“Enough romance… let’s fuck” blasts forth the disembodied opening line of dialogue that shatters the silence on the soundtrack immediately before Fred Huber shoves his member into the mouth of Maria Arnold while the “Mars” movement of Gustav Holst’s The Planets booms over the soundtrack.
If you are fortunate enough to draw 1974’s For Love of Money as your first selection in your adult-oriented Noirvember playlist, you’re going to start off with a bang both literally and figuratively as the film has director Bob Chinn helming a gritty, one-day production that was shot in the unfriendly territory of South Pasadena where things with the vice squad were still hot. A sweltering tale of suburban treachery amongst unfaithful spouses and low-rent blackmail artists, For Love of Money spins a yarn involving Dorothy Austin (Jane Clayton), a married woman who encounters smooth-talking Alan Breck (Fred Huber) at the posh Wilshire Country Club where he quickly shanghais her into coming to his place for an afternoon tryst. Turns out, it’s a trap as the VERY clandestine Raoul (Pharaoh Adams) snaps some blackmail pictures of the sexual shenanigans while standing in the wings. When confronted by Alan, Dorothy agrees to pay him the requested $5,000 for the negatives before quickly enlisting the aid of Mr. Daggit (Joey Silvera), a sleazy private eye who is sleeping with his girl Friday, Kelly (Rose Simpson).
Though the same year’s The Married Woman was electrifying in its accelerated graduation in style and attitude in comparison to what had come before, and The Love Slaves, also from 1974, was more ambitious in terms of plot and location, it is For Love of Money that comes off as the best of the three in terms of the application of the kind of technical flourish that would become the trademark of Chinn’s films. For Love of Money may have been an afterthought but it has a fairly sophisticated sense of style. For such a quick production, it is very well shot and quite elegantly so. The music choices and the subtly effective camera dollies around beds and couches give this film a graceful fluidity. Much like in The Married Woman, Chinn experiments with camera speeds but the setups and framing in the bedroom scenes are closer to the same refined and sparkling touch that would be found in The Jade Pussycat and The China Cat a few years later.
One of the things that helps For Love of Money go the distance is that the female trio of Clayton, Arnold, and Simpson who weave in and out of a smorgasbord of fantastic sex scenes (even if Simpson is in mortal danger of having a dart accidentally jammed into her skull during the opening moments of one of them). If The Naked Nympho was but a tease in terms of the talents of Maria Arnold being trapped within the confines of a softcore movie, For Love of Money makes up for that and more with her astonishing opener with Huber and her darkroom hook-up with Adams which achieves an otherworldliness as it remains bathed in the scene-appropriate red light and nicely accentuated with Holst’s “Venus”. Though she came and went and her sojourn in the world of adult cinema was but a flash, Jane Clayton is entirely buyable and alluring as a bored housewife who gets in over her head and more than holds her own in the myriad of explicit scenes in which she’s featured.
As for the film’s male cast members, Huber doesn’t radiate much believable menace with his freshly cut Brawny beard but he more than earns his day-rate as he’s tasked with three sex scenes. Longtime vet Joey Silvera displays an early skill for comedic timing and dialogue, and though he’s not given much to do in this fleet, 55-minute jaunt (outside the obvious), he makes quite an impression and leaves little wonder as to why he became a perpetually in-demand figure for many years after. The always-welcome Pharaoh Adams pretty much gets sidelined to the darkroom but he makes out ok in his brief but pivotal role.
Maybe more interesting than the film itself is its connection to 1975’s Blackmail For Daddy, the piggybacked second feature which was shot simultaneously with For Love of Money but sold to a separate producer. Both helmed under the directorial pseudonym of Ben Koran, each film utilizes blackmail as a shared central plot device but with one inverting the story of the other which creates something very beguiling when viewed back-to-back. “We figured if we were going to risk getting busted in LA we might as well get two films out of the shoot,” Chinn later said of the twin productions, both of which were written and edited by Jack Tucker.
Though Bob Chinn’s career often circled around producer Armand Atamian, most especially from 1976-1980 when Chinn unleashed a slew of classics through Atamain’s Freeway Films, For Love of Money was made for Gil Atamian, New York theater owner and cousin of Armand. Desperately wanting a film from a “good director,” Chinn delivered and then some. For like The Married Woman and The Love Slaves, For Love of Money is a terrific illustration of the evolving world of hardcore pornographic features that looked to find balance between explicit sex and story with an added foundation of technical excellence which would help lend them the sheen they would need to be taken seriously as a medium and one that could find appeal beyond the raincoat crowd.
(C) Copyright 2023, Patrick Crain
Apollo Twin 