It doesn’t matter how many times you see the same story repeated in genre movies, as long as there’s a little stylistic or thematic novelty added to the template.  I’ve seen plenty of characters purchase possessed antique mirrors that warp their perception of reality and perception of their selves, mostly in cheaply produced horror pictures like Oculus, Mirror Mirror, and The Evil Within.  I’ve never seen that story adapted into a feature length Golden Age porno before, though, which is the novelty that the 1981 film Pandora’s Mirror brings to the template.  Vintage porno star Veronica Hart stars as the titular Pandora, who is mesmerized by an “enchanted” (i.e., cursed) mirror that she finds in the back of a dusty antique shop.  No one in the film ever refers to her by “Dora” or “Dorie” or any other nickname; it’s “Pandora” every time in case anyone in the audience loses track of the allusion.  Instead of seeing a demonic presence or an evil reflection of herself in the mirror like in most of these stories, Pandora’s mirror allows her to watch the sexual adventures of its previous owners over the past couple centuries, hypnotizing her in an erotic trance.  Obviously, that set-up is mostly just an excuse to stage hardcore sex scenes in various period costumes, but it also plays directly into one of my favorite genre tropes: the doomed protagonist who becomes obsessed with something that’s obviously going to kill them, but they keep at it anyway because it makes them horny.  The fact that the object of obsession is a magical mirror in this case is only the icing on the erotic novelty cake.

The only thing you need to know about Pandora is that her erotic obsession with her mirror is out of character and a cause for concern among her uptight yuppie social circle.  The only thing you need to know about the mirror is that its owner is a seemingly immortal Dan Ackroyd type (Frederick Foster), who appears in every vignette but never has sex on camera; he’s only around to ominously answer questions like “How long have you been here?” with “I have always been here.”  He does helpfully provide the backstory of the mirror’s enchantment, explaining that it was made from the wood of an oak tree that was struck by lightning, which is apparently where all enchanted lumber comes from.  For any information on why the mirror is evil, we just have to draw our conclusions from the spooky synth score and the fact that Pandora is immediately addicted to gazing into its enchanted glass.  There’s an interesting subversion there in how an object that’s typically associated with self-obsession and vanity is instead a voyeuristic window into the sex lives of others, but it all comes around by the time Pandora sees her own sexual fantasy reflected in cursed object (a threeway with the two gym bros who lift weights on the rooftop across the street from her apartment).  This is largely a story about a woman’s masturbatory fantasies taking over her waking life until all she can or wants to do is stare into the sex mirror, to the point where she’s literally consumed by it. 

If there’s anything especially notable about the sex here, it’s that every period-piece fantasy depicted is a group activity.  We start with a Revolutionary War foursome, ramp up to an Old Hollywood poolside fivesome, ease back into a 1970s Broadway foursome, and conclude with a full-on S&M dive bar orgy (at NYC’s infamous Hellfire Club, reigned over here by a tiara-crowned Annie Sprinkle).  The only one-on-one coupling occurs in a go-nowhere side plot in which Pandora’s boyfriend (Jamie Gillis) cheats with her conniving frenemy (Sandy Hillman) after being abandoned for too long as she stares into the mirror.  Situationally, the sexual scenarios that appear in the mirror are pretty hot, especially as they play with the power dynamics of timid newcomers being seduced into deep-end group sex hedonism.  In practice, the action can be a little too impractical & inhuman to maintain that erotic tension, though, especially since every single act of cunnilingues & analingus (and there are plenty) includes way more biting and random tongue flittering than direct, effectual licking.  Worse yet, the casting-couch Broadway audition segment requires a performer to masturbate with the world’s least convincing dildo: a hollow, plastic toy seemingly cut in half with scissors, so that it collapses any time it’s squeezed.  It would be beside the point to knock the film for not properly cropping out the shotgun mics & stage lights that creep into the frame during those sex scenes, but I don’t think it’s out of line to say the sex itself could’ve been a little more sincerely steamy.

Overall, this is a much classier picture than the only other title I know from director Shaun Costello (credited here as Warren Evans): the infamous 1970s enema-kink geek show Water Power (credited there as Helmuth Richler).  The gauzy soap-opera cinematography, ambient synth soundtrack, and urban fairy tale premise all add to its mystique as one of the eerier outliers of narrative pornography’s Golden Age, at least in the wraparound story that connects the less satisfying tangents of cosplay group sex.  It’s the sex that makes the picture an outlier in the larger canon of haunted mirror movies, though, so it almost doesn’t matter that none of the performers can seem to go down on each other without using every tooth in their jaw, or that Costello has seemingly never seen a functional dildo before.  Just the mere fact that they’re fucking on camera at all is enough.

-Brandon Ledet