Ultimate Attraction

It's Sexploitation week at the Hell-A-Go-Go!

If exploitation trades in sleaziness via horrific acts of violence perpetrated against its characters; sexploitation is the same, albeit replacing horrific acts of violence with copious amounts of boobies. The horror of it all! The normally omnipresent sleaziness of exploitation is ramped up. Less voyeurism and more exhibitionism; sexploitation is the attention whore of the exploitation sub-mode.

The first movie of the week is a little-known (I'd barely heard of it) sex comedy known as Ultimate Attraction (or Body Beautiful, like any true exploitation film it has multiple, and varying, titles). Regardless of what it's called, I'd only heard of the film because it's based on a seminal erotic comic by Italian artist Milo Manera, which is about a magical remote control that can drive women to orgasm with the click of a button (hence the clever title of the comic eh? eh?). I can't imagine any premise more tailor made for a schlocky exploitative movie.



In a stirring variation of the "raise enough money to save the elder family member's home, orphanage, or youth center" film plot, Ultimate Attraction is about two personal trainer's efforts to save the humble gym where they are employed. Even though the gym (which is, as far as I can tell consists of one single white room with no mirrors, three exercise machines and a sauna and locker room off to either side) seems to consistently have people using its small space. An evil developer wants to bulldoze the gym and turn it into a parking lot because that's what evil developers do. Seriously.



The one plot device that makes this movie even worth seeking out, even as a curiosity, is the inclusion of a mysterious clicker (flushed out of an airplane crapper, frozen in a block of ice on the way down, crashed through the locker roof of the gym to land on our lead's heads as they screw, of course.) that can be used to "turn on" anyone it happens to be pointed at (or not pointed at, depends on the scene; in fact why the clicker doesn't just make everyone in the room horny as hell isn't explained as the rules of the clicker change with each scene).

But a clicker that makes anyone horny! I think some clever things can be done with this; funny, sleazy scenarios right? No, not really. Basically all the clicker does is turn each actress into a Cinemax starlet or require each actor to make a shocked face as a cheap mechanical boner prosthetic turns their shorts into a tent. Yawn. Besides providing the horny, The clicker is often used to turn lead actress Gabriella Hall (who I think is topless or in a leotard in virtually every scene she's in) into other actresses who are more willing to take their pants off for the sax-and-smoked-filled sex scenes (yes, it's a sexploitation film where the lead actresses' body double is worked into the plot of the film; this has to be illegal).



Far from sleazy, all the sex scenes (and there are a lot) are soft-focus, foggy, and completely boring. Watching two actors pretend to hump on cheap exercise equipment for a few minutes? Ho-hum. And after 8 or 9 different variations of the same? I feel asleep several times while watching this flick.

If the comedy scenes bridging the copious nude scenes were any good or provided some sort of context or cohesion, there might be interest generated for the viewer but Ultimate Attraction relies on unfunny sight gags centered around the sex-clicker or a mechanical boner prosthetic. Once or twice it may be funny or provide a grin, but the film constantly repeats itself, leaving only the naked actresses to carry the weight (what little there is) of the story. All of the actresses, especial Hall, are very attractive, but there's no backdrop to the nudity; each scene is like the end of some 5-minute mini movie. Ultimate Attraction has no cohesion and this makes for snooze-inducing viewing, breasts or no breasts.



To sum up: I had high hopes for Ultimate Attraction especially considering the source comic has the heroine, when not being reduced to a spastic nymphomaniac via the clicker, traveling to the Amazon, fighting off slave-rings, or invading a monastary of celibate men. This is ripe exploitation material on par with the Emmanuelle movies. Alas, it was not to be.

* out of ****