Any Love

I saw "Love You!" on a murky, washed out, out-of-print DVD. With a crisp, colorful Blu-Ray release, this film would serve as a shining example of how amazing and startling vintage adult movies can look.

"Love You!" is a stunningly beautiful picture that holds a special place in the history of classic adult films, and has interesting connections to mainstream movies. Actor turned photographer/director John Derek made one hardcore movie (who knew?) and "Love You!" is it.

Two couples decide to dabble in wife-swaping on a secluded beach. Annette Haven's character resists at first.

According to former Variety journalist Michael Walsh, Derek made the adult film to get his directorial techniques noticed by the mainstream studios. Although many consider his "Tarzan, the Ape Man" (1981) and "Bolero" (1984) to be colossal bombs, they are visually remarkable films shot in breathtakingly beautiful locations.

With this in mind, "Love You!" looks like a John Derek film. The warm glow of firelight illuminating beautiful faces foreshadows a scene in "Tarzan," only this time, it provides a flicking atmosphere for passionate lovemaking. A shimmering water effect that makes silhouetted bodies sparkle against the sea would also be repeated in "Tarzan." In "Bolero," Derek allows the dialogue from one scene to play out while, visually, the next scene has already begun. We see this editing technique used effectively in "Love You!"

Bodies silhouetted against the sun... explicit sexual acts silhouetted against the sun. Both tactile and emotional, "Love You!" was made "primarily for women,"as a "gift," according to Derek in articles by Walsh.

John Derek loved beauty and knew how to photograph it. Annette Haven, Eric Edwards, Lesllie Bovee, and Wade Nichols...The cast of "Love You!" is pretty. This cast is naked for most of the film. And it's never ugly or awkward naked, but glossy magazine beautiful naked.

Two nude men wresting in the firelight. Wade Nichols, a gay man, was more nervous to perform the scene than Eric Edwards, who told Nichols to just go for it. The two men gained respect for each other on the set.

Connections to other movies: The Hawaiian island the two couples visit was also "Skull Island" for Jessica Lange in "King Kong" (1976), and a character in "Love You!" calls the island "King Kong's playground." Annette Haven has an important cameo in the wild party scene of "10," a star-making movie for John Derek's wife Bo Derek, who, just months before was constantly on the set of "Love You!" as the producer of the film.

"Love You!" is amazing to look at, but home video has done it no favors. Extremely hard-to-find DVD versions look washed out, faded, destroying the gorgeous, subtle lighting effects and delicate nature of the night and sea photography. You already know what restoring a movie from it's original negative can do for a picture.

Haven's character is transported to a state of ecstasy in the film. Five years later, Bo's character would go to the very same place. When Bo finds it, we get the misspelled neon word "Extasy." When Annette finds it, we get implied double-penetration.

So...Director John Derek and producer Bo Derek made all-out porno in the 70s. Again, who knew? No, it's an adult film, and John had hoped it would cross-over into non-hard houses. John Derek had expected "Love You!" and movies that would follow to not only help pornography graduate into an art form, but to attract more mainstream directors. He clearly was not anticipating what cheap video productions and later, the internet, would do to adult entertainment.

But here we have it, "Love You!" This film points in a direction toward the sublime that adult films could have taken, as the surf roars outside an enchanted cave.

Edited by - escapade on Oct 2 2020