(https://i.imgur.com/PajwEnQ.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/VrB7KzA.png)
how am i to know the differences between these movies, what they can and cannot offer me, and how they are or are not comparable to other movies, when there is not an avenue for discussion?
at the video store in my country hometown the adult films lived behind a curtain. i do not think that it is reasonable to exclude these movies from critical discussion, even if they are not made for critical discussion. they are made regardless, and the law of probability says some will be bad, and the law of probability says some will be good. i for one one would like to hear a critical analysis of the accomplishments of fuck films, especially if tiny moments of unnoticed magic exist, which is likely
this thread was previously titled Opinion: Letterboxd should allow pornography
i want to mention that the people making the assertions via Vinegar use quotation marks around "pornography" and "adult" films. there's no topic that so thoroughly complicates a rational perspective as sex, which Scorsese has mentioned another way, in relation to it as the last frontier in cinema
it's wild to me, in a vivid way, very wild, to me, how at a certain point pornography was on the threshold of mainstream, but once it didn't make it it disappeared from the conversation
Quote from: jenkins on July 29, 2020, 01:24:46 AM
it's wild to me, in a vivid way, very wild, to me, how at a certain point pornography was on the threshold of mainstream, but once it didn't make it it disappeared from the conversation
On that same page of cultural sterilization, it's easy to point toward the erotic thriller, which had its prime during the ascension of mainstream porn. What used to be a VFX-less adult genre in cinema seems to have slinked into the Eros-lite of premium cable. Starz' The Girlfriend Experience season 2 seems to me more radical than any American motion picture has attempted in a while.
Do you know why Tumblr banned porn? It seemed to be the only reason explaining why people were on that website!
(https://i.imgur.com/ACo71VV.jpg)
the impetus here is simp: hardcore pornography is an unexplored territory for me, and I am a cinephile after all
you know the joke is on me: I can talk about werewolves and guns and knives and time travel etc, but I can't talk about sex movies. so I want to fix that
this is an endeavor of mine
I began with Joe Sarno's Vibrations (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062440/), which I spoke of above. Vibrations is not a hardcore movie though, and Sarno wasn't even a fan hardcore movies, (he directed the r-rated Deep Throat Part II (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069957/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_80)btw)
therefore Justine: 'A Matter of Innocence' (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0125296/) was my first proper adult entry into hardcore films. like Justine, I was a virgin
I was worried about this: would the sex be too much for me to handle? would I end up whipping out my dick?
let us backtrack and remind ourselves: the golden age of porn was pre-vhs, it's a topic in boogie nights written/directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000759/), and the scenario is these are movies with sex in them, made to be shown in a movie theater
thankfully by the end of Justine I did not encounter a scenario in which I was unable to control myself. learning about sex scene closeups is a new experience for me, but it doesn't panic my penis
it is very much a normal movie with pretty terrible acting and a narrative so half-assed you wouldn't call it a first draft so much as an unfinished screenplay outlined with extrapolative dialogue
I fucking loved it, I'm so excited, and I didn't order enough of these
there's a scene where Justine plays a flute while her cousin has a threesome with two friends after smoking Colombian pot and while listening to rock music--Justine doesn't do that stuff because she's been in a boarding school with strict regulations, except her hermit father just died so she was sent to live with her uncle. the end credits scroll as she loses her virginity to her uncle. it happens after they spend the day together in the city, ride horses, and really begin to connect with each other in a beautiful human way
this fucking imdb review of the movie is my new life coach
QuoteLate carnal critic and "acclaimed adult filmmaker" Jim Holliday was fond of describing JUSTINE as "a poor man's SCENT OF HEATHER" and, as usually, he was not altogether wrong in his assessment. Released hot on the heels of Bill Milling's relatively lavish period epic, the similarities between the two are a bit too obvious as to be considered entirely coincidental. This variation from the reliable Roberta Findlay (who ground them out hard 'n' fast yet still maintained an impressive amount of quality, as evidenced by genre classics such as ANGEL #9 and THE TIFFANY MINX) may be set in the present day but still operates on a Mills & Boon level of convent-bred virgins and star-crossed lovers.
Naive Justine (surprisingly well-played by underrated Hillary Summers, one of very few adult actresses able to project innocence without coming across like a retard) bids her goodbye to the nuns to go and live with her recently deceased dad's estranged brother Steven, a convincing performance by habitual second banana Ashley Moore in what probably constitutes his finest work next to his memorable turn in Findlay's PLAYGIRL. Disillusioned since his faithless wife (the always interesting Linda Vale) left him, Uncle Steven moves from one female honey pot to the next with only equally cynical mistress Vanessa Del Rio (looking absolutely resplendent by the way) for semi-constant companionship. A lengthy sexual episode finds him picking up a pair of inebriated stewardesses (lookalikes Merle Michaels and Christie Ford) and taking them to a live sex show featuring the likes of Beth Anna and Christine DeShaffer. The man's emotional aloofness is hard on his son (one shot Andy Hayes) who seeks solace with the "wrong kind" of friends, pioneering punkette Robin Sane (Carter Stevens' saucy secretary in Howard Winters' exceptional PLATINUM PARADISE) and handsome Rick Iverson (star of THE LOVE-IN ARRANGEMENT), who definitely provide the right kind of sex with a sizzling double penetration of the rarest kind, i.e. two poles in a single hole ! There's also a slow-witted if perpetually randy gardener (Dave Ruby, the Al Bundy of porn) who's usually kept out of trouble by the household's scheming maid Marlene Monroe, the wicked stepmother from Fred Lincoln's SERENA, and they share one of the hottest scenes in the movie. Fending off the advances of all available men, Justine naturally longs for the one who seems least interested, Uncle Steven.
Pulling out all the stops production-wise, as befitting a movie from the Golden Age mid-section, JUSTINE rises above occasional narrative sluggishness with glowing cinematography by Findlay herself, assuming the capacity under her "Anna Riva" name from the sexploitation days, splicing in footage from Paris landmarks like the Arch of Triumph from stock for additional gloss. Equally befitting, there also happens to be a syrupy title song, of course. The acting, when called for, is generally competent though the delectable Del Rio is rather unceremoniously discarded after her scalding bathroom bit with Moore. No matter how hard she tries, simpering Summers – the fault lies with the writing, not her acting – can't make up for the untimely departure of this magnificent lady from progressively pathetic proceedings.
Wonder if you'd enjoy reading this:
https://www.therialtoreport.com/2018/03/04/justine/
totally
Now do The Fashionistas.
bucket listing it. 500k those sales and the runtime. my mymymy. i have this stack from vinegar and I was worried it'd be too much but now I don't think it's enough
a letterboxd review of It's Called Murder, Baby (https://letterboxd.com/film/its-called-murder-baby-1983/), which is an r rated version of the x rated Dixie Ray, Hollywood Star
QuoteThird time's the charm. (Though, in truth, I've only watched it twice.)
I'm glad I watched the R-rated cut — IT'S CALLED MURDER, BABY — first. It proved to me once and for all that adult film director Anthony Spinelli, along with his cast and crew of adult film industry regulars, were eminently capable of making compelling, entertaining, thought-provoking, narratively challenging NON-adult cinema.
I already knew this, having watched both the adult and non-adult films of Roberta Findlay, Roger Watkins, Jean Rollin, etc., but seeing IT'S CALLED MURDER, BABY just put that myth (that adult films cannot also be *real* cinema) the rest of the way to bed.
As a retro-noir made in 1983, then, this R-rated cut trades not in explicit sex but complex and genre-speicifc character development. All the while effectively hitting every noir beat a 1980s-era cinephile would expect in a retro-neo-reboot version of the genre.
*And* doing all of that with a level of production value that, frankly, I can't believe they could afford (seriously, an entire cast's worth of expensive-looking, period-specific, smartly tailored clothes; one memorable noir location after another; etc.).
So, having tonight watched the X-rated cut — DIXIE RAY, HOLLYWOOD STAR — I can say a couple things:
1. It's disappointing to see that, in order to make room for the requisite (and extended) X scenes, much of the complex (and extended) character development, so satisfying as part of the R, has been cut.
