This is the story of the film that changed our culture and how our society looks at sex. Inside Deep Throat takes us behind the scenes of the making of the film,tells us how it became a huge blockbuster, and how it changed the lives of all of the people involved.

This is a very good primer to understanding Deep Throats impact on sex and censorship. This film does a very good job at laying out the story of the film and placing it into the context of the times. If you don't know what the big deal was when this film came out, you'll get a very good understanding of just why and how the film became so big that even small kids knew its name (though not its content). You'll also get a good over view of the battle to censor and to keep the film from public view, and an idea of how it shaped our world today.

I really did like this film a great deal. My one real reservation is that this film focuses a too much on the one film. Certainly the with Deep Throat in the title, I expected it to be mostly focused on that, but the censorship wars that were being fought at the same time involved other films and other media,for example the battle over George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words was happening at about the same time and was just as important.

But I'm nit picking. This is a good movie. Its a good starting point for learning about the film and the times that made our times what they are.

Inside Deep Throat delves into the fascinating background of the most profitable film in the history of cinema; it's a story that features political machination, cultural revolution, moral uproar, censorship, obscenity lawsuits, the women's liberation movement, claims of sexual abuse, and the mafia—but most importantly, a lady with complete control over her gag reflex.

Linda Lovelace (real name: Linda Susan Boreman) shot to fame in Deep Throat, the porn film that became a phenomenon by capitalising on its star's outstanding ability to perform fellatio; in the permissive climate of the early '70s, Deep Throat became the first blue movie to be embraced by the middle-classes, briefly making it chic to go see a sex flick. Unfortunately, for the people involved in the making of the film, not everyone was so open-minded: the Moral Majority (i.e., religious right) were soon up in arms and launched a crusade against the film with the full backing of the current administration, led by that beacon of morality, Richard Nixon.

Interviews with the film's cast and crew, including it's male star Harry Reems and director Gerard Damiano, shed a lot of light on the movie, and opinions are also given by such luminaries as Al Goldstein, Dr. Ruth, Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, John Waters, Wes Craven, Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal; however, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the whole Deep Throat affair—Lovelace joining the feminist anti-porn movement and subsequently revealing that she was forced to take part in the film against her wishes by her controlling and violent husband—is only briefly touched upon.

Whether or not Linda was really a victim of abuse, or merely a puppet of feminist activists, is still the subject of much conjecture, and with the actress having died as the result of a car crash in 2002, we shall probably never know for certain; but watching Linda enthusiastically performing her signature move (this documentary shows snippets of the notorious act),listening to her proudly promoting the movie in interviews, and knowing of her intent to return to the world of porn, I do find her claim of unwilling participation rather hard to swallow (snigger, snigger, fnar, fnar!).

6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

Deep Throat is a movie that had the sort of impact on porn that Night of the Living Dead had on zombie movies. It wasn't the first, and it may not be the best, but it had the biggest impact on its specific form and style. The irony for Deep Throat, and not the same for Night of the Living Dead, however, is that not that many people who watch porno movies today have even seen it. Perhaps since it is, after all of the hoopla and trials and tribulations, a pornographic movie, it can't be looked at as real "art" or even a guilty pleasure of bad-movie proportions. It's a "dirty movie" and it will stay that way, almost in spite of what its director Gerard Damiano has in mind for its potential for porn films to cross over into Hollywood films (after the fact, of course, of it being the monolithic success it was).

This documentary takes a look at the making of the film, where its director and star Linda Lovelace and not-ready-for-primetime co-star Harry Reems somehow came together from various places to make a movie with an inspired/absurd premise: the clitoris is not above the vagina but inside the throat, and of course wackiness ensues. We see some clips of the movie- some being that even as an NC-17 rated documentary it can only show so much of the actual footage from Deep Throat- including that climactic finish (ho-ho) where rocket-ships are sliced into the footage of Lovelace's orgasm from her unusual predicament. The story of the making of the movie is interesting in and of itself, but that's not really the focus of the filmmakers, or what its primarily concerned with as far as I could tell.

What Inside Deep Throat posits is the film's significance and importance in the scope of American culture and American politics, specifically the pornography and obscenity laws put into place at first by Richard Nixon with his Supereme Court appointees, and later with Regan's own report in 1986 with the commission in porn (non-scientific findings). There's much interest to find, and that the filmmakers take, in formulating this film as part of the battleground, and why not - it was the Titanic of its time, and a profit-making enterprise that was run by the mob! We see how porn movies at the time were an 'independent' thing, but only by a basis of a few guys putting up money with shady ties and backgrounds.

This also makes up for the best section of the film, where Deep Throat becomes the target of censors (first in New York, with a judge who didn't even know what a clitoris was, then across the country),and then the FBI who track down a whole conspiracy of money from the movie being "collected" by spotters and trackers. Did it even make $600 million? Who knows, maybe more, maybe less. But this finally leads to a trial of Harry Reems- someone who only acted in the film but didn't have immunity- and had to stand trial on obscenity charges. The outcome of the trial ended up being ironic for his fate: no jail time, a dismissal of the charges, but a forever tarnished career.

If the film works best as a saga of Deep Throat and the story of porn in America since then, it doesn't work quite as well in chronicling the fates of its players after Deep Throat's release. Some of the interviews the players in this story are fascinating; my favorite was the distributor, now an old man, who during the interview is interrupted by his wife who is nervous about him giving any information on what is now a legal matter, even, as noted, more than thirty years after the fact. What's murky is the information with Lovelace, her involvement in the feminist movement, and Reems' troubles with drugs/alcohol, and what ever happened with Damiano's own career. Perhaps that could make a documentary in and of itself, specifically for Lovelace who was a walking contradiction (or, as Damiano says, just needed to be led). But as it is, Inside Deep Throat is a thoughtful movie on a "sick" profession, and an iconic movie, for better or worse. It makes one curious to just see the movie - a movie Damiano once said isn't very good.