Believe it or not, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is honoring ’60s and ’70s softcore maestro Radley Metzger (now 85 years old) with a seven-day tribute called “This Is Softcore: The Art Cinema Erotica of Radley Metzger” (8.7 thru 8.13). This is yet another expression of the high-falutin’ dweeb-critic tendency to find artistic merit in once-denigrated (or at least looked down upon) exploitation films. But anyone who says Metzger was a respectable auteur is delusional. The below trailer for Carmen Baby tells you he wasn’t very talented. Metzger was certainly into terrible acting, swanky production design, way-too-bright lighting and horrible music choices. None of the actors ever seemed to actually “do it” in a Metzger film — they just kind of rolled around and gasped and moaned without getting too gymnastic or creative. I don’t recall ever seeing genitalia or pubic hair even, but I could be wrong. Next to no oral action. Nobody ever fingered anyone or gave anyone a handjob. And the actors never heard of Hershey bars. Metzger’s was a very weird world. Metzger films are cool for their sets and outdoor locations — I’ll give them that. He obviously tried hard to class up the softporn genre, but it was still the softporn genre.