In some cases they've jettisoned whole scenes — when our stud detective first meets Dixie Ray at her Hollywood estate, following her from the tennis courts to one of her many parlors, for example; or when our detective has a heartfelt lunchtime chat with his Armenian father figure.
In other cases, we get alt versions of the same scenes, re-shot to drop the character interaction and insert the sexual. It's very much like, say, watching a Paul Naschy werewolf movie that was released in both "clothed" and "unclothed" versions.
Here it's more jarring, though, and a more extreme version of that common practice (common in the 70s at least, in order to get around censors in places like Spain). It feels so extreme that it almost seems these are, literally, two parallel but different movies. Existing either as different decision trees in the same Choose Your Own Adventure noir, or as examples of what the movie looks like in two different timelines.
2. One reason that losing all of that character development hurts is because it also erases some of the most interesting narrative choices in the R cut.
For example: John Leslie, who plays our stud detective. He spends his time in the movie wearing a perpetual, self-assured smirk, positively radiating his alpha-underdog confidence** (I.e., he knows in his heart of hearts his place in the universe — that he is, absolutely, the universal stud.)
Yet, the R-rated cut neuters his status as such. Though he's repeatedly set up to sleep with the lead female characters — more than once being openly propositioned — he always turns them down with some excuse. Not enough time now, there'll be time for that later, I've got a case to solve now, etc.
It causes cognitive dissonance not only because the history of noir is full of smirking stud detectives whose animal magnetism draws all female characters into their sexual orbit, but because, if you go into the R knowing it's a cut version of the X, you *expect* the stud detective to be doing a lot of sleeping around.
Instead, his excuses come off as lame and half-assed, so much so that they begin to seem like some sort of "beard," hiding the real, much more complicated reason for his refusals. Maybe his stud card's been punched one too many times. Maybe he's impotent, emotionally dead, grief-stricken or stopped up with guilt over some past case? Maybe he's got a terminal disease — maybe he regrets sleeping with every female client (not to mention: his personal secretaries) up till then, who knows?
Whatever it is, in his repeated refusal, we start to wonder not only about him, but whether the same "rot" runs through the rest of the cast, the whole movie business, this whole stinkin' town. It's one of the most interesting aspects of the R cut, completely lost on the X, where he (and ad nauseam!) screws every single woman in the picture as many times as he can.
3. When Golden Age Hollywood started adapting the noirs of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and Cornell Woolrich and Fredric Brown, the Hays Code required them to water down the content significantly. All of the taboo dialogue and drug use and assortment of "immoral" sexual acts — mostly free to live and breathe on the printed, pulp page — had to be cut completely, or coded so obliquely that it was impossible to guess their original form.
The X cut here, then, feels like an extreme swing in the other direction. Taking every implied sexual and taboo kink and not stopping till it's on the screen explicit as can be. Taking all the whispered obscenities of that legendary Hollywood Babylon and writing them large. Again, it's like looking at the movie (and the whole history of film noir) in another timeline.
So, to sum up, please Letterboxd please please please:
Get off your Puritan pot and let these X films — many of which already exist in TMBd! — into your database. There are respected home video companies dedicating their lives to nothing but preserving, restoring, and curating these films. The least you can do as a "global social network for grass-roots film discussion and discovery" is to support that film preservation, not censor it.
(Plus you already have plenty of hardcore films in your database — see, for instance, Jess Franco's entries.)
Konrad Wardh
May 2020
Konrad Wardh, Sol_Madrid (https://letterboxd.com/sol_madrid/), is a goldmine for me. this list of favorite movies (https://letterboxd.com/sol_madrid/list/75-films-i-wouldnt-be-without-my-all-time/) can help you see Sol_Madrid as a sibling
i was reading Sol_Madrid's rundown on Joe Sarno, and the Abigail Leslie Is Back In Town section has this other great quote
Quote2. How so many of the tropes, images, moves, tics, plot points etc. of "explicit" movies have been so completely absorbed by mainstream film. So completely and — most often — without much comment or anybody really noticing at all.
I've been tracking down as many sexploitation classics as possible this year and I've lost count of the reviews that say something along the lines of "mostly tame by today's standards" ... another reason why LB's continued, inconsistent, haphazard refusal to allow a curated version of explicit adult films in from where they already exist in TMDb is so silly, provincial, old-fashioned, small-minded. Much of what was done in erotica and porn in the 60s, 70s, and 80s exists, without apology now, in "mainstream" movies. Get over it already and let us log what we watch.
Fred Halsted (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0357077/)
QuoteCommitted suicide, overdosed on sleeping pills after the death of his lover, Joey Yale. From his suicide note, "I had a good life...I've had looks, a body, money, success and artistic triumphs. I've had the love of my life. I see no reason to go on."
we've seen the documentary that borrows the title, but I need to see the original LA Plays Itself (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0249670/)
QuoteThe film opens on a shot of the "Los Angeles City Limits" sign. It then cuts to Fred Halsted taking a walk in the forest and coming upon a man sunning himself in the nude. They briefly talk and end up having passionate sex in the wilderness only to be interrupted by bulldozers destroying the wildlife area in order to build a new suburb. The film suddenly switches to inner city Los Angeles as Halsted and a man from Texas discuss in voice over the problems with modern society and the dishonesty of most people. This is inter-cut with shots of hustlers, bums, vagrants, porn theaters and shops, as well as footage of a man (presumably the Texan) being brutally tortured by Halsted. Eventually the man is bound and left helpless in a closet, a symbol of the violent and trapping nature of Los Angeles. The film ends on shots of newspapers saying that a young man was found dead after being tortured.
QuoteAt the film's screening, Salvador Dalí was reportedly quoted as saying, "new information for me".
Fred Halsted is dope (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Halsted)
QuoteHis films Sex Garage and L.A. Plays Itself are the only gay pornographic movies in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
imagine: you're in MoMA but letterboxd is afraid of you
QuoteHalsted was a sex radical. He believed that the erotic is transgressive and sacramental, that it is inherently violent and involves acts of violation. "Sex is not 'coming,' that is superficial sex," he once explained. "Mine is personal cinema. I don't fuck to get my rocks off. In the best scenes I've ever had, I haven't come. I am not interesting in coming. ... I am interested in getting my head off, my emotions off."
Andy Milligan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Milligan) I could go on and on about too
QuoteIn spite of the fact that he directed a number of movies that have become cult favorites with horror movie buffs, he died in abject poverty in 1991 from AIDS and was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave in Los Angeles, California.
QuoteJean-Pierre Bouyxou described Milligan as "halfway between Warhol and Ed Wood,"
it's been wildly fun getting into adult cinema. now i can tell you for sure that letterboxd pisses off lots of people when it comes to this topic. here's the topic in their feedback forum, Jan 24 2015 (http://feedback.letterboxd.com/forums/136771-general/suggestions/7004612-new-system-for-handling-films-marked-as-adult)
there are many specific titles in mind, too (https://letterboxd.com/digg/list/the-porno-chic-era-a-selection-of-classic/), it's not just a vague problem
QuoteHi There! Is something that can be done about this? I am writing a thesis on the significance of adult film in the 1970s, with a focus on the rise of animated pornography. I can understand that some of these titles would be available, but to disregard the historical significance of films such as Deep Throat, Cafe Flesh or the Sinful Dwarf is baffling. They have been studied by film academics for decades, books have been written about them, acclaimed critics have reviewed them, and they had an immense influence in Cult/exploitation cinema if not even the mainstream in some cases. At least the "porn chic" golden era of the 1970s of pornography should be included, since well, it is an unquestionable part of the history of cinema. Not to mention that many sexploitation films, pink films, and French extreme films on letterboxd blur the lines between soft-core and hard-core all the time. To just exclude them all together seems extreme. Surely should be a case by case situation.
QuoteAdd me to the list of people begging for adult content. Hide it behind a patreon membership, make a "see adult content" check box, do what you have to do but by ignoring all adult films, you're ignoring a massive part of film history.
This guy makes it sound not possible and explains why:
QuoteI'm gonna reedit and repost my summary from 2018 as literally nothing has changed since then. Most of the new comments since 2018 all promote the "simplest" or "easiest" solution and, as a developer (entirely unaffiliated with Letterboxd), these solutions and suggestions are anything but.
