USA. 1977.
Crew
Director – Michael Pataki, Screenplay – Frank Ray Perilli, Producer – Charles Band, Photography – Joseph Mangine, Music – Andrew Belling, Song Lyrics – Lee Arries, Special Effects – Harry Wohlman, Art Direction – Sherman Laudermilk. Production Company – Charles Band, Ltd..
Cast
Cheryl Smith (Cinderella), Sy Richardson (Fairy Godmother), Yana Nirvana (Drucella), Marilyn Corwin (Marbella), Kirk Scott (The Lord Chamberlain), Jennifer Doyle (Stepmother), Brett Smiley (Prince), Boris Moris (King), Pamela Stonebrook (Queen), Mariwin Roberts & Roberta Tapley (Trapper’s Daughters), Linda Gildersleeve & Elizabeth Halsey (Farm Girls)
Plot
The prince has turned twenty-one but is bored with all of the women freely available to him. The king decrees it is time that the prince takes a wife. The chamberlain is sent out into the land to invite all to the ball where he uses the occasion to sleep with many of the women he meets on the way. The chamberlain duly visits the stepmother and two ugly stepsisters where he insists on giving an invite to Cinderella, whom they treat as a lowly scullery wench. However, the stepmother throws Cinderella’s invite in the fire. As the ball comes, the fairy godmother appears to Cinderella and uses a wand he has stolen to transform her so that she can attend the ball.
The 1970s was the era of the Porn Movie. Not long after porn gained a foothold as its own niche, it brought peculiarly series of films that specialised in adult reinterpretations of Fairytales. Others to come out during this period include Grimm’s Fairy Tales for Adults (1970), The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio (1971), Alice in Wonderland (1976), Cinderella 2000 (1977), Fairy Tales (1979), Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs (1979), Cinderella (1985), The Erotic Adventures of Red Riding Hood (1986) and Snow Black and the Seven Wienies (1989).
Cinderella was one of the earliest films produced by Charles Band – the fourth in fact. With companies such as Full Moon and Empire, Band and his father Albert generated a prolific output of low-budget genre films throughout the 1990s and 2000s, including entire series such as the Ghoulies, Puppet Master, Subspecies, Trancers, Gingerdead Man and Evil Bong films, among others.
Michael Pataki was better known as an actor with numerous credits on film and tv, including plying a Klingon on Star Trek (1966-9) and genre works such as The Return of Count Yorga (1971), Grave of the Vampire (1972), The Bat People (1974), a descendant on Dracula in the Bands’ Zoltan … Hound of Dracula (1978), Graduation Day (1981) and Halloween IV: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1988), among a great many others. On only two occasions, Pataki took the director’s chair – firstly with Charles Band’s second film Mansion of the Doomed (1976) and then with Cinderella. Pataki subsequently returned to acting up until his death in 2010.
The film is frequently an opportunity for Pataki to show undressed girls – both boobs and bushes – although nothing more than that like penises or penetration shots. Girls are either shown with boobs out or with dresses that are see through or so low cut their bosoms are frequently flopping out of them. The big ball that usually occurs in any version of the Cinderella story comes with people outfitted in traditional costume but several of the women wearing outfits that reveal breasts and bushes, or else thongs beneath see-though material, while a number of the men turn up bare-chested.
All of the elements of the fairytale are wound towards sexual purposes. Rather than the quest for who dropped the glass slipper, the prince gets to try out all the other contenders for his hand before deciding upon Cinderella because the Fairy Godmother has magically outfitted her a ‘snapping pussy.’ The Lord Chamberlain (Kirk Scott), who probably would not even be a speaking part in most other Cinderella adaptations, become a major character and the early sections follow his escapades as he travels through the countryside delivering invites – coming across a farmer’s two daughters undressed and sampling them; stopping at the cottage of a hunter and being invited to bed the two daughters while the father is away.
Into the bargain, the film also comes with musical numbers. These come with such inventive rhyming couplets as “I can’t raise a bulge in my tunic/Am I heading for the day when I’m a eunuch?” There is a WTF dream sequence where an old man grabs Cinderella (Cheryl Smith)’s boobs from behind causing her to squirt jets of milk for several feet, before the stepsisters hold her down and violate her with a cob of corn, setting Cheryl’s bush on fire and causing her vadge to start popping corn.
The film is filled with cartoonish over-acting, especially when it comes to the two stepsisters. The fairy godmother is played by Sy Richardson in drag who camps everything up as flamboyantly as possible (while also turning the fairy godmother into a petty thief). Cheryl Smith, also known as Rainbeaux Smith, was a starlet who played in a number of films of this era, both clothed and unclothed, including Lemora, A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973), Massacre at Central High (1976), The Incredible Melting Man (1977), and Charles Band’s Laserblast (1978) and Parasite (1982). She then dropped out of acting to pursue a music career after 1983 up until her death in 2002 due to complications from heroin addiction. As Cinderella, she varies between a waif-like innocent and a standard blonde starlet from a generic casting call – her entrance at the ball looks more like a deer caught in the headlights.
Trailer here