Despite her appearance being cheesecake, softcore, and simulated, Dick Aldrich certainly scored a coup when he got Russ Meyer starlet Kitten Natividad to star in Titillation and Eat at the Blue Fox, his two hardcore features from 1982 and 1983, respectively. But Bob Chinn, Aldrich’s friend and sometime collaborator, did him one better by landing 1984’s All the Way In!, a project featuring Candy Samples who had also featured into the back half of Meyer’s career. The difference between the two showcases was that, in All the Way In!, Candy Samples was going to be going “all the way.”
Now, despite its promotional materials attesting to such, All the Way In! was not Candy Samples’s first XXX feature. In fact, Samples had been doing hardcore loops and features since the Stone Age of the medium (one such example being 1971’s Ensenada Pickup). But she had long since toiled in the work of burlesque dancing, men’s magazines, sex comedies, and softcore loops, some of the latter distributed by Bob Easley and Gary Wolf, the producers of All the Way In! (under the names Robert Garcia and Gabriel Lobo). So, to Wolf and Easley, working together under the one-and-done production company of Osolobo Productions, the hook of “introducing” the reigning big tit queen in a high-profile hardcore feature to a new generation was too good to pass up. And for those who remembered her earlier adult work in those hard and soft 8mm and 16mm loops and features, here was a chance to see her in glorious 35mm!
As Candy Keen, Samples is an advice columnist for Ultra Flesh, a sex magazine on the verge of being swallowed up by conglomerate. She’s barely bothered by this as she’s completely down in the dumps after meeting and subsequently losing the love of her life, Pat (played by Pat Romano, her then-boyfriend), while on a tour showcasing her burlesque dance routine. Her workmates at Ultra Flesh try to cheer her up while facing a all-but-certain layoff at the hands of the mysterious P.J. Corona, a moneyed bottom-liner who not only downsizes sex mags with reckless abandon but who is also rumored to have quite the crush on Candy.
As a light and bright comedy set in the sex industry, All the Way In! is easily Chinn’s best film since 1980’s Sadie. Like Hot Legs, this is a film that acts also as a acute mirror into the adult film industry but instead of the world of advertising and photography acting as a veiled parallel, All the Way In! is explicitly about people who work in porn and, instead of focusing on the pressures surrounding delivering product on time and on budget, All the Way In! is far more concerned with the businesses’s unique, sometime-familial atmosphere and its natural camaraderie during a time of reflection, uncertainty, and transition (which is explicitly underlined in a nicely delivered bit of dialogue shared by Eric Edwards and Mai Lin early in the film).
And, to this end, there are a lot of “hey, gang”s and “c’mon, guys” thrown about and all of it is pretty lovely and lovable. But, even though it’s a lighthearted ride, All the Way In! has a thread of bittersweetness that its Glamor Shots slicks and VHS box art don’t much hint at. For along with its bouncy, “let’s put our heads together” energy, there are a lot of “remember whens” and such floating throughout the film topped with a scene replete with farewells that feel like they have a real sincerity behind them. And, in fact, films like All the Way In! did signal an end of sorts to a cinematic era that began in 1959 with filmmakers such as Russ Meyer (who appears in a delightful cameo in the film’s opening moments). Samples’s scenes in which she performs her burlesque routine are nice throwbacks to the Meyer days what with their cantilevered cavorting over sleazy bedroom striptease music, but the days of modestly-budgeted smut shot on honest-to-goodness film to be projected on a giant screen for a paying public were clearly coming to an end.
But, boy howdy, did Chinn ever get a winner for his 35mm swan song. Shot by Jack Remy, his cinematographer for the Hyapatia Lee pictures for Caribbean Films, All the Way In! looks stunning with its careful, dramatic lighting, fantastic Jim Malibu sets, and smooth-as-butter editing by Pearl Diamond, punching her time clock with Chinn one final time. The combined superpowers of Chinn, Diamond, Remy, Malibu, and Samples are on full display in the film’s heart-shaped bed capper between Samples and Romano. Opening with one of the greatest transitions in all of Chinn’s career, you’d never know it was a dissolve shot into absolute hell for everyone. Here, the hassle was a dysfunctional Pat Romano who took hours to complete the task at hand which, due to the exclusive relationship between himself and the star, meant that Chinn and the crew were stuck with the two of them trying (and mostly failing) to achieve a cumshot. A little known scientific fact is that, with your ears tuned in to the correct frequency, you can hear the film itself exhale the second Romano pops his cork as it wastes nary a millisecond pivoting to the end credits; the brickwall impact of relieved frustrations are completely and utterly palpable to the audience.
