| Is There Sex After Death? | |
| Director: | Alan Abel Jeanne Abel |
| Producer: | Alan Abel Jeanne Abel Michael Rothschild |
| Starring: | Buck Henry Robert Downey, Sr. Marshall Efron Holly Woodlawn Jim Moran Earle Doud Larry Wolf |
| Cinematography: | Arthur Albert Gerald Cotts |
| Editing: | Jeanne Abel |
| Runtime: | 102 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
Is There Sex After Death? is a 1971 mockumentary and mondo film.
Driving through New York City in his Sexmobile, Dr. Harrison Rogers of the Bureau of Sexological Investigation searches out luminary figures in the world of sex. According to the movie, the answer to the title question is: "No, only affection".
Film critic Vincent Canby of The New York Times praised the film: "The movie, is critically speaking, anarchic, superficially dirty, often crude, and so exuberant that it sometimes doesn't know when to stop. It is also, more than half of the time, very, very funny."[1] In a positive review for San Antonio Express-News, Ron White highlights the comedy, writing that the film "is funny for true comedic reasons—satire, the juxtaposition of the incongruous, and dead-pan treatments of the ridiculous."[2] Writer Mary Rita Kurycki of Democrat and Chronicle praised the satirical and comedic elements but wrote that parts of the film are a "bore."[3] Similarly, Martin Malina of the Montreal Star wrote that it is "so outrageously funny that I cannot help but recommend it."[4]
On March 12, 1980, the ON TV pay channel aired the film on WXON (channel 20, now WMYD) in Detroit. It was scheduled to air again ten days later, but it did not. WXON station manager Aben Johnson, who was alerted to the film's content (including sex and nudity) by a station employee during its original airing, decided against showing it again, substituting Saturday Night Fever instead. ON TV's policy at the time forbade showing any films with an X rating, for adults only; Is There Sex After Death? was apparently not given a rating by the Motion Picture Association of America at all until 1975, when it was granted an 'R' certificate, making the movie seemingly within ON's standards. Still, WXON never showed the film again on its ON TV affiliate, which closed in 1983.[5]