Car Wash Angels

VCA Pictures

Genre: Feature

Director: Jim Holliday

Cast: Bionca, Careena Collins, Caressa Savage, Emily Hill, Jill Kelly, Jordan Lee, Juli Ashton, Kylie Ireland, Crystal Breeze, Mickey Lynn, Missy, Paisley Hunter, Shayla LaVeaux, Sindee Cox, Shelby Stevens, Sydney St. James, Tammi Ann, Sid Deuce, Peter North, TT Boy, Tom Byron, Bobby Vitale, Clay Hyde, Jake Steed, Joey Silvera, Edward Electric, Buck Staley, Michael Maxx, Miles Long, Mike Albo, David "Pussyman" Christopher, Veronica Hart, Simon Delo, and even a cameo by Jim Holliday

Length: 138.5 minutes

Date of Production: 1/4/1997 (DVD cover), 10/1995 (movie credits)

Extra's: The extras included three bonus scenes; Lacy Rose doing Tony Martino and Peter North in Sorority Sex Kittens 1, a threesome between Nina Hartley, Shayla LaVeaux and a dude from LA Fashion Girls (review forthcoming), and a lesbian orgy with Rebecca Bardoux, Bionca, Melanie Moore, and Lacy Rose from Cheerleader Nurses; the audio "Jim Holliday Legacy" tribute (though it bugged me how it kept looping the same information), a few photogalleries, star biographies, trailers, and spam presented in a wholly interesting manner.

Condoms: None

Audio/Video Quality: Car Wash Angels was presented in the originally filmed 1.33:1 ratio full frame color as shot by director Jim Holliday for VCA Pictures back in 1996. The picture was blurry a few times, always relying on a sense of raw energy rather than pure technical expertise, and had a wonderfully diverse cast as seen on the back of the DVD cover. The fleshtones were accurate though occasionally out of focus but fans of classic porn understand the limitations of the genre at least as well as I do so take the rating with a grain of salt. This was one of the first Holliday flicks that made great strides to cleaning up the picture and camerawork substantially and should be recognized as such. The audio was presented in the usual Dolby Digital stereo English but the vocals appeared to be looped in a few cases, the dialogue slightly wooden at times, and it sounded hollow less frequently than previous volumes in the series. The music was trademark Jim Holliday style as provided by Dino Ninn and Earl Ninn, with intermittent music punctuating the scenes from time to time. The music was all original and actually fit in the action, with the lyrics working better than average for the action; the kind of breezy and fun stuff I always liked about Jim's later efforts.

Body of Review: Jim Holliday was one of the classic porn director archetypes by all accounts, knowing when he was right and everyone else was wrong, as he offered up his own unique brand of movie over the years. Recent attempts to either imitate or at least pay homage to the man include VCA's Car Wash Angels: Wet N Wild and Eye Candy: Camp Fuck A Lot; and I have to give credit that under current porn constraints, both movies do a decent job (while they might not have 20+ ladies in them, or mimic the style of the late, great Holliday, they do pay more then passing lip service to the man, one of them even going so far as to include porn veteran Bill Margold who mused about his role. Well, as I continue to take a look at the past efforts by Jim I finally came across one of his true classics, a movie that seemed (in some ways at least) to really capture the modern (and later works) of the director; a movie called Car Wash Angels. The front cover claims the show has 13 sex scenes, though if you look closely enough, you can find more (or less) depending on how you classify a "scene". The back cover described the movie like this: "Featuring the Spectacular Jill Kelly...Imagine...You've died and gone to heaven and there are all these gorgeous babes in tiny cut-offs and wet halter-tops washing cars and getting it on with the lucky patrons. Now...Imagine CAR WASH ANGELS- because Jim Holliday has gone through hell-and-high-water to bring you the aforementioned sex-spectacle...without the hassle of dying!!! Hot wax and hand-buffed take on new meaning as a cast of 18 car-wash-crazed-cuties soap up and get down with a bevy of lucky customers!!! Shot on location at a real car wash- this is one time you won't have to worry about taking a rain check. Ever." I even wrote a short mini-review for the title recently as it was included in the remake/homage title by director Jane Waters in Car Wash Angels: Wet N Wild, saying:

