Doesn’t that cover just scream ‘a modern day interpretation of Homer’s The Odyssey’? Well, maybe not, but that is what Truck Stop is, and a whole lot more. It’s a film that was given an extra lease of life by 23rd Century DVD, a somewhat shady outfit whose releases seemed to be everywhere up until a few years ago, especially at the bargain basement shops that sell low-priced DVDs and CDs. In some ways the 23rd century label was a continuation...although some might call it a last gasp...of those cheap video labels that were all the range in the 1980s and 1990s. Ones like Apex, Viz Video, Network, Turbophase, the kind of labels that always tended to re-title the films they released, had terrible picture quality and tacky, but attention grabbing covers. Everything about 23rd Century had an air of grey area illegality about it, the company never submitted the movies they released to the BBFC, chances are that they didn’t own the rights to the films they released, and pretty much everything they put out was of VHS quality. The label might have been called 23rd Century, but the picture quality of their discs was definitely rooted in the 20th century.
To give credit where its due though they did produce some startling cover designs for the likes of Drive-In Massacre, Head and The Devil’s Rain...and it did feel like someone at the company had put effort into their artwork at least. Something which compared them favourably to the likes of Vipco, who were going through their ‘gold lettering on a black background cover’ phase, and whose releases smacked of indifference and zero effort, yet were seen as a far more legitimate outfit. Whether Vipco were a far more legitimate outfit, is another matter, but you did see Vipco DVD releases in high street chains like HMV and Virgin Megastore, whereas 23rd century titles only tended to turn up in the lower rung, market stall level DVD shops, and as I say the bargain basement outlets. Another part of their appeal was that 23rd Century DVDs were dirt cheap, you didn’t expect to pay more than a pound for them, and if you did you were robbed.
23rd Century's greatest hits
23rd Century didn’t put as much effort into designing their adult releases as they did other genres. In that sense they were continuing a tradition of their VHS label forefathers by slapping random porno images onto the covers of these releases, making them look like modern day porn, even though the films on the discs tended to be older, drive-in era sexploitation movies. Although I’m sure the adult movies they released were selected with little rhyme or reason, 23rd century did still manage to put out a few notable titles. 23rd Century released ‘Teenage Tramp’ (1973) a drive-in obscurity about a runaway who runs foul of a Manson type figure, and the bizarre, bisexually oriented British film ‘Boys and Girls Together’ (1979) which was really hard to find before 23rd Century put it out on DVD. For that at least, this now defunct company deserved kudos.
The plot synopsis on 23rd Century’s release of Truck Stop doesn’t clue you into what the film is about, favouring instead some bad erotica gibberish. “to the roar of a castle-8 turbine, the chevvy bender roller rubbers, twin pack super heat super turbo in mid flight, thighs like a racing horse, moving like an oiled piston, breasts heaving, lips trembling, bottom wiggling power with legs a-go-go...every truckers favourite, whether she’s black or blue, just as long as she goes and goes. It’s a race against the clock, will she or won’t she...she will and she’s wet and screaming...she’s on her way”
As well as being an adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey though, Truck Stop is actually a spin-off from the C.B. Radio/Trucking phenomenon of the 1970s, which quickly spread to movies like Smokey and the Bandit, Convoy and the early Chuck Norris vehicle Breaker, Breaker. Inevitability, softcore variations on the theme like CB Hustlers and Truck Stop Women came along. This is predominantly thought of as being an American genre, but Truck Stop breaks the mould in that respect as well, this being a French trucking sex comedy...based on Homer’s Odyssey. So, we are definitely talking a fairly unique film here...oh, and one of its female stars...wasn’t always that way. It’s a shame the film was struck with such a dull English title (it was also released in English as the equally lacklustre ‘Travelling Companions’) its only when you delve a little deeper do you realise that this is something extraordinary, and far from your average run of the mill 1970s sexploitation film.