Let's assume the following, as good faith:
1. Some Letterboxd users want to track adult films.
2. Adult films are divisive and many feel disgusted by them.
3. From a historical perspective, any film of any genre can be important.
4. Creating a singular list of "important films" of any genre is impossible.
5. The Letterboxd team is small and busy and has other priorities.
Then, to clarify my role in this:
* I'm a user of Letterboxd. I, too, want to track adult films.
* I'm a developer who has written software and books about software for 25+ yrs.
* I literally own every Vinegar Syndrome release.
* I am not a lawyer.
And, finally, to reiterate "how it works right now":
* Letterboxd DOES NOT decide what films are adult or not.
* Instead, Letterboxd (LB) uses the crowd-sourced data from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
* Anyone can set, and unset, an "is adult" flag on a film in TMDB.
* If an adult film is listed in LB, it's because the data is inaccurate in TMDB.
* If the TMDB data is corrected, the entry is removed from the public LB.
* If you logged or reviewed the film in LB, your data remains in your export.
* The last official response on this issue was back in 2018.
There have been two primary suggestions on how to "fix this":
1.
Remove the "adult film" filter entirely. From (my) developer's perspective, this seems the easiest programmatic solution because it's "just" a matter of removing the "is this film flagged as adult in TMDB?" check within the importer and updaters. It sounds soOoOO easy that, why, jeez, it must be SUPAH simple to accomplish for such a "small and busy" team like Letterboxd. However, it opens Letterboxd up to a huge can of worms when it comes to search engines and content filters (marking Letterboxd as an adult site because it has adult film covers or pornographic text across hundreds of pages), when it comes to parents and children (nudity in the movie posters, salacious text in the descriptions), and when it comes to the fervency of the "adult films are the devil's work" crowd (consider the obsessive details of IMDB's "parents guide" for a film, which is "acceptable" in its salacious details because we're "saving the children" dontchaknow). Add in differing definitions of adult content and child protection laws depending on where you live, and this "simple solution" would likely cost Letterboxd MORE time, MORE hassle, and MORE money (legal fees, a wider audience of angry users no longer subbing, etc.). It's just not tenable.
2.
The other solution seems the safest from a user experience perspective: adding an "I want to see adult content" flag to a user's profile. However, from (again, my) developer's perspective, this is also the most costly to implement. Nearly every single "view" (not "page") on the site would need to be modified to support this flag. It's not just a matter of "me" wanting to add adult content to my lists, but also of "you" viewing my profile and feeds. It'd require a rewrite of the caching engines of the site to support adult vs. non-adult preferences. It affects everything at the stupidest level of detail: should the "You've watched 17 of 34" films statistic on a list count adult content? Should it show "17 of 34" for one user and "17 of 26" to another? Or some horrible amalgamation of "17 of 26 (8 adult films hidden)"? What about all the other stats that are calculated and then cached to prevent recalculation on every page load? For a "simple" site with little traffic, sure, doing all this would be relatively easy. But when you've got hundreds of thousands of users and millions of page requests, you've got a very different set of problems to solve. For a "small and busy" team like Letterboxd, this suggestion would likely take months of careful and concerted work for, likely, the smallest percentage of their user base. And any rendering bug would open Letterboxd to the same can of worms as the first solution above.
I have disbanded my criticism of Letterboxd and just now this is an adult movies thread. I think a rather good example of the complexity of this topic arises from Wakefield Poole (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakefield_Poole), whose "Moving! (1974) challenged what Poole in a 1978 interview called the 'middle-class values' of 'the vast majority of gays' with its lengthy and graphic fisting scenes, which Poole considered important as 'one interpretation of reality related man-to-man.'" it is fair to say that at-best I have a middle-class familiarity with adult movies. a vanilla experience compared to the possibilities
previously I mentioned Wakefield Poole in reference to Bijou (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/bijou), and, you know, it makes sense that these directors made more than one movie. I am pretty hype about this
(https://i.imgur.com/IwiOOzR.jpg)
QuoteFrom acclaimed erotic filmmaker, Wakefield Poole, comes The Bible, like you've never seen it before!
The stories of Adam & Eve, Bath Sheba and Samson & Delilah are given sexual twists in this visually stunning and sensually charged masterpiece of the erotic avant-garde.
comes with (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/bible?_pos=2&_sid=b93e783ca&_ss=r)
QuoteDirector's Audio Commentary + Director's Introduction
Fuego!!! An essential thread ~
This quote is too funny:
Quote from: jenkins on December 19, 2020, 01:16:13 PM
learning about sex scene closeups is a new experience for me, but it doesn't panic my penis
it's a whole new world inside the world I knew. it's tricky because you treat it like a normal movie but you still can't watch it with your parents
the sex movie genre begins in the early 60s with Russ Meyer, Radley Metzger, and Joseph Sarno, then Warhol's Blue Movie, 1969, is considered the beginning of the golden age of pornography, and everything terminates in 1984. it's a limited time window of operation, an expression is "the raincoat crowd," and everyone in them is in their retirement age now
If you want to go even, uh, deeper down this hole you should hang out at therialtoreport.com (https://www.therialtoreport.com). A wealth of awesome stuff (interviews, photos, etc) for the Golden Age enthusiast.
definitely. here's an article (https://www.therialtoreport.com/2020/05/17/jaacov-jaacovi/) about Jaacov Jaacovi, director of Taxi Girls (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/taxi-girls-heavenly-desire-peekarama), and that's just an immediate find
Nancy Suiter almost reduced me to a drooling mound.
if it were still active i'd be part of the raincoat crowd basically definitely. for me it's from before my time, it's concept and personality and it's a lot of fun
already planning my wish list for the vday adult movie sale at vs. here is the promo video from last year
https://www.twitter.com/VinegarSyndrome/status/1228762505528389632
Yeah, my first sweaty, nervous, unsettled visit to a Pussycat Theater was in Dec of '71. No home video then, you whimpy Pornhubbers! :wink: I even have a Jamie Gillis story from a few years later.
Quote from: wilberfan on January 20, 2021, 12:53:47 AM
Yeah, my first sweaty, nervous, unsettled visit to a Pussycat Theater was in Dec of '71. No home video then, you whimpy Pornhubbers! :wink: I even have a Jamie Gillis story from a few years later.
lmao and i'm still so newb i had to search the rialto report for who Jamie Gillis is and that was easy (https://www.therialtoreport.com/2017/04/07/misty-beethoven/). that was the fifth article on him so there must be a lot to know. i'll be watching The Opening of Misty Beethoven soonish, I'll set up the post to intro the story
Because you never forget your first time...
NSFW (https://www.xvideos.com/video19970479/)
i'm ded. that's great
Quote from: jenkins on January 20, 2021, 01:01:33 AM
lmao and i'm still so newb i had to search the rialto report for who Jamie Gillis is
I also have a John Holmes story, my dudes. And a couple of female porn star encounters.
San Fernando Valley, man!
Quote from: wilberfan on January 20, 2021, 01:15:26 AM
Quote from: jenkins on January 20, 2021, 01:01:33 AM
lmao and i'm still so newb i had to search the rialto report for who Jamie Gillis is
I also have a John Holmes story, my dudes. And a couple of female porn star encounters.
