It’s difficult to puzzle out how much of Sexual Encounter Group, an 81 minute odyssey of guided, mannered group sex produced by director Alex de Renzy for exhibition in his Screening Room and beyond, is a genuine time capsule or an orchestrated put-on. Regardless, beginning poolside and concluding with a post-coital immersion, what unfolds between stands as one of de Renzy’s least engaging works of his earliest period. Though, like many other noble failures of the period, it’s not completely without some merit as a very specific snapshot of a time so long ago and in a galaxy far, far away, it feels wholly disconnected from our present reality.
The film opens on the scattered enjoyment of jugs of wine, zodiac talk, and overlapping dialogue about dropping out and running off to Yosemite, all of which has the hallmarks of an off-the-cuff happening. And this is exactly where it’s skirting that razor edge of early hardcore where there seemed to be an understood safe zone if the dirty bits were occurring within the parameters of a documentary. Not for nothing but it’s also the type of discourse that was sent up on Frank Zappa’s Lumpy Gravy album or in the first ten minutes of Ralph Bakshi’s Fritz the Cat which means it registers as unintentionally hilarious in its earnestness.
Sitting on shag carpet so thick it has a deep end and a lifeguard, the group is led by George McDonald, an early west coast hardcore day player who would find fame in Jim and Artie Mitchell’s Behind the Green Door a couple of years later. As he kicks off the proceedings suggesting that the women smell the men, McDonald then conducts a slow caress session with his partner before suggesting “why don’t you try it?” to anyone within earshot, almost like if the old SNL character E. Buzz Miller had he become a group therapy coach.
The fanciful justification for having an orgy feels like the kind of thing that would qualify as community service in heaven. Sure, you get to have indiscriminate non-committed sex with a total stranger who is also open-minded, but you’re also going to have to endure a bunch of New Age mumbo jumbo that might hamstring your libido as a direct result of the silliness. It is a cinch that at least one of the people in the film was a closet square and his or her mind was no doubt screaming “Oh, please shut that mouth… I just came here to fuck.” Probably the randy, red headed Leo who can’t seem to keep to the simple instructions given by McDonald and continues to make out with her partner (who looks like a fit, slightly younger Milton Ingley) throughout the early “sensitivity drills.”
What survives today of Sexual Encounter Group is missing the audio from the second and third reels and its absence may actually enhance the movie. Even though the audience is no doubt missing out on some choice awkwardness in the verbal exchanges, and it would be preferred for the sake of integrity that it was still available, there is a certain eroticism that is gained and captured in quick, isolated moments such as the unmistakable look of ecstasy on the participants’ faces as they lay prone and are softly caressed by an army of slow-moving hands without the accompaniment of coughs, giggles, or McDonald’s instructions. The music itself, all lifts previously used by de Renzy in his loops, is appropriately groovy, sometimes somber, and gives the movie a more time-specific dreaminess. At times, it plays like the home edition of the desert orgy in Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point.
But Lordy Moses is this thing in the opposite of a hurry. There is a LOT of dead air. Most of the time, de Renzy simply parks the camera and lets everything unfold as naturally as public sex guided by a dungeon master could possibly be expected. This means that the actual sex part doesn’t occur until after about an hour of heavy encountering. This also means that the movie, on the whole, is painfully dull. At some point, the audience is going to identify with Joyce, the Virgo, a Nordic, Fake Jan Brady-type who looks positively bored until McDonald brings her down onto the floor to get in on the action. But even then, she looks only slightly more engaged.
All in all, there just isn’t a lot to say about Sexual Encounter Group. It’s a historical document which means it comes with built-in interest. Where else can one see this tiny sliver of hippie culture during the halcyon days of the free love movement doing one of the most free love things one can do? But it ultimately lacks energy, and most importantly, it doesn’t do a good job selling the idea of sex, encounters, and/or groups. By the time it’s over and done with, one gets the impression that a sloppier and less intellectualized living room flesh pile would be a much better time.
And somewhere in the mid-70’s, Carlos Tobalina would put that notion to the test and scientifically prove it.
(C) Copyright 2025, Patrick Crain
Apollo Twin 