VOICES OF DESIRE
Color, 1972, 71 mins. 46 secs.
Directed by Chuck Vincent
Starring Sandra Peabody, Marlene Willoughby, Roger Caine, David Kirk, Guy Thomas

FLY NOW, PAY LATER
B&W, 1969, 65 mins. 6 secs.
Directed by B.H. Dial
Starring Charlotte Rouse, George Winters, Simone Renard, Cherie Winters, Shep Wild
AGFA / Something Weird (Blu-ray) (US R0 HD), Something Weird (DVD-R)

The line between horror and sexploitation could get so blurry when it came to roughies you couldn't eventually tell the difference, and to prove that you need to look no further than a 2026 Blu-ray double bill from the reprobates at AGFA and Something Weird. Both shot in New York City within a couple of years of each other, Voices of Desire and Fly Now, Pay Later are delirious exercises in sexual fantasy and terror involving secret underground sects and depraved East Coast practices. Both were released on VHS by Something Weird ages ago and made their way to DVD-R, but now they've been preserved in HD from what appear to be the last 35mm prints in existence.

The primarily selling points of the first film are its star, Sandra Peabody, who made a powerful impression as the ill-fated Mari in Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left, and the fact that this is the debut film and only horror production for Chuck Vincent, who later became a legendary hardcore director (Roomates, etc.) when he wasn't turning out cable TV classics like C.O.D., Preppies, Hollywood Hot Tubs, and Warrior Queen. Here Peabody (a.k.a. Sandra Cassell or as she's credited here, Liyda Cassell) is Anna, a distressed young woman running around Manhattan in a panic. She ends up at the office of a cop, Detective Holland (Kirk, a.k.a. Eric Stanhope and a bunch of other names), to recount how she's being constantly tormented by Voices of Desire. At first these spooky voices just make her get naked and roll around with fruit on the bed to classical music, but things escalate when they lure her to a creepy dark house where sex cult members (including XXX regulars Roger Caine and the later infamous Gus Thomas) drug her with wine and have an orgy. Of course, it quickly transpires that the cultists have something more homicidal in mind and drive anyone who tries to leave their kinky clutches to an early demise.

The title of the film might lead you to expect a standard softcore film, and while this does pour on multiple enthusiastic encounters with most of the cast members (including Marlene Willoughby for a little diabolical same-sex diddling), the tone is too creepy and ultimately fatalistic to imagine anyone getting heated up watching it outside of Peabody's first curtain raiser sequence. The history of New York XXX has a surprising number of major directors who tried out horror, such as Gerard Damiano's Legacy of Satan and Armand Weston's The Nesting, but you can sense the affinity for the genre in the rest of their work. Vincent seems an odd one to start off in this direction, but he manages to wring some good disorienting atmosphere out of the extensive location work and gets a strong performance from Peabody (who would deny appearing in her multiple sexploitation films which also include Massage Parlor Murders and Teenage Hitchhikers). One of those orphaned films from a one-off distributor, Voices of Desire has barely survived today as that sole faded, battered print, which is exactly what we've had on home video all these years. The Blu-ray is matted to 1.85:1 in its theatrical aspect ratio versus the full frame predecessors, and otherwise any flaws baked into the source are inevitable.

An obligatory title for any hip mom and pop video store with a few Something Weird tapes on the shelves well into the late '90s, Fly Now, Pay Later is a crazy late entry in the black-and-white NYC roughie game that will appeal particularly to fans of Michael and Roberta Findlay. They might not have been behind the camera, but the attitude is very similar here with a dizzy mixture of sexploitation, sadism, and artiness, all of which can be found in the dreamy pre-credit sequence with our main character, stewardess Sally (Cybelle), having a sexual fantasy in a giant bed of snowy-looking sand. Rather unwisely, Sally is acting as a drug mule moving a new designer narcotic from Morocco to the Big Apple, but when she ends up turned into human trafficking fodder in a basement at the mercy of a whip-wielding dominatrix (the amazing Renard) on her latest trip, it's up to her coworker Joan (Winters) and cop Richard (Wilson) to come to her rescue. Wildly unpredictable and featuring a memorable shock ending, this is a prime representation of what made Something Weird so appealing back in the day when you could stumble blindly into a unique, scuzzy treat like this without any warning. Again the source here is the sole extant print, and it's in really good shape and looks nice here in a 1.66:1 scan. Both films have DTS-HD MA 2.0 English mono tracks with optional English SDH subtitles.

In the extras department, both members of The Sin Syndicate podcast are here but in different capacities. Casey Scott provides an excellent, thorough commentary for Voices of Desire pointing out the key NYC locations and delivering the details about Vincent, Peabody, Thomas, and the IDs of plenty of other players you'll recognize from legit and hardcore films throughout the decade. Gentry Austin provides a very thorough essay about Fly Now, Pay Later in the booklet enclosed with the disc, laying out the known facts about the mostly obscure players and creators while covering the end of the roughie scene and the details of distributor Cinex. The inclusion of the short Driving Miss Daisy Crazy (36m10s) is appropriate since it involves a woman seeing a shrink about her horrific monster-masked nocturnal experiences. Of course, it's all part of a larger plot to gaslight her through sexual terrorism with a twist at the end. Previously seen on the Something Weird / Image DVD of Monster A Go-Go / Psyched by the 4-D Witch, this black-and-white late '60s oddity is a condensed version of the 1969 roughie After the Ball Was Over, which was out on VHS from Something Weird decades ago and would be great to have on a Blu-ray release of its own someday. Then Strange Sex Dreams (5m25s) is a softcore drug scare short with a narrator warning you about the perils of "drink and dope" which can cause visions of topless women writhing around on top of a random guy or massages with gropey lesbians. Also seen on Something Weird's Shameless Shorts! Volume 4, it's obviously something that should be shown in finer classrooms everywhere. Finally, Maniac Hospital (11m43s) is another "shameless short" staple previously on the Doctor Gore DVD, here showing a couple making out on a bed in different black-and-white and color scenarios with the latter turning into a trippy psycho horror story. This is the only one with a SWV watermark on it, and all three look fine. Also included are a "Horrotic Trailer Reel" (19m34s) featuring In Hot Blood, Banned, Sock It To Me Baby, Fluctuations, Chained Girls, and Love in a 4 Letter World, and a 1m42s photo gallery with publicity material for both films.

Reviewed on June 16, 2026