The Hardy Girls

The mishmash titled THE HARDY GIRLS has been temporarily rescued from oblivion by Alpha Blue Archives in a current DVD tribute to Tina Russell, but is difficult to watch. Not only its bloated running time (88 minutes on video) but its haphazard assemblage of unrelated short subjects prove to be indigestible.Title refers to Hardy Harrison (apparently real-name Harding Harrison, a very minor bit player in ’70s porn), visiting NYC and getting a guided tour of it seedier side by pal Mike (Michael Merlin) with another guy (Bernie Grimes) in tow. This dull footage is basically pseudo- documentary, occasionally coming to life as in a lengthy segment with a talkative call girl (Jeanie Parker, another very minor porn player) or in the picture’s best moments of the final reel as a young lady shooting stag films explains the familiar tale of answering a nude modeling ad in the Village Voice and soon ending up in the porno grind working for peanuts (but “better than being a 9 to 5 robot or secretary” to paraphrase the inevitable defense stated in so many porn films of the lifestyle).Along the way we briefly see divine Miss Russell masturbating in a 25-cent peepshow as well as endless shots of Times Square but little of the nostalgia that NYC films from this bygone era usually preserve. Lion’s share of the running time is devoted to nonsensically bad silent vignettes with stupid titles like “Sport” (about a girl who looks like Susan St. James and feels herself up while dreaming about the jock swinging a baseball bat outside her window -she also licks a jock strap she finds lying around in her closet; Hardy’s Black Fantasy entitled “The Stripper”, featuring a Black Girl masturbating and then having sex with a Black guy; and “The Mechanic”, an incomprehensible segment set in Ohio about a girl who digs a guy in overalls fixing a car. She masturbates in her kitchen using a basting tool apparently left over from Thanksgiving..If this sounds stupid, it is. (Film’s sexual content -it’s raison d’etre – is negligible and certainly unstimulating.) Even the educational “behind the scenes” final reel is disappointing -while the girl explains the porn business the film suddenly goes silent and we watch the cast and crew leave -as “who cares” a finish to an admittedly crappy film as I can remember.