San Fernando Valley, man!
lol I am just loving this. I don't think there's anyone else here who witnessed theatrical adult movies take place either, so I'm appreciating you
previously a person older than me had informed me about Radley Metzger, who is "the high priest of 70s arthouse erotica (https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/movie-poster-of-the-week-the-films-of-radley-metzger)" and he edited trailers at Janus Films of course (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radley_Metzger), and he used class and art and stuff like that for making erotic movies, I knew him and had seen Score in a theater, hosted by my friend who told me about him, and Score is kind of perfect because there's no real drama and it's just people hanging out, liking each other, and having sex
but so I was Radley Metzger and Tinto Brass (whose Salon Kitty (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075163/) is essential imo) and that was pretty much it until Vinegar Syndrome came into my life. I just couldn't handle there being so many movies I hadn't seen. sex movies released as movies really got me going. and previously I was like aware of John Holmes. now he's a person in my life. he's in Hot and Saucy Pizza Girls (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/hot-and-saucy-pizza-girls?_pos=1&_sid=a994e66ea&_ss=r), which sounds like Score but with pizza, and was mentioned by a woman who spoke about watching adult movies (https://justthediscs.libsyn.com/episode-186-vinegar-syndrome-favorites-samm-deighan), and he's in Hard Soap, Hard Soap (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/hard-soap-hard-soap-disco-lady?_pos=10&_sid=a994e66ea&_ss=r) which I own, and I'm delaying watching it only because then I'll have already watched it, and that's the same director who half-directed Taxi Girls which was mentioned earlier, and ngl I ~need~ to learn more about Evil Come, Evil Go (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/evil-come-evil-go?_pos=17&_sid=f108a3f47&_ss=r), in which "traveling Evangelist preacher, Sister Sarah Jane (Cleo O'Hara), is hellbent on ridding the world of evil, sex-obsessed men. Taking to the streets of Los Angeles, she quickly befriends a gullible young woman and the two embark on a mad, sex-filled killing spree."
(https://i.imgur.com/V6eOK57.jpg)
This frame alone tops most of what's shot on digital sensors over the last ten years. And i'm talkin' any cinema!
gorgeous restorations of marginalized and forgotten movies, VS
I like 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076459/) up until the gas station restroom and that's the first twenty minutes or so. the most pure sex shots in a sex movie I've watched
update: fantastic Samm Deighan (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/9-lives-of-a-wet-pussy) commentary tho
Omigosh (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/let-my-puppets-come?s=recomatic)
VS be blessed, lol.
the lead-up:
Quote from: jenkins on December 13, 2020, 04:05:25 PM
i ordered All the Sins of Sodom/Vibrations and they have arrived, i'm saving All the Sins for later but i started with Vibrations and it's so good, so okay Sarno's whole thing is erotic melodrama, and i'd call it sexy existentialism, Vibrations has juicy existentialism and it's such early sex movie stuff that there's no real sex and just sometimes naked bodies wiggle against each other, no cock or pussy is shown, and it's b&w nyc stuff, i was into it. the perspective is they were all made to be shown in a theater during the golden age of porn, and beneath all that sex they're just movies
Quote from: jenkins on January 17, 2021, 12:16:44 AM
my first Andy Milligan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Milligan) was Vapors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vapors_(film)), from the VS Sexploitation Signature Series (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/andy-milligans-seeds-vapors?_pos=1&_sid=a0df47a14&_ss=r). missing out on his Fleshpot on 42nd Street is a particular regret of mine, especially now that I've seen Vapors. so it's from 1965, it's his first movie (~30min short), it's set in a bath house, men seeking men, it's b&w and there isn't a single dick shown. sex movies are still just beginning, which I knew from Vibrations (https://letterboxd.com/film/vibrations/). pre-hardcore it's super soft core. no sex here: this movie is tender, it's dimensional, it's full of character, and it's a million fucking miles from Hollywood movies in this time period, much closer to something like Shadows (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053270). it's hella authentic seeming even if it's obviously a movie. everyone is acting natural
I watched Seeds (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/blu-ray-dvd-combo/products/andy-milligans-seeds-vapors) (which is limited to 2.5k and down to 117 btw, it was my friend's copy btw-btw), Andy Milligan, who once owned a mansion on Staten Island, which he named "Hollywood Central," later in Los Angeles he died of AIDS, and he was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Milligan). his mother is said to have been domineering, she troubled him, and Seeds is inspired by her—it's a sexual psychodrama from 1968. imagine What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? if Tennessee Williams wrote it as a family melodrama and nudity was involved. there's no penetration in this movie. there is no penis. no vagina. just some tits and minor ass. it's 1968, which is pre-Blue Movie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Movie). I don't understand how it's sexploitation because it doesn't make you feel sexy. you feel troubled. the final kill scene happens while the killer is topless. it's the wheel-chaired mother she kills of course. she's been the killer the whole time. she was using the cane. I'm pretty sure that's what happened. the mother called all her children bad seeds, and all of them bothered her. one son is named Buster. it's carnal to me. it's so human to me, this movie. such rich melodrama
Quote from: wilder on December 24, 2019, 01:26:38 AM
March 2020
FAB Press is republishing (https://www.fabpress.com/ghastly-one-andy-milligan-book.html) the long-OOP book 'The Ghastly One: The 42nd Street Netherworld of Director Andy Milligan', with newly added material.
Pre-orders will include a one-off printing of a 300-page book of previously unpublished Andy Milligan scripts.
(https://i.imgur.com/09orV95.jpg)
There's an interesting interview (https://diaboliquemagazine.com/the-ghastly-one-is-coming-bynwr-is-here-an-interview-with-jimmy-mcdonough-biographer-andy-milligan-and-co-conspirator-of-nicolas-winding-refn/) with the author, Jimmy McDonough, up at Diabolique Magazine
I'm working on opening up conversations about adult movies in the Vinegar Syndrome Collectors facebook group. A common thing is you see a photo of seven horror movies and one adult movie. And no one talks about the adult movie. Another common thing is you see a photo of adult movies from a person making a masturbation joke. Not only do I not think these movies inspire masturbation, I also think that joke derails a conversation. But anyway someone reviewed La Femme-objet for me
QuoteI watched it a couple of nights ago and was pleasantly surprised. It's 80s porn. Expectations need to be in check.
First off the transfer and cinematography are excellent. Not something I expected. The story is of the Frankenstein variety. Mix in a ton of sex, and hair, and you can conjure up some mental images. LOL!
The first half of the film is a bit slow. A lot of time is dedicated to getting the point across that Nicolas is a sex addict. However, once Kim, Marilyn Jess, shows up, look out. She is quite the vision.
The acting is well done all around. Additionally, I liked the twist ending. The director is actually trying to tell a story here. BTW, he and/or the writer definitely have a thing for Star Wars. You'll see.
This was a complete blind buy for me, and I'm glad I pulled the trigger. It's that rare porn flick that is smart and interesting to go along with titillating.
Side note, the spine shows this as Pulse Video #4. I wonder what the first 3 are.
God it's just so true that it's hella fun to hear conversational perspectives about adult movies
wilder you have the power to watch La Femme-objet and report back
my current vday sale maybe list:
La Femme-objet (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/la-femme-objet-pulse-video)
Skin Flicks (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/skin-flicks)
Blue Money (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/blue-money?_pos=7&_sid=a1b42c1a2&_ss=r)
A Thousand and One Erotic Nights 1 & 2 (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/a-thousand-and-one-erotic-nights-1-2)
Let My Puppets Come (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/let-my-puppets-come?_pos=2&_sid=8ae1a8f7c&_ss=r)
Memories Within Miss Aggie (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/memories-within-miss-aggie?_pos=1&_sid=68e609f75&_ss=r)
Bible (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/bible)
Dixie Ray Hollywood Star (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/dixie-ray-hollywood-star)
Game Show Models (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/game-show-models)
The Candidate (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/the-candidate-johnny-gunman)
Ribald Tales of Canterbury (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/ribald-tales-of-canterbury-tasty)
Sex and Astrology (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/sex-and-astrology)
Evil Come, Evil Go (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/evil-come-evil-go)
Star Virgin (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/star-virgin)
That's Outrageous (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/thats-outrageous)
Little Showoffs (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/little-showoffs)
Naughty Girls Need Love Too (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/naughty-girls-need-love-too)
Weed / Innocents Abroad / Sexual Encounter Group (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/weed-innocents-abroad-sexual-encounter-group)
When I ask someone about their photo of Frat House:
QuoteI got to be honest I don't watch the adult films for the most part unless it's a really famous Director like 9 LIVES. It is cool that other people do, I just view purchasing them like getting baseball players in a card collection you don't care for just to compete the set. I do like looking at the cover art and I think FRAT HOUSE's art is really well done and takes me right back to 70's mentality, even if that was before my time.
it's of course gas in the fire for me, the way VS stans feel about adult movies. and there's a deeper joke about the matter too, in terms of "The company was founded to restore and distribute X-rated films from the 1960s to the 1980s, including pornographic films released during the Golden Age of Porn, on home media." it was built for this. "We are film archivists who happen to focus on preserving sex films."
this remains so much fun
I asked someone about their photo of three horror movies and Taxi Girls:
QuoteI went with Completionist. I vend at local shows here in the tri state area, and see Brandon around a lot. I appreciate the work they put into it, and admire their business model. I'm not SUPER INTO vintage porn, but hey! YOLO!
