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Inside Deep Throat
Universal Pictures


8.0

based on 38 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 4 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: NC-17 for explicit sexual content

Starring Dennis Hopper (narrator), Linda Lovelace, David Winters, Gerard Damiano, Erica Jong, Norman Mailer, Harry Reems, Gore Vidal, and John Waters

It was a $25,000 movie that became a $600 million phenomenon. It caused an administration to declare war on freedom. It turned buying a ticket into an act of revolution. Now, more than 30 years after Deep Throat first burst upon the public consciousness, this documentary examines the chasm between the modest intentions of the movie's makes and the unforeseen legacy they inadvertently created. (Universal)

GENRE(S):	Documentary
DIRECTED BY:	Fenton Bailey Randy Barbato
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: September 20, 2005 Theatrical: February 11, 2005
RUNNING TIME:	92 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Nimble, engrossing, and journalistically eye-opening, a movie that pulls into focus 30 years of porn in America. It also pulls no punches.

USA Today Mike Clark

Inside Deep Throat, an NC-17 documentary that deftly chronicles the fallout -- with about 15 seconds of hard-core footage -- has some surprise credits.

Slate David Edelstein

Isn't as campy or as unhinged as the delightful Bailey and Barbato Tammy Faye Baker documentary, "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"; it's more like your standard HBO documentary (and HBO co-produced). But it's extremely entertaining.

Dallas Observer Michael Fox

The film falls short only in its refusal to take a stand on whether star Linda Lovelace was a victim, as she claimed.

New York Magazine Ken Tucker

Delightful, insightful documentary.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Offbeat documentary filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato dissect the history and legend of perhaps the best known and most profitable pornographic movies ever made.

Empire Nick De Semlyen

There's nothing preachy about this slick and funny doc (narrated by Dennis Hopper), which as a brief history of how porn spurted into the mainstream has all the money shots you could ask for.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The doc is longer on historical interest than original insights or analysis.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The film goes beyond historical anecdotes. Besides fresh and funny insights from the likes of Norman Mailer and John Waters, it shows how little censorship politics have changed from Nixon to Bush.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Considering the seedy nature of the adult film industry and the sad fates of many of its stars, Inside Deep Throat is surprisingly light on tragedy.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

When Inside Deep Throat is over, it's tough to say which tragic moment lingers longer.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

A deliriously entertaining field report from a historical moment when porn darned near became mainstream.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Does a fine job.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Offers a diverting tale of erstwhile indie filmmaking and the power of porn to generate change - both at the box office and in the bedroom.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A thorough but highly entertaining documentary details the making of the notorious 1972 film, the series of legal battles that helped make it immensely popular and the flick's considerable cultural legacy.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Inside Deep Throat, a documentary that premiered at Sundance and is now going into national release, was made not on the fringes but by the very establishment itself.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

An often lively investigation of the social forces that produced the original movie and made it an unlikely political shibboleth in the ongoing culture wars.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Inside Deep Throat starts small and keeps expanding outward until there's seemingly no facet of American life the phenomenon hasn't touched.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Provocative and perceptive.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Has a gaudy pop-culture personality that perfectly suits its subject.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

In a Kafkaesque turn of events, Reems was the fall guy--facing prison, he became a Hollywood cause célèbre. Inside Deep Throat includes footage of him partying with Jack and Warren and debating Roy Cohn on TV.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

By turns funny and sobering, sweeping and intimate, the consistently entertaining Inside Deep Throat plays like a giddy prance through the minefield of the last three decades of American sex and politics.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's a reductive moral to a story full of fascinating contradictions, but Bailey and Barbato draw a convincing line between the social and political atmosphere of the film and the culture wars of today. The issues are still very much alive.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Not even the film's director Gerard Damiano will argue for Deep Throat being a great movie. But, hey, at least there's no gag order anymore.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Passably interesting, occasionally compelling, sporadically amusing, and badly lacking in focus.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

While brisk, informative, and entertaining, feels frustratingly sketchy.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Beautifully assembled and edited by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato ("The Eyes of Tammy Faye") and is often very funny.

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

Full of groovy music and comic characters--many with a priceless reaction to Lovelace's oral party trick--but it hardly manages to say anything new or thoughtful.

Newsweek William Underhill

Inside Deep Throat is more scattershot than deep, but it vividly evokes the days when the "sexual revolution" was supposed to liberate the American libido.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Seeks to establish a pioneering role for the movie in liberating America’s sex life. To me it’s far from clear that that cheerfully cheesy slice of hardcore, made for $25,000 by a middle-aged hairdresser named Gerard Damiano, has spawned much in the way of a cultural legacy.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Well-crafted and, in places, highly informative, but with the exception of some of the original film's hardcore sex scenes and the aforementioned Mob angle, there's little we haven't been exposed to before.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It's a fascinating story but not so fascinatingly told.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

As the smirking title might suggest, the movie is least prepared to process the feminist backlash against porn movies that followed their early-70s crossover -- in a way the most interesting part of the story.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

This feeble documentary ends up perpetuating the very hypocrisy it means to probe.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

It's an unfocused overview that intersperses choppy interviews and observations with clips from "Deep Throat," including some of its most notorious and explicit scenes.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

If a movie can be fascinating and tedious at the same time, Inside Deep Throat -- which more or less depicts the America I have just described -- is that movie.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

"Deep Throat" bore an X certificate. Inside Deep Throat is an NC-17. Neither is suitable for grownups.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

A "slam, bam, thank you, ma'am" trifle of an entertainment.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Marc D. gave it a9:
Very solid film. Full of laughs in addition to some genuinely sad moments. See it find out why Linda called her cat Adolf Hitler. That busted me up.

Eloi P. gave it an8:
Excellent movie. It's worth seeing for the John Waters sequences alone. I had never seen actual film "Deep Throat," but I can tell you that this film shows you just enough to understand exactly why it was groundbreaking. The recounted reactions to the "key sequence" by the actors, director, and everyone else who was on the set are priceless. Everybody in our theater was roaring. The film does a nice job in again characterizing the feminist movement of the mid-70s as one of the more counterproductive and even harmful of its kind in American sociological history. And poor Harry Reems. Wow, he was put the ringer, huh?

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Inside Deep Throat Universal Pictures

Inside Deep Throat
Universal Pictures