70s Sleaze Resurfaces With Groovy Color and Chaos

Read Time:4 Minute, 51 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Dames and Dreams (DVD)
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Genre: Drama, Action, Adventure
Year Released: 1974, 2025 Jezebel DVD
Runtime: 1h 19m
Director(s): Harry Sahn
Writer(s): Jacques Descent, Greg Javer, Harry Sahn
Cast: Serena, Brandy Saunders, Tallie Cochrane, Margie Lanier, John F. Goff, Patrick Wright
Where to Watch: available now, order here: www.kinolorber.com or www.amazon.com, and streaming here: www.redemptiontv.net

RAVING REVIEW: Some rediscovered films feel like lost treasure. Others, like DAMES AND DREAMS, feel more like the contents of a forgotten drawer—curious, colorful, and undeniably nostalgic, but not exactly essential. Long buried and finally restored, this 1974 sexploitation oddity from director Harry Sahn reemerges after decades in obscurity.

The premise is thin but promising in that vintage grindhouse way: four women have their fortunes read at a Hollywood party. They are launched into a surreal series of dreamlike escapades involving crime, seduction, and plenty of bare skin. The film treats these women as both fantasy avatars and pseudo-empowered agents of chaos, brandishing sexuality like a weapon in a world of cops and crooks. In theory, that setup could lead somewhere provocative. But the reality is that DAMES AND DREAMS, like many exploitation films of its time, is more interested in aesthetics and nudity than it is in narrative.

Shot in and around Hollywood, much of the film's charm lies in its ’70s atmosphere. Bold interior design, tacky club lighting, and that unmistakable Southern California haze wrap the movie in a haze of polyester-fueled nostalgia. It’s easy to get caught up in the vibrant world it presents, at least visually. However, after a while, the novelty wears off, and you’re left watching something that struggles to string together a coherent narrative.

To its credit, the film’s restoration is excellent. The colors pop, the grain feels organic, and it’s clear that a lot of care went into preserving this slice of exploitation history. There’s a charm to watching a movie that was nearly lost, now returned to the world with all its flaws intact. For fans of the genre or archivists fascinated by cinematic oddities, that restoration effort alone makes it worthwhile to view.

Performance-wise, there’s not much to dissect. Most of the cast members, including familiar exploitation regulars like Tallie Cochrane, George “Buck” Flower, and Cleo O’Hara, exist more as archetypes than as fully developed characters. Their appeal rests on screen presence and physicality more than any nuance or scripted dialogue. That’s par for the course with sexploitation fare, but it means the viewer’s engagement lives or dies based on their appetite for voyeuristic spectacle.

The eroticism here walks a difficult line. It’s too explicit to be considered tame and too goofy to be genuinely sexy. Scenes often begin with some semblance of narrative but inevitably devolve into lengthy, soft-core interludes. For those expecting seduction or high camp, some moments land, especially when the film leans into its surreal, dreamlike transitions. But the repetition becomes tedious.

While DAMES AND DREAMS never reaches the outrageous heights of other genre classics, it’s not entirely without charm. There’s a certain low-budget creativity at work, particularly in how the film flirts with horror, crime, and psychedelia while never committing to any of them. An especially bizarre sequence involving a movie theater, a piano, and a rendezvous captures the kind of unhinged imagination that could have made the whole film pop if used more consistently.

Yet, the disjointed structure is hard to ignore. There’s a reason this film was left unfinished for so long—and that absence of direction is still palpable in the final product. What we see today feels more like a reconstructed curiosity than a fully realized vision. There’s no denying that fans of vintage erotica, counterculture cinema, or grindhouse grit might still enjoy it as an artifact.

DAMES AND DREAMS is a vibe-heavy relic that exists more for the sake of ambiance than storytelling. It's easy to imagine it playing on a loop in the background of a retro art installation, but as a narrative experience, it often leaves the viewer floating in a haze of half-baked ideas. That said, there’s something oddly admirable about its commitment to style and sleaze, especially in an era where even exploitation is often sanitized. For those interested in cinematic detours and forgotten footnotes, there’s just enough here to justify the watch. Think of it as cinematic archaeology: dirty, disorganized, but occasionally illuminating.

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[photo courtesy of JEZEBEL, KINO LORBER]

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