I am ~in love~ with these people collecting adult movies they don't watch. but maybe this person is saying they will watch it later, actually
I managed to track down a person who could recommend Peekarama releases:
Eat at the Blue Fox / Titillation (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/eat-at-the-blue-fox-titillation?_pos=1&_sid=7d46be400&_ss=r)
Pleasure Maze / Lovers Lane (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/pleasure-maze-lovers-lane?_pos=1&_sid=6f2df5ec4&_ss=r)
Mai Lin vs. Serena / Oriental Hawaii (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/mai-lin-vs-serena-oriental-hawaii?_pos=1&_sid=fb79e6c90&_ss=r)
Nasty Nurses / Let's Talk Sex (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/nasty-nurses-lets-talk-sex?_pos=1&_sid=3109f6aed&_ss=r)
I don't know if the recommendations relate to movies or sex!
I've discovered more and more VS stans who don't actually watch the adult movies they buy and it just cracks me up. Adult movies are definitely the most fun new movie thing that's happened to me since Mondo Macabro
(https://i.imgur.com/9wIRojo.jpg)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCxH_2a6Z-M
putneyswipe told me about this video that explains sex theaters
https://youtu.be/VhRB145Hwnk
About 16:00 in Ferrara recounts his experiences making Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy. Very entertaining story!
somehow I've been to their site and looked through their catalogue a bunch of times but I still discover new movies now and then
(https://i.imgur.com/Y3SgOu8.jpg)
QuoteEver since being sexually traumatized as a young man by his aunt, Billy has had an unhealthy association between peanut butter and sex. After his latest date leaves him, he meets Priscilla (Helen Madigan), an equally odd woman. As the two strangers decide to share stories of their unusual erotic experiences, Billy begins to realize that he may have finally found the girl of his dreams. But can their budding romance survive the ultimate sexual test?
One of the strangest films to emerge from San Francisco's underground erotic film scene, Gerald Graystone's CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE PEANUT BUTTER FREAK is a bizarre and surreal romantic comedy, co-written by and starring Zachary Youngblood (DEEP TANGO), and featuring the screen debut of Constance Money (MISTY BEETHOVEN). Vinegar Syndrome presents this under-seen oddity newly restored from rare vault elements and presented fully uncut for the first time on home video!
it's Friday night and I'm making sure I know all the sex movies I might buy next Friday, there are indeed possibilities new to me:
Erotic Adventures of Candy / Candy Goes to Hollywood (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/erotic-adventures-of-candy-candy-goes-to-hollywood-blu)
QuoteCANDY GOES TO HOLLYWOOD (1979):
Buxom Candy arrives in Hollywood, searching for fame and fortune. After meeting lecherous agent Johnny Dooropener, young Candy gets to know the ins and outs of Hollywood in every way possible! Featuring a guest appearance from punk legend Wendy O. Williams.
Showdown (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/showdown)
QuoteOff somewhere in the middle of the desert sits the Bar None Dude Ranch, a cathouse for all men...and women. With the law in their pocket and a carefree daily lifestyle, their on-site working girls have it pretty easy. The only problem is a shortage of clients. But when a trio of dim-witted city folk arrive at the ranch, hoping for a more conventional western getaway experience, they quickly find themselves in the midst of a carnal getaway, the likes of which they could never have expected, all the while the new girl, Jennie, whose husband wants her to give up her life at the brothel, is starting to have doubts on her chosen profession, but can't decide if she's ready to give up easy money for the prospect of true love.
Dark Dreams (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/dark-dreams)
QuoteA hallucinogenic, sex and horror filled cinematic 'trip', DARK DREAMS was one of the earliest attempts at a hardcore 'crossover' film and stars two of the biggest names in early sex films...The sole erotic film from mysterious director Roger Guermantes
Trashy Lady (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/trashy-lady)
QuoteGangster Dutch (Harry Reems) has just been left by his regular dame, Jessie (Cara Lott). With the third annual 'Gathering of the Brotherhood' merely weeks away, Dutch is desperately in need of a new girl. Upon being introduced to the beautiful Katherine (Ginger Lynn), a cigarette girl working at the hottest speakeasy in town, The Paradise Club, Dutch is immediately smitten but soon discovers to his dismay that Katherine is a 'good' girl. Determined not to let her get away, Dutch enlists the help of Rita, a rough broad, who also happens to be the favorite squeeze to rival gangster Louie (Herschel Savage), to transform Katherine into the perfect Trashy Lady.
Nominated for 6 XRCO awards, including best director (Steve Scott), and featuring AFAA award winning cinematography by Tom Howard as well as an AVN award winning performance from Reems, TRASHY LADY is a light hearted and elegantly made journey through the sexcapades of the Roaring Twenties,
Sadie / The Seductress (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/sadie-the-seductress)
QuoteSADIE (1980):
Director Bob Chinn's adaptation of Somerset Maugham's classic, 'Rain', stars Chris Cassidy as a beautiful prostitute named Sadie living on an island in Borneo during the Vietnam War. With the arrival of an Evangelical senator, Sadie's life is pushed into lust-fueled turmoil in this impeccably written and beautifully photographed erotic masterpiece.
Cry for Cindy / Touch Me / Act of Confession (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/cry-for-cindy-touch-me-act-of-confession#)
QuoteACT OF CONFESSION (soft cut) (1971):
In this notorious film, a Medieval nun explores her sexual fantasies as she prepares herself for her life of religious servitude.
fuck okay so the sale is approaching and now I have to concentrate. I want to buy 6 and this is my trying to narrow it down
Seems essential:
Taxi Girls
Skin Flicks
A Thousand and One Erotic Nights 1 & 2
Trashy Lady
The Bible
Bijou
Dixie Ray Hollywood Star
Nasty Nurses / Let's Talk Sex
Pleasure Maze / Lovers Lane
Confessions of a Teenage Peanut Butter Freak
oh shit so the essential list alone is over six and i stopped making it not because I ran out of possibilities but because it was already so long ~this will require concentration~
update: I have been informed that the ending to Taxi Girls is "rough"
further update: Taxi Girls is a comedy the ends with an R scene. men today do not appreciate R scenes, which is good obviously
it happened so fast and I'm out of breath. I definitely ended up favoring blu-rays. I purchased:
Don't Panic -- Pajamas (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/dont-panic-pajamas?variant=32402748669994)
A Thousand and One Erotic Nights 1 & 2 w/ limited edition slipcase
Skin Flicks
Blue Money
Trashy Lady
Storefront Theatre: All Night at the PO-NO (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/storefront-theatre-collection/products/storefront-theatre-all-night-at-the-po-no)
Fast Cars Fast Women / Starship Eros
Bijou
this documentary exists (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/a-labor-of-love?_pos=1&_sid=fd9db711b&_ss=r):
In the winter of 1974, a naive independent filmmaker based in Chicago found funding to make his first feature, to be titled "The Last Affair." The one stipulation mandated by his financial bakers was that the movie needed to include hardcore sex scenes. A LABOR OF LOVE documents the ensuing heart felt and earnest attempt to create an X rated movie. Between struggles with the cast and problems with crew and locations, the production forges on in a manner NBC News described as "A true human comedy" and Hadrian Belove of Cinefamily acclaimed as "a lost vérité masterpiece ... a movie-about-movies documentary classic."
^ I did order that documentary, which completed my order.
