets. STAR VIRGIN, shot on 16mm for $70,000 within a week at the end of the 1970s, was the penultimate porn film of Ziehm’s career. It was made at a time when the disreputable sex film industry was still releasing several curious productions; soon they were to be replaced with far cheaper videos, and the cinema was losing its relevance as a venue for the genre. Of Ziehm's episodic films, this one is certainly his most eccentric and striking.

– after all, the journey takes us, among other places, to a black-and-white silent film segment telling its own hair-raising version of DRACULA. Even songwriter J.C. Phillips (‘GREEN-EYED LADY’) and, under makeup and pseudonym, character actor Charles Dierkop (BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID) are involved – and Jason Mayall, son of blues legend John Mayall, built the sets!

Ziehm’s irreverent, subversive wit is rather obvious in STAR VIRGIN as he ploughs through familiar iconographies – whether STAR WARS, GREASE, or THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, the biblical story of paradise or the near-sacred football ceremony in America. The fact that the manager in paradise is actually a vice cop, or that a helper with a Nixon mask sneaks around in the satanically evil castle, mimicking his famous “Victory” pose during sex (‘Tricky Dick’!), are just two examples of Ziehm’s audacious appearances as a porn satirist here. More subtle are the ways in which he exploits and at the same time subverts common sex film images, for example, notice who gets the biggest and – as a real ‘big bang’ – most visible thrust of pleasure."

Christian Genzel