Truck Stop was directed by, and stars, Jean-Marie Pallardy, who began as a male model before turning his hand to sex films during the 1970s. On the basis of Truck Stop I’d definitely be interested in checking out more of his work from this period, something tells me my life won’t be complete till I’ve seen his 1974 film ‘Erotic Diary of a Lumberjack’. Towards the end of the decade Pallardy began to diversify into mainstream cinema with the 1977 thriller The Man from Chicago aka Le Rician, which Pallardy claimed was later plagiarised by Clint Eastwood in the 1993 film A Perfect World. Pallardy’s best known non-adult movie though remains 1984’s White Fire. An absolute stable of VHS shops in the 1980s, in which Robert ‘The Exterminator’ Ginty showed he had range beyond playing a guy who kills people with a flame thrower, by playing a guy who kills people with a chainsaw. White Fire didn’t exactly hide its director’s pornographic background, Ginty’s character wants to fuck his own sister, and after she is killed, somehow talks a prostitute into undergoing plastic surgery to look like his sister. Which both allows him to get revenge on her killers, and to sleep with a woman who looks like his recently deceased sister, a sub-plot that is a darn sight more kinkier than anything in any American action film from the 1980s.
Homer’s original epic poem concerned the plight of Greek hero Odysseus and his ten year journey home after the Trojan War, as well as his wife Penelope’s attempts to deal with several unruly suitors who compete for her hand in marriage. Jean-Marie’s version, updated to the C.B. radio era, casts himself as the Odysseus like truck driver Eugene, who has become lost in the desert while delivering fridges with his comedy sidekick Geoff. Eugene’s mission is to haul ass and drive the truck back home to the truck stop he owns, which is being run by his wife Pamela in his absence. After a year, Eugene is presumed dead, and while mourned by his fellow truckers, this doesn’t stop them from making moves on his wife. As per Homer’s original poem, Pamela insists that the truckers compete in various tasks in order to win her hand in marriage.
Don’t feel too sorry for Eugene and Geoff though, as while out in the desert they stumble upon an idyllic, utopian society run by Calypso, played by the scandalous transsexual star Ajita Wilson. Born George Wilson in Brooklyn, Wilson had a sex change in the mid-1970s, and thereafter became a star of Euro-sleaze films before dying prematurely in 1987. Eugene and George are kept in the life of luxury, with Calypso’s underlings serving up drinks and massages, while a sex crazed parrot squawks orders like “Get it up, Get it up” and “coffee break”. All Calypso demands in return is that Eugene gives her a big 10-4 good buddy!!!
Even putting aside the fact that one of the stars of this film is a transsexual, who has a lengthy, graphic sex scene with the leading man, this is a sexually subversive film for one aimed at a straight male audience in the 1970s. Straight man being hoodwinked into homosexual acts, or having momentary ‘lapses’ are running themes in Truck Stop. In another eye opening sequence, JoJo, one of the truckers competing for Pamela’s affections, picks up a transsexual hooker while she is using a urinal in the men’s room, and buys her services for his dim-witted pal John. Only after fucking her in the ass for a while does John think to reach round, only to discover she is all woman...and a bit extra. The transsexual is, by the way, played by non-transsexual Annik Borel, ol’ hairy tits herself from the Italian sleaze-fest ‘Werewolf Woman’, who in order to complete the illusion that she is a man, has here been dubbed by an effeminate sounding gay man.
The only really erotic sex scenes in Truck Stop tend to be lesbian orientated ones. One of the tasks that Pamela lays down for the truckers, sees them all having to watch two of the truck stop’s barmaids making out on the tables. This, the truckers have to do with their trousers down, and with bells attached to their genitals. Any man who gets it up, rings his bell, and gets disqualified from the competition. It all proves too much for trucker Lionel, who gets carried away, and tries to hump one of the other guys while they are bent over “with all the sex around this place, I’ll stick anything” he admits. Later on in the film Lionel ends up falling in water then keeps falsely accusing the two men standing behind him of touching his ass. Only to eventually discover that while in the water, a fish had got caught down the back of his pants, and has been trying to swim up his ass crack.