Some of this has been previously stated in other ways: a thing is serious movie goers don't treat the horror genre seriously. so the horror genre is kind of a safe place for the tasteless. except the horror fans don't take adult movies seriously. and although as an art house person I'm used to liking shunned movies, I've never encountered such a shunned category of movies. outside of older people who saw them in theaters, younger people don't know what to do with them, and like in most outsider situations that means they make fun of them. just again and again and again I've encountered people making fun of pornos from a theoretical perspective. they have perhaps seen a couple but have now switched into generalizing. which, to be fair, is perhaps what it is like with me and comic book movies. but there's no such thing as seeing a couple and understanding them all. what can also happen with older people who were around in the day of the golden age of porn is they already have the conversational baggage, and this is a thing about being younger: you don't carry the baggage of the older generation. when I hear 21st century people talk about 90s music they're making like insane choices from my perspective. they're doing it all wrong. but they're not doing it all wrong they're doing it all their own way
I talked about this with a friend recently: I don't do the thing where I watch the movie 9 times. I don't watch the same movie over and over, I watch a lot of movies. seeing movies new to me retains the thrill of initial encounter, because it's all initial encounters. so here was a genre untapped to me, since also I lived through but did not live within vhs days. my understanding is that in fact many of these movies are available for free to stream on porn sites. that was how I watched the beginning of Frat House, which I suspected I wouldn't like, and I didn't, although tbh I found its humor superior to Animal House. I like its direct route but still the entire atmosphere isn't for me
so it's not the sex I want it's the atmosphere. it's the orchestration, the organization, the implementation that magnetizes me. and it's simply a whole other world, because part of the atmosphere is that spontaneous sex is possible during any moment. I must confess that in this current moment the idea of watching a movie without spontaneous sex seems, like, I don't get it. although I don't think there's expansive territory for me in this genre, I do want to explore its possibilities. the shape of adult movies.
and perhaps it does not engage the core of my soul, but it does give my soul a kick. it does serve as a false refuge, an escape from the reality of myself, I engage in escapism through its extremities, and the adult genre allows me to witness vivid human extremities. there are cross genre adult movies, action and horror possibilities, but it's more like its own medium, such as any anime is an anime however it is. and it just is true that my appreciation for it kind of tarnishes my reputation, depending on who I'm speaking with, which again, as an art house person I'm familiar with this situation, but all the immediate deep cuts that come from adult movies are new to me in this exact way. it fascinates me and throws gas in my fire, because liking the unliked and ignored is a total thing of mine. I believe in all of life and want none of it ignored, I am a different type of person in my own way, this all sounds exactly like me, and this is the most fun movie thing that's happened to me since martial arts movies I think
first at my friends' I showed some clips from Storefront Theatre: All Night at the PO-NO (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/storefront-theatre-all-night-at-the-po-no?_pos=1&_sid=e15a07031&_ss=r) and that went well. we discussed what we were seeing and I was describing why I thought this was a good idea, and my friends were able to vibe it. they're a couple. there were interesting insights about appreciable qualities
then at my other friends' well his wife is like not having what I'm up to. she says sex is to advance a story or it's gratuitous. so she's not looking at sex as part of the story and I had brought along A Labor of Love (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0249672/) because I thought, okay it's a documentary, this will work. she didn't believe it was a documentary I realized after it began and she said "oh it is a documentary" but still she left early because, well, the women making this movie are not happy to be making this movie. so my quest toward normalization seemed absurd. even the director doesn't want to be making the movie the documentary is about making. the director is Iranian and his dream is to make movies and he was given the funds to make a movie on the condition that sex was included. he said he didn't want to make another sex film and he never did. so it's a great documentary but the inner turmoil associated with making the movie assisted the perspective that I am insane
Quote from: jenkins on February 20, 2021, 02:39:22 PM
it's going to be a minute until I can watch it but it's singing to me, Fleshpot
(https://i.imgur.com/VfsXT1Z.png)
it's definitely an adult movie, as in there are sex scenes, and it's
such a good movie. genuinely. some City of Night (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Night)-level of insight into human behavior that can simply only be gained through experience
(https://i.imgur.com/sFe9y71.png)
(https://imgur.com/hZ3rwno.png)
frankly, it raises the bar. I have Blue Money and Skin Flicks ahead of me but if this turns into the best adult movie I ever see it does legitimize the entire genre. it's achingly human from a perspective only possible in a major city. the whole time the actors sound like they're going off the script but honestly the script is good except for the ending, which is not a good ending and why the movie might be bettered. but the bad ending does not ruin the overall shape of the movie. very glad I was able to see it
one of my new internet friends. he's wearing dino pajamas in his profile photo
QuoteIf you're trying to get "her" (per your OP) to watch the adult films, that is territory I have less confidence in traveling. However, I've shown my shelved classic porno collection to straight and bi women, straight and gay men, and trans women. Here's what I've noticed: women are far more comfortable with sexual entertainment, in the sense that they'll watch it for what it is. Most straight men who grew up with the porn landscape of the last 30 years don't understand adult entertainment as anything other than gonzo porn: a product that's usually shameless about appealing to straight men's sexual fantasies, which results in private pleasure. Women seem capable of entertaining adult films without the presumption that they will want to masturbate while watching it. They'll watch it with their lady friends. FWIW, I've shown In the Realm of the Senses to more women than men (3 to 1 as of now).
Here's a line for selling these pornos: "Babe, sometimes a really popular porno would be the highest grossing movie for the weekend in a particular city. Depending on the time, day, and location, a porn theater could be full of bored friends, curious girls testing their mettle, couples getting in the mood, dates treating a new movie phenomenon as a mode of discourse for new sexual politics (it was the 1970s when these movies were the most popular), and art elitists with enough status anxiety to brave a grindhouse when the press made it seem cool. It wasn't only about wearing a trenchcoat to vacant screenings for, you know...Porn as a theatrical and narrative phenomenon is much different than the direct-to-home-video/streaming standard we've grown used to."
(https://i.imgur.com/bh96HxC.jpeg)
it's a well-composed movie. it's the story of Chaka Khan being betrayed by his Sultana, which fucks up his sense of trust so heavily that afterward he decides that instead of beginning a new relationship he'll kill women from his harem after sleeping with them. now, the way Chaka Khan decides who he'll sleep with is his harem keeper brings him a basket filled with tiles, and each tile has a name. after the name Scheherezade is drawn, she is prepared. and she knows what is about to happen but you see, Scheherezade decides not to be dead in the morning. and she is clever, she's been around the world (from China to the Mediterranean Sea), and her imagination is endless. what she does is each night she starts to tell Chaka Khan a story with a cliff hanger, and she asks for an afternoon to remember the rest of the story she'll finish the next evening. she tells the story of Aladdin, Sinbad, and Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, although those particular stories aren't in the movie (sexy stories are in the movie, obviously)
the thousand and one erotic nights come from her forestalling her execution through storytelling. such a fan of this movie and its tonal commitment. its dedication to its own framework. the sequel is also included and usually I skip the bonus movie but the first was so good I have to watch the sequel
I don't want to describe Part II because I didn't like it. I should have known better but I became confused because Part I is that good
(https://i.imgur.com/LAepdzV.jpeg)
it's not pornography, it's a movie about making pornography. on the cusp of Nixon's reelection and of course Nixon is trying to shut down the adult movie business, sounds just like Nixon. this is the story of a hot af French quebecian who just wants to score big loads of money and finish building his boat, to leave everything behind. but the government won't let him. because the government is seriously rude. he's a father and his baby's momma has a side story about her own perspective. this hot af French quebecian with gorgeous pouty lips is also the director, it's his story, and this whole thing is about him
it's so good. VS compared it to Cassevetes but nah. it's Jacques Demy's Model Shop but about porn instead of depression
(https://i.imgur.com/ht09MZk.jpeg)
these are two bona fide genre movies that are also adult movies, both written/directed by Scott McHaley, and these are the only two movies he ever wrote/directed, which makes him more impressive from my perspective
this was my first dip into the Peekarama series and great, now the bar is raised for that entire series
I began with Fast Cars Fast Women because it's at the top of the menu screen, although in fact this one was made after Starship Eros.
okay: what an impressive and authentic portrayal of the reality of a race car driver in the south. what total immersion into a southern lifestyle in general: early on you see the race track and I thought, nice, but by the time we're in a bar with a live county-western band performing I'm becoming impressed. although a potential sibling to this movie would be The Legend of Billie Jean, the bar scene is Nashville-level. it feels like I'm there in the bar, hearing a live band. still an adult movie, however, a slight detail is a line in the song, "Slide on in, darling I'm so what you're looking for," and although in a lyrical context you could justify that the singer is referring to a hug, I mean.
