Taxi Girls (1979)

[StevePulaski]

Taxi Girls (1979)
Directed by: Jaacov Jaacovi

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

Taxi Girls opens on a crop of hookers being berated and arrested by the police. The mass incarceration leads to a plethora of horny streetwalkers crowding the jails, of course culminating in a group orgy that involves everyone right down to the joe behind the desk. An annoying older woman comes in to report a crime, but the man is a bit preoccupied with a sultry dame curled underneath the desk. Where Jaacov Jaacovi's Heavenly Desire took the Warren Beatty film Heaven Can Wait as a source of inspiration, Taxi Girls sees Police Academy as fodder for parody this time around.

The plot eventually thickens once the girls are bailed out of jail. Frustrated at their lack of options, they decide to run a taxi business predicated on getting customers from point-A to point-B and pleasing them along the way. The ringleader of this group is Toni (Nancy Suiter), a gorgeous blonde with aspirations to be a stand-up comic. She has no problem mixing business with pleasure. But she hates the unsavory side of it. She juggles a part-time boyfriend (John Holmes) and a litany of other girls (Stacy Goldman, Amika Giortano) intent on making their come-up by collecting fares.

The quartet of girls is very persuasive when it comes to getting the necessary loan from the bank and striking a compromise with the rival cab company. For much of the first half, the sex scenes in Taxi Girls are orgies. When things shift to more intimate sessions, it permits performers like Suiter and Holmes to have an extremely intimate extended scene together. Every now and then in porn, you can spot when the actors are into one another and not hamming it for the camera. Suiter and Holmes' love-making is definitely one of those times.

Taxi Girls is anchored nicely by Suiter, who has such a command over the flimsy material. She's also drop-dead beautiful. Her career as an adult film actress took off just about as quickly as it went dormant. No word on what came of her, but a bulk of internet rumors range from her marrying a millionaire who wanted her to leave the business to being killed by her pimp. Whatever came of her, I hope she lived a fulfilled life. Perhaps anonymity was what she was seeking, and in that case, she ultimately achieved it.

Where Taxi Girls spiraled, for me, was the third act involving drivers for the rival cab company kidnapping the "taxi girls" one-by-one to hound them in a warehouse. This sequence is nothing shy of a dramatized gang-rape, desecrating the casual sweetness that preceded it. The tone darkens, the forceful nature of the sex is a massive turn-off, and not even a justice-laden conclusion can rescue it. Imagine if Nancy Suiter was replaced with someone with far less on-screen beauty and charisma. Then we'd really have a dud on our hands.

NOTE: You can purchase Taxi Girls in a two-pack Peekarama Blu-ray set alongside Heavenly Desire on Vinegar Syndrome's website: vinegarsyndrome.com/products/taxi-girls-heavenly-desire-peekarama

Starring: Nancy Suiter, Stacy Goldman, Amika Giortano, John Holmes, Ric Lutz, and Mike Ranger. Directed by: Jaacov Jaacovi.