Patti Rhodes and her spouse Fred Lincoln create a much better than usual feature with this well-made Chloe vehicle for VCA Pictures. Patti’s screenplay utilizes an ingenious premise, one that (reversing the usual parody/ripoff mode) would work quite well to create a fresh rom-com in Mainstream movies.
Title has a double meaning, both of which are well developed. Fred cast himself as a movie director, with a series starring Chloe in which he shoots a “hot” version for European audiences, just like they routinely did in the Hollywood of the 1950s and 1960s (Julie Newmar in “Mackenna’s Gold”). The wonderful Aria, who somewhat resembles Chloe here physically, is the Stand In who doubles for her in a hot jail scene humping Billy Glide.
But Chloe’s character has a Stand In notion of her own, convincing gal pal Shelby Stevens (acting here, rather than her more usual function as makeup artist) to go on a European vacation girls-only with her, while they find a temporary female replacement to stand in for her servicing the whims (including sexual, of course) of her producer husband Kyle Stone while she’s away.
Rhodes’s astute script has them trying to find a gal at a massage parlor first, choosing an Oriental one, with Chloe explaining to bewildered Shelby that this designation means a brothel, not that the masseuses are necessarily Oriental. Busty Angelica Sin balks at the proposed arrangement and tells them where to go, and again Patti has examined the various types of sex workers (Adult actresses, masseuses, prostitutes) in knowing fashion in her script.
They enlist instead a waitress who naturally is an aspiring actress, and Kelsey fills the bill. Again, what you have to do to get casting assignments to get ahead in Hollywood is the central theme Patti explores.
Chloe’s famed deep-throat abilities are well-displayed, and she is one of porn’s most adept artists at establishing and maintaining eye contact during her love scenes. No one working in Adult fills her niche, though petite and slim young beauties have become a dime a dozen of late.
One of the best Rhodes-Lincoln collaborations, “The Stand In” was surprisingly missing entirely from IMDb until I added it today, 17 years after it was released.
