Here’s some free advice: if you are going to make a documentary about a fraudulent boner-pill business, don’t make it as limp as The Great Erection Deception: The Stiff Nights Story. You can see, of course, why the makers were attracted to the subject. Anything about erections sells, and as an elevator pitch, it works brilliantly: a herbal equivalent of Viagra is discovered and pressed into lucrative service by a Mormon called Kelly Harvey and an elusive vegan called Erb Avore who are soon employing 200 people to pack capsules with “extract of golden speargrass” and taking home suitcases of cash as the product works and sales take off. Alas, however, it turns out that their supplier has been a little slapdash with the truth and “extract of golden speargrass” is actually sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra.
Unfortunately, this becomes a very slight story when the result of Kelly and Erb’s decision to keep selling their Stiff Nights pills regardless of this new knowledge – which would require the pill to be licensed and regulated and all that jazz – is that their deception is discovered by the FDA. Harvey goes to jail and serves his three-year sentence, while Erb disappears and the FDA (as well as the programme-makers) fails to track him down. The single death that a family has sued over is attributed not to Stiff Nights itself but a lookalike pill that came after Harvey’s time. Harvey is sorryish for what he’s done (“I never thought that I would be a criminal. That’s not who I was … I did make some bad decisions. I could have done things differently”). He seems content enough with the pizza delivery job he has now as a felon, and his loving family is still intact and seems to have forgiven him entirely. Save for the big “It was sildenafil all along!” reveal – which anyone with the slightest scepticism about the efficacy of herbal powders, let alone the raising of entire organs, probably saw coming – every potential narrative peak flattens into nothing.
The Great Erection Deception is padded out with material including an extensive history of Viagra, so we know the name of the active ingredient when we hear it – some footage of former porn star Buck Angel roaming round a sex industry expo, a herbal supplement user testifying that only some work – which are the filmic equivalent of strapping a flaccid penis into a splint. Even Kelly’s account of taking part in an apparent drug deal with a Mexican cartel – as any unlucky importer of ephedrine could wind up having to when a component of their diet supplement line is also a vital ingredient for cooking meth – is rendered flat and lifeless in the telling. Kelly remains throughout far more cookie-cutter Mormon than the charismatic con artist a camera needs.
There are signs here and there of what this documentary could have been. Jeff Abraham, CEO of what is called in my screener a “sexual wellness brand” and a Google search reveals is a brand specialising in “science-backed” peen products (their most successful apparently being a spray that retards premature ejaculation), is clearly champing at the bit to damn all herbal imposters and close down the whole trade in “gas station pills”. “It’s the new wild west!” he cries, though whether he is concerned for men’s safety or his market share we may never know.
Unlike here, where Viagra is available over the counter, there is still in the US a huge market for alternatives and racks of them are available wherever men are able to shop most privately. Whether the appeal is the promise of a “natural” rather than pharmaceutically induced erection or the difficulty of getting the little blue diamond through official healthcare providers is never made clear. The single (recreational, it seems) user they interview – Charles Mendoza III – says he does not want to risk an allergic reaction to a drug. Why he fears this and not the unregulated contents of a capsule purchased alongside a tankful of unleaded is not discussed – and the wider issue of what people understand by the term “natural” (or its cousins “organic”, “holistic” and similar Paltrovian vocabulary) is one of many avenues left unexplored. The significance of erectile dysfunction and the consequent price (literally and metaphorically) men are willing to pay in pursuit of its banishment is left equally unexamined. Instead, we have every penis pun ever crowbarred into a tortuous voiceover that tries desperately to add something to almost nothing. Though I will award one star for the “privates investigator” they hired to try and find Erb. That’s it.
The Great Erection Deception: The Stiff Nights Story is on ITVX.
