Debbie Does Dallas

One of the five best selling porn films of all time, Debbie Does Dallas appeared in 1978, close enough to the release of The Exorcist, The Driller Killer and other such notorious seventies video nasties to provide blessed (if rather sticky) relief from a stream of blood and gore. Starring Bambi Woods, whose parents must surely have realised a name like that gave her little choice of career beyond pornography or wildlife films about deer, the film is, in truth, abysmal. Cheap, badly edited and portraying some of the worst acting in the history of bad acting, one can only assume the producers were fully aware most people would be focusing on the more 'artistic' content of the film - namely the endless parade of naked breasts and white, hairy arses.

The plot is simple. Debbie, cheerleader beyond compare, has been chosen to travel to Dallas and become a cowgirl. Alas, she is penniless and must raise the money herself. Her parents, quite wisely, refuse to support her. Despite having only two weeks, Debbie and her cheerleader chums decide to raise enough money to allow them all to travel down to Dallas and give Debs the support she deserves. (Understand that whilst this discussion takes place each girl removes her clothes and idly soaps herself in the shower, a scene that would later influence the infamous shower scene from Porky's. The display of mis-aligned tan lines is a highlight here - one girl has a white stripe that comes halfway up her buttocks at an angle of approximately thirty degrees off the horizontal.)

But where to find the money? The girls flock off to offer their services as bookshop assistants, sports equipment saleswomen and auditors of novelty candles at Mr Hardwick's candle store. The inclusion of a candle shop turns out to be a happy occurrence, of course, as later on in the film the young lady is possessed by an irresistible urge to penetrate herself with a sizeably-girthed wax item more commonly used to provide subtle or romantic illumination. Needless to say, she is discovered and diverse entertainments ensue: Mrs Hardwick somehow ends up with her fingers inside the young lady whilst her husband, never one to miss a bit of excitement in a candle shop, masturbates vigorously and rounds the whole thing off with a spot of inter-generational intercourse.

Of course, she's not the only one. Two other girls accept an offer of twenty-five dollars for a kiss. This, as you'd expect, leads to breast-licking, cunnilingus, fellatio, anal intercourse, ejaculation and a spot of ooh-look-I-can-rub-my-face-in-your-spunk. Other girls enjoy a bit of a spanking, various bouts of fondling and the usual stuff. All of it, remember, badly shot, badly edited and badly acted.

You'd think, with all this industrious copulation, there'd be enough cash to send an entire football team to Dallas, but no - in order to raise that final injection of cash Debbie is obliged to dress as a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader and indulge in various sexual shenanigans with an appropriately dressed Mr Greenfeld. In return, Mr Greenfeld will pay for the whole lot of girls to make their way down to Dallas. It's been hot, sweaty work, but it's clearly worth it... at the end of the film the word 'Next....' appears on the screen, concerning which we are left to draw our own conclusions.

There is no doubt that Debbie Does Dallas is famous for being famous, and that of those who speak of its nefarious charms few have actually seen it. Certainly the porn scenes on any copy commercially available in the UK are cut to ribbons and thus reduce the film to a rather tame, soft porn epic. The Debbie Does Dallas available today is not top-shelf, scorching-hot pornographic material. Add to this the fact that the quality, even on the later UK DVD releases, is extremely low. One of the early scenes has been clumsily edited and includes a painfully lengthy section filmed before action has been called - cue one second of teen cheerleader poised ready to 'act'.

Nevertheless, Debbie Does Dallas has entered modern culture as an epitome of adult entertainment, a paragon of pornography. Infamous but ultimately unsatisfying: an afternoon spent watching Debbie Does Dallas is not, it must be said, an afternoon well spent. Still, curiosity may get the better of you, or the urge to be one of those who can proudly say 'Yeah, I've seen Debbie Does Dallas'. If that's the case, Debbie was recently re-released in the UK on DVD in that censored, hacked-up form, or there's always those original seventies VHS and Betamax copies if you hunt round hard enough. Then, if even that doesn't quench your insatiable desire for tack, there's always the sequels... many, many sequels...

Debbie Does Dallas was directed by Jim Clark and released in 1978. It starred Bambi Woods as Debbie, and a host of other, now forgotten, actors and actresses who all did their clumsy, inept best with Maria Minestra's rather plain, straightforward script. There's surprisingly little information in The Internet Movie Database about Debbie Does Dallas, but a google search will provide those all important details, plus information on the Debbie Does Dallas play, which features no sex or nudity, functioning more as a tribute to one of the most famous pieces of pornography of all time.