this is a fully formed movie, although yes it's an adult movie. that combination is assuredly accomplished. so there's a rivalry between the owners of race cars, one female and one male, and their rivalry is spiked by the fact that the evil male-owner also runs a company in financial trouble. he wants to win prize movie to pay off his debts. and he's so evil he tampered with a car that crashed and killed its driver. the star of this movie is a woman who arrives to replace that dead team member. she will drive the same car that killed its previous driver. wow. the stakes are high. damn. so what transpires is a deft amalgamation of this narrative and sex scenes
you go from the evil male-owner visiting the holy female-owner, and the female-owner won't put out to him of course (she sleeps with her pit boss), so she masturbates while the evil male-owner watches. and next you witness thugs in cheap winter masks attack the pit boss. followed by a female-with-female shower scene. this is how the movie progresses
the evil male-owner wants to overpower the holy female-owner, but he is way, way underestimating her strength and ability. she confronts him in a pit and tells him, "Stay away from my wheels. Stay away from my girls. If you don't I'm going to chop your balls off," and we hear the click of her heels as she walks away.
a main goon on the evil side is Ron Jeremy, back when he was young and possessed beauty imo. you see him doing goon stuff and you see a car crash. what, appropriate for this movie, doesn't this movie offer me? it absolutely works car fetishization into the movie at a John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix-level. you see closeups of car stuff before the final race, when everything is on the line
the movie ends with a car race and it's pretty much a perfect movie. the disc offers soft core outtakes taken from sex scenes. somehow: all of this is real. this is reality. the movie trailer is another special future
Starship Eros begins with a note from the producer as a special feature. he says Scott McHaley wrote the script and showed it to him, and the producer was like, yeah for sure. it was financed through stunt men. the producer said he directed the sex scenes because McHaley was so fresh. but you're wrong if you think McHaley didn't make his own significant contributions: he made the special effects in his garage, and I assume he directed the scenes of space chases and space battles
the producer said it was a two-day shoot and I did wonder how they did that. the first shot is a star-filled sky from the perspective of traveling thorough space. the year's title card appears: we're in the future of 1995
how they accomplished the two-day shoot is this movie has the narrative speed of porn, yet also you are in space. the first ten minutes establish who the commander is: we're introduced to her through a hot tub scene, followed by self-pleasure, followed by intercourse.
then we're in space with the special effects: we can see a space station, and a spaceship flying through space. a pilot arrives at a space station and a woman greets her, tells her, "Beverly here, everyone calls me Bev." this ship is women-only. though there is a sex robot named Quasar, played by a man wearing a C=3PO mask. you see his hands and later his penis. he says he's human from the waist down although like I said you also see his human hands. he has on a robot vest though. with the mask and vest he looks robot, count it
when the captain meets the commander you learn about their spaceship lifestyle: "Sorry to interrupt commander, I didn't know this was pleasure period." the commander had been self-pleasuring. but the commander isn't upset at all and says, "Strip and do me." these crew members are super nice to each other, real friends
while learning about Quasar, the pilot encounters the situation in which Quasar's battery loses power and must be replaced. good detail, space sex movie.
when they're called into mission 28 min into the 67 min movie, it does feel like one shooting day has transpired. it's miraculous how little happens in this movie that also feels like a complete-enough movie. called into a mission, suddenly the sex actors are controlling a spaceship. the mission pertains the daring Amazoids who are up to extreme mischief. Starship Eros is in pursuit
"Think we'll see any action, commander?"
"It isn't very likely we won't."
In order to change into combat gear, the pilot leaves the room, although while changing she sees Quasar, and she becomes distracted, for which she's later punished. now it must be mentioned that sex scenes are intercut with scenes of spaceflight. damn Scott McHaley, you really know how to treat a movie. Fast Cars Fast Women fetishizes cars and this movie fetishizes sci-fi. the pilot's punishment for becoming distracted by Quasar during a mission is the wildest punishment I've ever witnessed in a movie, involving a laser gun and manual stimulation. this punishment makes the pilot sweat
again, very little has happened, but enough to call it a movie, and plenty to call it adult. 55min into the movie the enemy captain is captured. by this point Bev is naked. accomplishments at the end of the movie are Quasar comes on his own (without programming, his first time) and the enemy captain is converted into a team member
this is just a thing I'm mentioning now that I'm so accustomed to watching adult movies and everything: before beginning this endeavor I suspected that I would find myself fast forwarding through sex scenes that went on for too long, but that has not been the case. I do sometimes bring out my phone or just like stare away thinking about something else during a long sex scene that isn't offering me much, but because I am so plugged into the rhythms of the movie I can't fast forward it. it seems like betraying the movie to fast forward it, even if I'm not watching it, because some weird part of me needs to experience the full rhythm of the movie. it'd feel like not experiencing the movie if I fast forwarded it
that's kind of odd but that's been the case. I don't know. I get in sync with the movie I'm watching, like two people get in sync during sex I guess
going from early Joseph W. Sarno to Alain Patrick's Blue Money to Henri Pachard's Matinee Idol (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/matinee-idol?_pos=2&_sid=954c24086&_ss=r) is witnessing a lot of change. a fuckton of development
everything Alain Patrick dreams of in Blue Money is actualized by the time of Matinee Idol, which is a Hollywood insider movie about the porn industry. Matinee Idol begins on a set and ends in a production office, with two producers looking at the camera and asking you (the viewer) if you're the pretty-faced big-dick star of the future: a Hollywood dream through a pornographic prism
I can't put into words the lightness of Matinee Idol, except by using the word lightness to describe the movie, so I just did my best there. it's very much a Peter Bogdanovich porn movie. it understands the life of actors and the reality they face, and portrays burdens surmounted through grace and good humor. it is simply true that there is a sex scene involving toes, and that it's an intentionally funny scene. traditional sex scenes occur while actors play their roles, which we know because we see the production crew and the production meetings. we witness the production of pornography, are given insider knowledge, hear the conversations that take place between scenes, and of course there is a production we don't see, the production of this production, and it's so well accomplished. Matinee Idol is rather expertly crafted and thoroughly enjoyable
(https://i.imgur.com/1UFwmoB.jpg)
Oh. Wow. Okay.
You know, not so outrageously, I had expected a pornographic parody of Batman. But this is something else entirely. Really its own kind of thing. As the cover indicates, the central characters are the married couple Buddy and Sam. The vast majority of this movie takes places in their apartment in what is speculated to be Arkansas, based on a tattoo on Buddy's ass. In the beginning Buddy is reading Screw magazine, Sam is on the bed, then Buddy joins Sam on the bed, and the bulk of the movie is their conversations on the bed, amid sexual behavior but no sex at all.
In the final portion of the movie, Bat Pussy joins them. Buddy calls her Bat Woman a couple times, which Sam once corrects. Bat Pussy coughs a couple times. Sam takes out a dildo. A couple times in this movie the sound cuts out for a brief moment, a couple times Buddy looks toward the production crew, direction is being given.
The fact that you can watch this, that it exists, feels astonishing. The commentary track is five people who work in this industry (2 from AGFA, 2 from Something Weird, 1 from Bleeding Skull) being astonished that this movie exists. If it had been released by VS it'd be in a Storefront Theatre, the southern one, I suspect, based on its runtime and general nature. I am a fan of the Storefront Theatre series, by the way. Now I am a fan of Bat Pussy, too. AGFA has a great line on the case, here it is, "the no-fi sexploitation messterpiece of your wildest dreams."
Bruh!!! I must get this ~ Holycow, batpussy!
