Wow, forty eight years since this true porn classic made it’s debut and we bring it your way today. This was filmed in a real restaurant in a NYC hotel that had been shut down. The story revolves around a reporter doing a story on a former hooker. But it is what takes place at this restaurant that is the premise of this very well done story. So, enjoy our original review from back in 1996 and then find it at your favorite video store.

Barbara Broadcast – Crescent Films – 1977 – Director – Radley Metzger – Cast – Annette Haven, C.J. Laing, Sharon Mitchell, Constance Money, Jamie Gillis, Bobby Astyr, Alan Marlowe and others.

When you come out with a great porn film like “The Opening of Misty Beethoven” that has everything and more a porn film should have, what do you do for a follow up? Leave it to Radley Metzger to find the answer with this film. It is totally different, humorous, fantasy, off the wall and works mainly because of the characters who make up the ensemble in this film.

The story that Metzger weaves in this offering centers around a woman named Barbara Broadcast, who is modeled after former hooker Xaviera Hollander. She is a former hooker who has turned author and is exquisitely played by Annette Haven. She is met at a restaurant by a reporter ( C.J. Laing) who is there to do an in depth story about her life and what made her what she is today. It doesn’t take long for this serious interview to turn into a lot more. The reason is in this upscale restaurant the menu isn’t one with a variety of food dishes, but one of sex instead. What begins to take place between customers and staff becomes very unnerving to Laing, but as she tries to do the interview, what is taking place as she tries to maintain her professionalism it gets  her mind and body working. We see the various sexual acts start to take place as they are ordered from the menu and carried out by the wait staff.

The sex scenes in this film leave nothing to the imagination and it is a different look from today. The women have real boobs, unshaved pussies, no tattoos to speak of and guys without the hard body look of today. The sex that takes place in the restaurant has just about everything, blow jobs, facials, screwing in every position and a variety of combinations that take place throughout the film. Eventually our journalist, Laing, finds herself not being able to handle this interview the way she had hoped. Laing finds herself attracted to a waiter and they go off to the kitchen for one of the best scenes in the film. There is a lot of humor in the dialogue throughout, some of it actually ad libbed by the performers, but it all works very well in this very different restaurant setting.

The camera work is well crafted offering some very good angles and visuals of the action that takes place. It is also interesting to note this film was shot in a one time, well known restaurant in the Royal Manhattan Hotel in New York City. It had been shut down and was going on the auction block so the film company was able to secure its use for the film. Because there is so much that goes on, the story tends to get lost at times. Thanks to a very solid and professional cast, a good delivery of lines with quick humor and explosive sex in a real setting, rather than a studio, this is a porn classic that is very much recommended.

Like many of the classics, it has been reissued in sharp DVD form with some great extras added. Radley Metzger was one of early porn’s top directors and “Barbara Broadcast” was another of his award winning films that deserves its place as a classic from porn’s golden age. It is interesting to note that the film, plus cast members Annette Haven, C.J. Laing, Sharon Mitchell, Constance Money and Jamie Gillis are all rightfully enshrined in both the AVN and XRCO Halls of Fame.

Art Koch, National Features & DVD Editor, NightMoves Magazine and AAN