Is There Sex After Death?

Is There Sex After Death? is a 1971 mockumentary and mondo film.

Plot

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".

Cast

Alan Abel as Dr. Rogers
Buck Henry as Dr. Louise Manos
Marshall Efron as Vince Domino
Holly Woodlawn as herself
Robert Downey Sr. as himself
Jim Moran as Dr. Elevenike
James Randi as Seance Medium
Earle Doud as Merkin
Larry Wolf as Sexbowl Announcer/Seance Spirit
Mink Stole as Dominatrix
James Dixon as Richard Nixon
Kathie Fitch as Clinic Patient

Reception

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." 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." Writer Mary Rita Kurycki of Democrat and Chronicle praised the satirical and comedic elements but wrote that parts of the film are a "bore." Similarly, Martin Malina of the Montreal Star wrote that it is "so outrageously funny that I cannot help but recommend it."

Controversy

On March 12, 1980, the ON TV pay channel aired the film on WXON 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 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.