Annik Borel
Despite the film having its roots in classic Greek poetry, Truck Stop can rival any British film starring Robin Askwith, and any American film directed by Hal Needham when it comes to unsophisticated comedy, and would be equally at home in both those cinematic worlds. I’d wager that Jean-Marie Pallardy is a fan of physical, slapstick comedy, Truck Stop is very big on that, the film being full of punch ups, food fights, men being slapped around by women and practically pirouetting about as a result. All scored to Country & Western type music, in what presumably is a nod to the trucking film’s American origins. The fact that most of the cast have been dubbed with southern American accents, despite clearly being French and Italian actors, only adds a further layer of hilarity onto Truck Stop.
As well as the homosexual elements to the film, the constant ridiculing of heterosexual virility is another unexpected aspect to Truck Stop. All of Pamela’s suitors are complete idiots, utterly incapable of satisfying Pamela or the other women who work at the truck stop, and who only make fools of themselves when they attempt to do so. Jean-Marie Pallardy was in no risk of being upstaged by any of his male co-stars in the good looks department. Leading man aside, the male cast here are comically unattractive guys, best represented by Georges Gueret, a regular stooge in Pallardy’s movies, who resembles a French Windsor Davies, with a huge moustache to match. A cynical mind might wonder if Jean-Marie crammed the film with so many male uglies, just to make himself look good. I guess if you cast yourself as the leading man in your own movie, playing a modern day version of a Greek king, you might have a tad bit of an ego, thankfully Jean-Marie does also have the charisma to back it up. It is impossible to dislike Jean-Marie Pallardy, you get nothing but good natured vibes from the man, and Pallardy has such an air of coolness and hard living debauchery to him, as you’d expect from a Frenchman.
There is certainly no lack of incident along the way home for Eugene and Geoff, at one point the pair get held up by robbers, who try to steal the truck. A sequence that not only points the way forward to Pallardy’s action movie future, but also gives him the opportunity to prove that he is a fighter as well as a lover. Eugene also has to fight off the attentions of an eye patch wearing comedy fat woman, who threatens to crush Eugene under the weight of her gargantuan chest and is only restrained by Eugene sticking a live plug up her ass and giving her an electric shock. Anal abuse does seem to have been high on Jean-Marie Pallardy’s list of guaranteed rib-tittlers. As well as fish and plugs finding their way into people’s backsides here, one character gets a knitting needle in the rear, while Pamela shoos away one suitor by sticking a pitchfork up his ass. No one’s ass is safe in this film.
Truck Stop’s playfully perverse cocktail, the casting of Ajita Wilson, and the transsexual hooker incident, do have a sexually mischievous edge to them, and naturally, the ability to wind up the more close minded elements of society the wrong way. How do I know this for sure? Well, when I chanced upon the 23rd Century DVD of Truck Stop, I was a bit on the fence about picking it up. I did wonder if it could have been a re-titling of the Claudia Jennings film Truck Stop Women, then again it could have been the time wasting, shot on video porn that the cover made it out to be. Fortunately, an acquaintance, who shall remain nameless, didn’t have such reservations, and won over by that T&A cover, paid a couple of quid for it. When he played the DVD, and a film from the 1970s popped up, starring the likes of Ajita Wilson and Annik Borel, I instantly knew that I’d missed a trick here.
Now, the person in question, who picked up the DVD isn’t ....how can I put this....the most progressive of thinker, and I knew if I let slip that Ajita hadn’t always been a she, they’d probably freak out and end up giving me the DVD. Sure enough, that is exactly what happened, and amidst protests of “she used to be a man...urrghh thats not normal...I’m not watching this” I emerged with another title to add to my collection of releases by the world’s worst DVD label. If you do have an open mind though, Truck Stop is actually a warm, joyfully movie, a celebration of friendship, love, sex, drinking, the beauty of rural France, and what Jean-Marie’s countrymen like to call Joie de vivre. Something, that in times like these is surely worth raising a glass to.
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