Nostalgia Kinky

It’s been a minute since Pop Cinema graced us with another installment of its Racy Reels From The Something Weird Vault. Thankfully, a 4th volume is now available to order from Alternative Cinema or MVD. Containing two obscure Softcore productions from the early seventies, newly scanned in 4K, this 2-DVD set continues a long-too-dormant archival series.

Compared to its earlier Blu-ray special editions, this new Racy Reels SD collection is a step-down in both ambition and quality. Neither Matinee Wives nor its companion film Executive’s Wives are all that memorable; however, these sun-soaked East Coast 60-minute quickies are more than serviceable.

Matinee Wives (1970) is the main feature found on this new DVD set. Credited to a ‘Kendall Stewart’, whose only other credit commonly listed is the delightfully titled Code Name: Raw-Hide (1972), Matinee Wives is pretty ridiculous stuff, but it has its charms. Focusing on some bored housewives seeking pleasure during the day with paid Johns, and their completely clueless and useless husbands, Matinee Wives is as inconsequential as it gets but still kind of fun.

Matinee Wives is mostly notable due to the appearance by popular softcore actress Barbara Mills, an East Coast figure who’d become entrenched in the California exploitation scene in the late sixties. This is a fairly early film in Mills’ decade-long film-career and she’s both charismatic and sexy, making her an ideal actress here. A fairly obscure film in Mills filmography, this Racy Reels set will please her fans.

Matinee Wives features a decent ensemble featuring a few familiar and new faces to the world of softcore cinema. Not suprisingly, the female cast far outshines the goofball men, who spend the majority of the film’s runtime bragging about imaginary conquests while looking like they smell of Old-Spice and sadness. Keep a lookout for cult-figure Jennie Lynn, going by Denny Lynn here.

Running around an hour, the print Pop Cinema located for this release of Matinee Wives is pretty beat all to hell but all the scratches and wear work to its favor. With at least half its runtime dedicated to its lengthy softcore workouts, Matinee Wives delivers what it sets out to do and is easily the better of the two films found in this release. While a rumored more explicit longer cut is thought to exist, it is honestly hard to imagine another release revisiting Matinee Wives.

The Executive’s Wives (1971) is an even more obscure production. Running a bit longer at the epic length of 67 minutes, this film looks even cheaper than Matinee Wives, even though the print Pop located is in better shape. Another title featuring Barbara Mills, Executive’s Wives is credited to the delightfully named Albert Dinglehoofer. I’ma guess that is a pseudonym, as this is the only film I could find credited to that name.

Mills isn’t the only notable figure appearing in Executive’s Wives. Suzanne Fields pops up as does Elizabeth Knowles, working as Lisa Grant. Overall the cast here is more appealing than in Matinee Wives but there just isn’t much for them to do. There’s a lot of dancing, swimming and lovemaking. That’s about it.

A real ‘California’ feeling film, Executive’s Wives feels barely there, like a collage of casually connected moments and overextended softcore scenes. As a narrative, it is hard to get a handle on, but Executive’s Wives has some memorable moments, mostly due to the film’s weirdly creative editing. Executive’s Wives almost feels like two shorter films thrown together, making it much more disjointed than Matinee Wives. Still, the film pretty much achieves the little it sets out to do.

Arriving just before the hardcore revolution took full-hold, both Matinee Wives and Executive’s Wives appear on the cusp of this very brave and much more explicit world. Neither are ‘good’ films but as historical documents they are priceless. This affordable new Racy Reels DVD collection will only be of any real interest to softcore enthusiasts, who should be more than satisfied adding two more harder-to-see films to their collections.

-Jeremy Richey, September 2026-