The Toy Box (DVD) (1971)
Director: Ron Garcia
Starring: Ann Myers, Evan Steele, Uschi Digart, Maria Arnold, Marsha Jordan and Jack King as "Uncle"
(Image Entertainment) www.image-entertainment.com

"Happy Uncle!"

Ralph (Boston accented- and Harry Reems-mustachioed Steele) and Donna (blowsy bottle blonde Myers) are part of a group of swingers who perform for the pleasure of Uncle, a skidrow Santa lookalike with fried egg eyes who may or may not be dead. Uncle encourages this crew of fuck-happy hippies (who count sexploitation vets Maria Arnold, MILF Queen Marsha Jordan and sweater pillow dream Uschi Digart among their members) to do it till they're satisfied, and pays them for their efforts from the Toy Box, which appears to be a pirate's treasure chest containing a black light. But, as any good deviate will tell you, vanilla sex has a pretty short shelf life, and now Uncle wants stronger fare. So he has the swingers start killing each other after sex-or so it seems (one guy stabs a girl after she gives him head; a Jeff "Skunk" Baxter gets run through with a pitchfork by his chick after a romp in the woods; and best/worst of all, a fat, naked butcher screws a corpse on his cutting table before another corpse rises off a meat hook and whacks him with a cleaver). Naturally, none of this sits well with Ralph (Donna seems non-plussed, and he decides to split from Uncle's mansion. Uncle gets wise to their escape plan and throws every trick at the book at them-floating heads, disappearing bodies, and best of all, a giant nude woman who informs them that Uncle is actually an alien who's collecting perverted specimens of humanity for his extraterrestrial clients (which immediately supercedes the whole "is he dead or not" issue). Then, in rapid succession:

1. Donna turns into Uncle (or Uncle into Donna).
2. Ralph cringes in terror as fog juice billows around him.
3. An earthquake strikes the mansion.
4. The swingers find themselves unable to escape, and paw futilely at the windows as director Garcia pulls slowly back from the scene.
5. You shake your head and rub your eyes, adding a heartfelt "Whaa…?" for good measure.

"Your body and my sheets are one."

Produced by exploitation's favorite scummy uncle, Harry Novak, The Toy Box is the rare adults-only film that manages to be sexy, stupid and watchable at the same time (and if you see enough of these things, you know that's no mean feat). Director Garcia (who later worked on "Twin Peaks" and currently lenses "Gilmore Girls") solves the problem of how to spice up the old softcore shell game by taking a kitchen skin approach, hurling garish Bava-esque light schemes, fog, distorted angles, elliptical editing (oh, and that hot giant broad) at the viewer, hoping to stun him into a satiated state. He's also wise enough to know when to tone down the light show and let the film's most appealing special effects-its wealth of attractive naked bodies-take over, and the couplings are fairly sweaty, especially a scene in which Ms. Digard is fucked by a bed (you read that right-not on a bed, by a bed).
For the scholarly types, there's also a bit of a message running under the showcase of smut, and a fairly level-headed one for a sexploitation film (instead of the usual "girls really can find happiness from a rapist" or "gorillas make the best lovers"); namely, that like absolute power, absolute kink can corrupt. Donna and Ralph argue about this sporadically throughout the movie; she knows that the constant live sex show for Uncle has basically ruined the idea of normal sex and a healthy relationship with Ralph, who laughs it off at first, until the dead bodies start popping up, and by then, it's too late for both of them. It's not Pride and Prejudice, to be sure, but a grinder with even a 30-watt idea behind it is worth watching (and apparently worth repeating, as Garcia explored similar territory in Swinger's Massacre, '75). The Toy Box is heady stuff, with enough old-school skin to keep the retro knob waxer well greased, and enough psychedelic jet fuel to keep basement stoners and film students on bum kicks goggle-eyed and gleeful.
Extra points for: the aforementioned bed scene with Uschi; the spooky opening credits, which feature toy trains (pulling a Hormel meat car--ick) passing through endless toy tunnels; the scene where Donna busies herself with her birthday gift from Ralph-a vibrator ("How could a mechanical object cause such ecstasy?"); Marie Arnold getting "mauled" by two girls in chains acting like lions ("Oh, bite me! Bite me! It feels so tongue-on (?) good!"); the disembodied-head-on-the-table scene; and for dialogue like "I guess it's better than someone raping you." Image/Something Weird Video's DVD pairs The Toy Box with the truly grotesque ode to infantilism Toys Are Not For Children and a brace of like-minded trailers for Tales of the Bizarre,The Exquisite Cadaver and others. No points subtracted.
-Paul Gaita