Another of Terry Sullivan's now rare-as-hen's-teeth Athena Films productions, FARMER'S DAUGHTER AND HER PUNISHMENT PONY is a strange little stage-bound fetish flick that's worth seeking out.
Even at a scant 44 minutes, this cheapjack pseudo-doc begins with 14 minutes of padding. Purporting to show us around the various live sex shows in San Francisco ("the Copenhagen of the West"), the film fudges the opening, claiming these theaters feature sets so realistic the audience would think it's an actual bedroom. Well yeah - easy enough when you just splice in footage from an old porn film featuring Fran Spector! While the cumshots are voluminous, these scenes' divorcement from any narrative context nevertheless renders them unerotic filler. Thankfully, the film doesn't try to use them to pad to the hour mark - 45 minutes will do, and you're best just skipping to the final 30.
The real meat of the film begins a quarter hour in, and does indeed appear to be footage of a real sex show as it might have been performed in one of Frisco's '70s kink houses (one assumes this is Sullivan's theater, though the narrator coyly refrains from identifying it). The featured act is a bizarre one, with "Sally Equine" and her stable boy (unidentified though not unappealing bearded thesp in colorful briefs and leather vest) emerging with a real, live pony (Horace) onstage. While the stable boy's MCing probably had audiences primed for a real Tijuana donkey show, the film thankfully never goes there. Instead, the couple hops on Horace's back for some vanilla coitus, then Sally ties up her farmhand (spread-eagled across the pony's back) and tans his hide with a riding crop, something he surprisingly doesn't seem too enthusiastic about. Closest the film comes to crossing the line are two brief moments, one where Sally stimulates herself with a carrot before feeding it to poor Horace (is gonorrhea interspecies-transmissible?), and the other a surprising instance toward the beginning where the stable boy declares "Horace is definitely bi" before rubbing his erect dick all over the poor creature's snout. Judging by Horace's reaction, he's sorely mistaken.
For those primed to decry animal abuse, the pony mostly looks bored, and I can't imagine what must have been running through its mind while these weird humans were conducting their ritual. Less a proper film than a document of a HIGHLY misguided sex show, FARMER'S DAUGHTER AND HER PUNISHMENT PONY is far from erotic (and further still from good filmmaking), but there's nothing else quite like it. I'm glad it survives, if as nothing more than as a testament to a decade when enough cocaine made everything seem like a good idea.
Even at a scant 44 minutes, this cheapjack pseudo-doc begins with 14 minutes of padding. Purporting to show us around the various live sex shows in San Francisco ("the Copenhagen of the West"), the film fudges the opening, claiming these theaters feature sets so realistic the audience would think it's an actual bedroom. Well yeah - easy enough when you just splice in footage from an old porn film featuring Fran Spector! While the cumshots are voluminous, these scenes' divorcement from any narrative context nevertheless renders them unerotic filler. Thankfully, the film doesn't try to use them to pad to the hour mark - 45 minutes will do, and you're best just skipping to the final 30.
The real meat of the film begins a quarter hour in, and does indeed appear to be footage of a real sex show as it might have been performed in one of Frisco's '70s kink houses (one assumes this is Sullivan's theater, though the narrator coyly refrains from identifying it). The featured act is a bizarre one, with "Sally Equine" and her stable boy (unidentified though not unappealing bearded thesp in colorful briefs and leather vest) emerging with a real, live pony (Horace) onstage. While the stable boy's MCing probably had audiences primed for a real Tijuana donkey show, the film thankfully never goes there. Instead, the couple hops on Horace's back for some vanilla coitus, then Sally ties up her farmhand (spread-eagled across the pony's back) and tans his hide with a riding crop, something he surprisingly doesn't seem too enthusiastic about. Closest the film comes to crossing the line are two brief moments, one where Sally stimulates herself with a carrot before feeding it to poor Horace (is gonorrhea interspecies-transmissible?), and the other a surprising instance toward the beginning where the stable boy declares "Horace is definitely bi" before rubbing his erect dick all over the poor creature's snout. Judging by Horace's reaction, he's sorely mistaken.
For those primed to decry animal abuse, the pony mostly looks bored, and I can't imagine what must have been running through its mind while these weird humans were conducting their ritual. Less a proper film than a document of a HIGHLY misguided sex show, FARMER'S DAUGHTER AND HER PUNISHMENT PONY is far from erotic (and further still from good filmmaking), but there's nothing else quite like it. I'm glad it survives, if as nothing more than as a testament to a decade when enough cocaine made everything seem like a good idea.