Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle (1981)

Now Available at Melusine.

I was first introduced to Annie Sprinkle during the heyday of HBO when she appeared on the documentary series “Real Sex.” She was promoting one of her sex positive film festivals, as well as taking photos with willing fans donning a bare chest and angel wings. Some how that image never left my brain over twenty years later, and that’s simply Annie’s style. Annie is a self-aware and slickly tongue in cheek porn icon who spent much of the seventies starring in a ton of porn films and never had a limit to what she was into.

Although the movie purports to be a biography, Annie only really discusses herself for five minutes, while the rest of the movie involves her infatuation with all kinds of kinks including butt play, girl on girl, and orgies. She even foreshadows a lot of her future work in promoting safe sex and discussing sex openly by explaining why she keeps both of her middle fingers’ nails trimmed very short. Wink wink. We learn that Annie’s real name is Ellen (Ellen Steinberg to be exact), her family are all well aware of her then sexual profession, and that she didn’t lose her virginity until she was seventeen. After that she was obsessed with having as much sex as possible.

She even spent many years in the construction business admittedly flirting with construction workers and having a good time of it, too. From there Annie walks around New York City like a fantasy, walking in and out of sex scenes that are about as graphic and rated X as you’d expect. She saunters into a photo studio, a movie theater, all dolled up in fur and black latex for the most part. Among her co-performers, there’s Lisa Be, Colleen Anderson, Sassy, and Misty Blue Simms, just to name a few. The direction by Joe Sarno is great, allowing for sensual and very erotic hardcore sequences where Annie is able to take control of all of the partners that she brings on screen.

While “Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle” is not as complex as the Vanessa Del Rio documentary “Fifty Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior,” the film is still a lot of fun, especially for fans that appreciate the buxom, vivacious and incredibly sexy persona of Annie Sprinkle.