Both styles had things in common. They were opposed to any formerly established boundaries of taste and propriety and they were both shot in an utterly amateurish style. Is There Sex After Death?, shot and released prior to the peaks of popularity of either of these styles, shares both features in abundance.
Alan Abel and his wife Jeanne were the perpetrators of this film. "Perpetrator" is a good word when discussing Abel as he spent much of his career as a hoaxer, tricking the New York Times into printing his obituary and bypassing a ban placed on him by NBC's Tomorrow program by disguising himself as a character called Omar The Beggar. This movie was based on a play Abel had staged at a theater owned by Hugh Hefner and relied, as with so many of Abel's pieces, with an impersonation. Here he pretends to be Dr. Rogers, head of the Bureau of Sexological Investigation in New York City. In his Sexmobile the doctor sets out to interview people about sex in search of the answer to the title question.
Many ordinary people on the street give typically uninformed Candid Camera-style answers. However, the documentary quality of the whole enterprise becomes somewhat bent as Abel combines these interviews and other gathered at an actual nudist camp with faked ones featuring a supposed sexual magician's act and a panel discussion around a table on which a couple is making love. Although some might have been confused at the time as to which scenes were real and which faked, modern viewers are more likely to catch on due to the presence of Buck Henry as fellow-sexologist Dr. Manos. Henry, the screenwriter of The Graduate (1967) and frequent host in the 1970's on Saturday Night Live is a bit too well known now to pass as an expert on anything but comedy.
Is There Sex After Death? received a number of positive reviews at the time of its release but now is likely to seem overlong and obvious. The sexual content that once gained this movie an X-rating is far more comic than erotic although it is interesting to see male and female nudity before body sculpting exercise and silicone implants became commonplace. The most controversial things on display are sketches that strongly resemble bits in later Woody Allen movies. The Sex Olympics bit in this movie resembles the Howard Cosell coverage of Woody's wedding night in Bananas (1971), the opera scene about the removal of a chastity belt is slightly similar to the medieval scene at the beginning of Woody's Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex (1972) and the man-on-the-street sex-content interviews might have been an inspiration for a scene in Annie Hall (1977). Unlike the movie title's unanswerable query, the possibility of a Woody Allen connection may be the most interesting question posed by this movie.
For more information about Is There Sex After Death?, visit Image Entertainment. To order Is There Sex After Death?, go to TCM Shopping.
by Brian Cady
