Lady Chatterley's Lover
Back in the day when full-frontal nudity and soft-core eroticism were still part of the mainstream release strategy,Lady Chatterley's Lovermade the rounds as a higher-toned slab of hubba-hubba. For this opus, Sylvia Kristel, the Dutch-born beauty who had bared all and gained a following inEmmanuelle, teamed up again with that film's director, Just Jaeckin,. Based on the once-scandalous D.H. Lawrence novel (and at least partly adapted by Marc Behm),Lady Chatterleycasts Kristel as the wife of a paralyzed nobleman (former Hammer star Shane Briant). He can no longer make love to his sexy missus, and so gives his blessing to the idea of her having an affair--although the reality of the Lady getting it on with the manor's rough-hewn gamekeeper (Nicholas Clay) is not what he had in mind. The result is much closer to a bodice-ripping romance novel than to Lawrence (stick with Ken Russell'sWomen in Lovefor Lawrence erotica), and the sex scenes have the customary tropes of crackling fire and dancing in the rain. The sheer dullness of the production might be the price one must pay for getting to the hot parts, of which there are plenty.--Robert Horton