Sugar Cookies is an exploitation movie that desperately wants to be some kind of psychological erotic thriller. It just forgot the psychology. It’s not thrilling. And the eros is kind of tepid. It exploits, though.
Buy Sugar CookiesProducer and writer Lloyd Kaufman (eventually of Troma fame) likens the story to Vertigo and Sweet Smell of Success. This is a wild reach. One actress plays two characters, and dresses like the other. That’s the extent of the Vertigo connection. Sweet Smell of Success? I don’t see it at all.
The storyline is pure psychological thriller – an actress, Alta, is killed during a bit of sexual play with a gun by her director, Max. He claims it was a suicide, but the actress’s lesbian lover Camila is convinced it was murder. She intends to get revenge, even as she lets herself be used as Max’s alibi.
Her plan for revenge is simple. She’ll find an actress who can be used as a substitute for Alta, lure her in with Max… and hope for the best. It’s all very vague, but all the plotting and characterization and everything related to story in this movie is vague. The naked women are in focus, and fairly constant, so that’s the important part.
What might be interesting is to watch how much Sugar Cookies tries to look like a real movie, while only achieving a simulacrum of the thing. Scenes are sometimes like movie scenes, but with odd pacing, and a strange sense of rhythm. It’s like the filmmakers have had movies described them pretty well, but that’s all they have to go on.
Shots tend to be static. Most scenes have minimal cutting. It’s all professionally shot and lit. The music is actually pretty great, in a ’70s electronic way. And there’s none of the seat-of-your-pants dinginess that you find with Troma’s more recent productions. Those are shot on video without much apparent care for how they look. Sugar Cookies looks good. It has original songs – I don’t like them, but they’re there. There’s an attempt at style in some montage sequences, but they’re all pretty blunt and inelegant.
Lloyd Kaufman describes this as the only X-rated movie in history to lose money. He blames distribution problems and a number of other issues. However, the major problem here is that, even with all the young naked women in the world, the movie’s dull as hell. The nude scenes have the leering quality of all exploitation movies, where just getting the chance to stare at a naked woman is enough. They don’t have to do anything but display breasts.
Which is okay but doesn’t make an interesting movie. By attempting to do a sophisticated thriller without any sense of sophistication or thrills, it even makes boobs boring. It has a typical ’70s downer ending, which makes the already tepid stew a little sour. Some of this comes down to direction. Dario Argento could have made a meal out of this, but he would have needed a budget. As it stands, Sugar Cookies is thin gruel. With boobs.
Sugar Cookies has been released on Blu-ray by Troma. I didn’t have much nice to say about the movie, but there are copious extras accompanying it on disc, all which appear to be archival. Video extras include: Lloyd Kaufman’s Classic Intro (7 min) where he talks about the film’s production, and does some nastiness, just because; “Lynn Lowry Remembers” (14 min) an interview with the actress; “Interview with Lloyd Kaufman” (36 min) where the producer talks about the film and its distribution; “Interview with Lynn Lowry” (4 min), a second interview with the actress; “Interview with Mary Woronov” (5 min), an interview with Camila’s actress; “Looking for Oliver Stone” (4 min), about an attempt to contact one of the film’s producers, Oliver Stone; “Troma JFK Assassination Theory” (3 min), a joke skit about the JFK assassination, and “Seeing Red by Entombed” music video (4 min), a music video from Toxic Avenger 4.