But lest anyone think I’m trying to lay this film out as some kind of three-hankie weeper or issue-cursed cinematic affair, let it be fully reiterated that All the Way In! is a well-crated slip-and-slide of jovial fun with a giant heart right where it should be. Opening on a slow-churning warm up scene between Shanna McCollough and Mike Horner, two holdovers from Chinn’s previous film, 1983’s Let’s Get Physical, the light tone immediately emanates due to the playful humor displayed by John Seeman and Lisa DeLeeuw, two of the films credited cameos, and the scene’s mile-high, airplane fuselage set.
The supporting cast of All the Way In! is also terrific. Ron Jeremy’s performance as Mike Farley, perverted and energetic photographer for Ultra Flesh, scored him an AFAA Best Supporting Actor in 1985. Danielle, a performer who was only in the business for a couple of years, is actually quite touching in her eponymous role that contains a lot of dialogue which she manages to deliver with a surprising amount of tenderness and believability. As was generally the case, Mai Lin brings tons of heat as adult film critic Chrissy Chen, a completely well-meaning compatriot who nonetheless bungles the two planned attempts to lift Candy’s spirits. One of the film’s funniest moments belongs to Lin as she and Tanya Lawson show up to Martina’s apartment both slightly bombed and insatiably horny and they almost immediately double-team Francois Papillon, completely queering Martina’s scheme to cheer Candy up. Afterwards, they express an “ooops, awww-shucks” attitude about fucking it up but, honestly, they totally could give a shit. They had a good time and nobody’s mad, not especially Papillon.
Also terrific is the scene between Lin, Eric Edwards, and Samples, all of whom become the players in a fantasy letter sent in by an Ultra Flesh reader and read aloud by Edwards. An office ritual between Edwards and Samples in which he reads the choicest letter to the magazine over the intercom to Candy, Lin finds a way to work herself into the fun even though the oration is supposed to be exclusively for Candy’s enjoyment. Shifting from shared fantasy to reality with some of the finest match cuts in Diamond’s career, it’s an imaginatively constructed and scorching sequence.
Aside from her two paired encounters with Pat Romano, Samples gets a sweetly performed and delicately directed girl/girl scene with Martina. As the latter laments her own failed attempts to romantically connect with Jeff (the always reliable David Morris), Ultra Flesh’s art director, J.E. Peck’s music works overtime, lilting to damn near Jerry Goldsmith territory as Martina says “You’ve got it bad, girl.” Though Samples is undeniably the star of the film, her character allows her to be the centerpiece without her having to do a lot of the heavy lifting or threatening to overpower the ensemble. And though her hardcore scenes are limited, it’s not a detriment to the film given how well they actually come off (despite Pat Romano’s aforementioned equipment failure) and how well they do actually work in terms of the film’s story and its resolution.
At the time All the Way In! was shot, Candy Samples was a mind-boggling 56 years old. Despite her keeping her actual age a secret throughout her career, it probably wouldn’t have mattered to anyone in the front office had they seen her birth certificate because Candy Samples was an old-school professional knockout in the same vein as Marlene Dietrich. If she could prove that she could still cut the mustard, there would be a righteous indignity if age was mentioned as anything other than two digits sharing space for twelve months. This was, after all, a lady who proudly hung a bronzed brassiere in her living room and dared anyone to say something about it. In All the Way In!, Samples gives women of a certain age something to cheer about as she proves that sensuality and the ability to have a rip-roaring good time have no real expiration date and that, after all those years in the business, she remained, as Eric Edwards intones the film’s closing moments, in-fucking-credible.
(C) Copyright 2023, Patrick Crain
Apollo Twin 