The original Car Wash Angels was shot by Jim Holliday on 10/1995 (released around the time of his passing on DVD if I recall correctly). The movie was shot in full frame 1.33:1 ratio color, had lots of silly trivia that Jim was known for, and at least a baker's dozen of scenes that included a lot of lesbian trysts to balance out the male on female material. The music was provided by a precursor to Reno & the Rumrunners but you'd never notice the difference if you listened to the music from his later flicks. The movie lasted an astounding 139 minutes, had the slimmest of plots centering on the car wash, and scores of attractive performers & actors like Bionca, Careena Collins, Caressa Savage, Emily Hill, Jill Kelly, Jordan Lee, Juli Ashton, Kylie Ireland, Crystal Breeze, Mickey Lynn, Missy, Paisley Hunter, Shayla LaVeaux, Sindee Cox, Shelby Stevens, Sydney St. James, Tammi Ann, Sid Deuce, Peter North, TT Boy, Tom Byron, Bobby Vitale, Clay Hyde, Jake Steed, Joey Silvera, Edward Electric, Buck Staley, Michael Maxx, Miles Long, Mike Albo, David "Pussyman" Christopher, Veronica Hart, Simon Delo, and even a cameo by Jim Holliday himself. The story of the Burton Allen Institute was barely touched on in any meaningful way in order to let the sex be the focal point of the flick (a wise idea). The extras were left intact with the three bonus scenes, the audio "Jim Holliday Legacy" tribute (though it bugged me how it kept looping the same information), a few photogalleries, star biographies, trailers, and spam presented in a wholly interesting manner. The use of the actual car wash in some portions of the movie was inspired but again, just a nice touch to the fun had by the performers in most of the scenes. What an excellent extra, yes?

The plotted elements of the movie revolved around the Burton Allen Institute, a sort of vocational college where ladies would go to learn about the vocations Jim found to be exceptionally hot; nursing, cheerleading, car washing, and of course the main extra curricular activity was sex (lots of lesbian sex but also taking on man-meat regularly). Jim called his ladies "Angels" and while he seemed to love them all, certain gals were looked upon more favorably then others; including Shayla LaVeaux, Jill Kelly, Kylie Ireland, Sindee Coxx and a few more (in later efforts, this would include Felecia for example) with Jim using them more than anyone else. There was a lot of tease footage where barely dressed women would bend over and show their goodies, do bunny dips to show cleavage, or otherwise use their feminine wiles to attract other men and women to have sex.

The sex itself was often focused squarely on lesbian action with all the rug munching, rimming, and feeling up a fan could handle but there seemed to be a fair amount of men getting in on the deal too. At this point in his directing career, Jim used TT Boy a lot to represent his own libido, working the guy to death in numerous scenes with his best ladies. Later efforts would do likewise with Evan Stone and a few others but the scenes were almost always very short compared to modern porn; even shorter than the feature porn released by companies such as Wicked Pictures of Vivid in fact, the only real nuisance to this reviewer since I like the tease built into the scene; not before or after it. Yet for whatever limitations the sex might've had in that sense, the cast had a lot of fun on average, you never heard the ladies complaining about mistreatment on Jim's sets, and the pacing was more like real sex than porn sex (porn sex lasts a very long time for all the reasons related to how it is shot while real sex usually involves a guy trying to quickly bust a nut).

Car Wash Angels was one of Jim's classic titles that would merit a rating of Highly Recommended even if the man wasn't a genius and the flick was available so cheaply because of all it had to offer. Fans of his work "get" many of his insider jokes but later movies benefited from his audio commentaries since Jim always seemed to assume that a viewer had watched every one of his movies and that made getting the jokes impractical for most of us. Further, he'd through in references to celebrities from his youth or sort of celebrities that few knew about, one of the aspects that really tweaked the professional critics who lowered his ratings in response (causing Jim to refer to them as pinheads and worse since they didn't understand him). He went on to make better movies on a technical level and he even went on to make movies with longer sex scenes and more of what made him a legend but Car Wash Angels was effectively a turning point in his career for getting his own formula down pat and expanding from there so it remains a classic years later and a great place to start for fans not interested in his learning curve as some of the earlier movies I've been reviewing have been referred to.

Summary: Car Wash Angels was one of those movies by director Jim Holliday that most people either love completely or hate with a passion in my experience. The DVD release years ago reminded me of that when some railed about the man behind the scenes and others practically built a shrine in his honor. For my part, I always liked Car Wash Angels and was somewhat irked when the remake, Car Wash Angels: Wet N Wild, came out as a lesser entity but in retrospect; the homage was clearly a tribute by a person with a different sense of style who understood that imitation would be pointless. The original had it all and had it all in droves so check it out as a free copy on the remake or as a value priced classic but if you've never watched the movie, you might be doing yourself a favor.