John Holmes’ famous Johnny Wadd character probably went a long way towards inspiring Boogie Nights. In Tell Them Johnny Wadd Is Here, which is directed by Bob Chinn [the Burt Reynolds character from Boogie Nights], you see some of the goofy action sequences immortalized in the Paul Thomas Anderson classic.
One classic begets another as P.I. John Holmes stops just long enough from engaging drug dealers in various forms of bad martial arts to having sex with Annette Haven, Joan Devlon and Veronica Taylor. Holmes is in the middle of undressing Haven when he gets a call from an old army buddy who’s now a San Francisco cop on a vigilante-style trail of drug traffickers in Mexico.
The jurisdictional aspects, alone, beg some questions, but Holmes signals that his lean ass and 12-inch dick will be in Enseneda to join him within four hours. Whether Holmes mentally calculates fucking Haven in his itinerary is anyone’s guess. But their opening tryst has always been considered this film’s best.
In one road sequence Holmes, inexplicably gets out of his convertible Mercedes in some south of the border shithole, looks out towards the ocean and reminisces about a strung out woman named Doreen he once fucked. Doreen has married his army buddy but has now left the army buddy to fuck one of the drug traffickers the army buddy is trying to put away.
How’s this for a priceless exchange. The drug dealer: “You’re not going to shoot up again?” Doreen ignores him and shoots up. Drug dealer: “It’s a good thing I get it wholesale the way you put it away.”
Paralleling the complexities of the Wadd love triangle, are sequences that go long ways to Sunday to save dimes including lengthy philosophical spiels from Carlos Tobalina, a porn director, who plays the local police chief ala Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, along with a bad guy cameo from Chinn.
In one of the most dastardly examples of cinematic continuity abuse ever witnessed, Holmes and his buddy are eating in a dive. [There’s a lot of eating going on here.] The buddy’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt. But as they leave the restaurant and into the arms of awaiting muggers, he’s now fending off the goons decked out in a leisure suit and a white shirt.
Priceless. And, of course, in his methods of interrogation to solicit vital information, Holmes nails a couple of the local senoritas with doggie-style dispatch, dripping man snot on their ass cheeks. In another sequence where- you guessed it- Holmes and his buddy are having a bite, Holmes excuses himself to take a shit while a trio of Mexican cutthroats do the friend in. Guilt riddled with bad bowel timing, it’s when Holmes whips out the hardware, meaning the handguns, that the film rises to the occasion of marvelous revenge-focused absurdity.