Hot and Saucy Pizza Girls -- my first Bob Chinn. meeting John Holmes was cool. the calmness of John Holmes calmed me. and, shall we say, he lives up to his sexual reputation. in this movie John is John. he's the manager of the pizza parlor. the south is made fun of in this movie. some southern guys want friend chicken to be the food everyone eats instead of pizza. so the southern guys are trying to sabotage the pizza parlor with a 6 foot tall chicken who (unseen) rapes the pizza deliverers (you see them with feathers from the aftermath). the pizza deliverers are women who ride skateboards. for me, the scary part in the movie was going downhill on a skateboard. who joins John is his twin brother from another mother, Bob, played by director Bob Chinn. they are the co-captains of the pizza parlor. they want to protect the pizza deliverers but they suck at that. pretty much useless in that regard. a side-character ends up being a central character. the detective who wears a raincoat. this movie is ridiculous and it never made me do anything but smile. the California lifestyle
Let My Puppets Come -- outrageous. glad I watched this because its irreverence is full throttle. this had to be made as a puppet movie because actual people doing this, I mean, the first sex scene is between a dog and a woman, and Pinocchio is a character in this movie, he has sex with his nose. incredible. puppet sex jokes. ludicrous. there is some crossover with actual people. the woman who stripped for the puppet, and who participated in the sexual fetish of the puppet (he wears her underwear on his head while she throws grapes at him), she never had another acting job like that again
both streamed on xhamster
LOL
Dig that your journey through this genre means you must wade through the waters of tubesites.
Those websites are truly frightening but at least they can harbor feature films.
right. it's weird. I visit the porn site for practical purposes. I'm not sure how they get away with it. they're really all there. not truly all but truly many. is it because xhamster is in Greece? does no one care about any copyright? is there no copyright? it is a particular quality within interest about the golden age of porn. the golden age of Hollywood does not quite have the same possibilities, although many older films appear on YouTube too that's true
Hurry: Listen to the podcast episode before it's optioned by Hollywood! (And let us know if you find a copy of the finished film online somewhere.)
'Centurians of Rome' (1981): The Behind-The-Scenes Story – Podcast 105 (https://www.therialtoreport.com/2021/03/21/centurians-of-rome-3/)
<3
I don't know if this film meets the Jack Horner "film to remember me by" standard, but Jesus, the production values! It looks like they spent more on the title sequence alone than Jack spent his entire career.
https://www.eroti.ga/heavenly-desire-1979-watch-uncut/
(https://i.imgur.com/kiVwenq.jpg)
QuoteA raucous and revealing oral history of the birth of the adult film industry, The Other Hollywood peels back the candy coating to let the true story be told -- by the stars, movie makers, and other industry players who lived it. And what a story it is: Through hundreds of original interviews, contemporary newspaper accounts, police reports, court testimony, and more, Legs McNeil and coauthors Jennifer Osborne and Peter Pavia trace today's billion-dollar industry from its makeshift, mob-connected origins to the Internet age. Along the way we encounter porn stars such as Linda Lovelace, John Holmes, Traci Lords, and Savannah -- along with countless mainstream stars, politicians, FBI agents, and more.
Epic, hilarious, and moving, The Other Hollywood contributes to the porn industry the one thing missing in all previous accounts: a vivid, tragicomic, irresistible humanity.
:yabbse-thumbup: :yabbse-cool:
whata buncha nerdz!!!
(jelly)
In an otherwise hair-raising interview (https://www.therialtoreport.com/2021/05/16/jamie-gillis-4/) on the personal proclivities of Jamie Gillis, he mentions the origin of what became the inspiration for "On the Lookout" in Boogie Nights.
QuoteSo what motivated you to make your 'private tape' series?
Jamie Gillis: I wanted to do something entirely different. By the late 1980s, I was dividing my time between L.A. and San Francisco, wherever film work called me, but I was generally getting more bored with the state of the adult film business.
What frustrated you about it?
I was jaded. I'd seen it all.
I'd started out in New York doing loops for Bob Wolfe in his basement studio twenty years earlier. I'd made one-day wonder features, sex instructional films, and films with big budgets. And each step of the way, the films seemed to get further away from real sex... further away from pornography. At least, further away from what I thought pornography should be. I didn't like that.
How so?
When you make a sex film... the more money you have, and the more people that are involved, and the more you have to focus on selling a product to a mass audience... then the less spontaneous, and therefore the less real, the sex becomes. And who the hell wants to see a sex film where the sex isn't real...?
And your 'private tapes' were a reaction against that?
Sure. When the video boom started in the early 1980s, I was optimistic: finally here was a way of capturing real sex, dirty sex, in an easy and spontaneous way. You could literally do it yourself.
But it didn't turn out that way. All we got was shittier movies.
When did the idea of doing something different first come to you?
I was working on a film being directed by my good friend, Allan Shustak, who was better known as Duck Dumont.
It was another terrible, boring, scripted porn film. Everyone was thinking, "How quickly can we finish fucking, so we can go home?"
It was disappointing: we started out as pioneers, as revolutionaries, then we became boring filmmakers, but we ended up as whores.
I said to Allan, "This is ridiculous. Here's a better idea: Why don't we just throw a girl in a car, take her outside, and find someone who really wants to have sex with her – and film that". I'm not even sure if I was serious, but Allan casually replied, "Ok, let's do it, but let's use a limo to give it a little class."
And that resulted in the On the Prowl series?
Yes. We had no real idea what we were doing or what it would be called – we just rented a limo and took off into the San Francisco night.
I wasn't happy about the limo idea. I dreamed of raunchy, sleazy sex, without any Hollywood gloss, but I figured it wasn't a big deal.
How well did 'On the Prowl' do for you?
It made a little money. Not much, but I did ok.
What I loved about it was that I could set up all the sex scenes and do all of the filming myself.
What I hated was that I had to do all the business side too. That was a pain in the ass. I love sex, and I hate to see what happens when money gets involved.
nice
Quote from: wilberfan on May 16, 2021, 03:41:14 PM
I'd made one-day wonder features
VS has released samples of these in their Storefront Theatre Collection (https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/storefront-theatre-collection), which series has been discontinued according to the cover designer. these were generally movies made by the theater to be shown in the theater
although Dirk Diggler being a character in a series of films is undoubtedly inspired by Bob Chinn's Johnny Wadd series with John Holmes, just today I happened to run into QT talking about the director who inspired Jack Horner, it's from 2019 (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/08/quentin-tarantino-paul-thomas-anderson-flaw-boogie-nights-1202163389/)
Quote"I think Burt Reynolds is fantastic in the movie," Tarantino said. "Me and Paul have talked about this, though. I actually think there is a slight flaw in 'Boogie Nights,' and the flaw is the perception of the Burt Reynolds' character. Paul can say he's not based on the director Gerard Damiano, who directed 'Deep Throat,' but he obviously is. He looks exactly like him, and Damiano has a very unique look. Burt Reynolds doesn't look like that, so you actually have to go out of your way to make him look like Damiano. That's not Burt Reynold's look, that is Gerard Damiano's look."
Tarantino's gripe with "Boogie Nights" is that it positions Reynolds as a Gerard Damiano stand-in but does not stick true to the pornographic director's mentality. The flaw occurs when Reynolds' director Jack Horner is working on his cop-themed porn movie and says it's the best work he's ever done.
"The [cop porno] film looks like a piece of shit. It looks horrible," Tarantino said. "Believe me, I've seen more porno movies than Paul has because I worked at the porno theater. I saw a lot of movies that were crappy like that. But he has Burt's character say, and he says it in a full-on moving close-up, 'I think this is my greatest work yet. I think this is my finest work yet.'"
Tarantino said "Damiano was a better director than that," and thus Jack Horner should've been a better director than that. "Damiano was a good enough filmmaker to know the difference between 'Oh wow, this is the best movie I've ever done' and 'Oh, this one has a little bit of a story,'" Tarantino said. "It's a cheap line because the character would know the difference, that the work is not the best work he could possibly do.
Quote from: jenkins on June 02, 2021, 02:16:07 PM
This is a pretty big deal
https://www.twitter.com/AltInnocence/status/1400153396263329792
it felt like a big deal, too. I can't immediately compare these movies to other movies I've seen, which impresses me. I want to read the MoMA catalogue descriptions for these movies. they are definitely non-narrative, take place in the land of abstractions. but that gets you into murky territory in terms of describing what they do, and they're rather too new to me to able to explain that immediately. engaging my literary self, I'd say that Fred Halsted is a Clarice Lispector of cinema. not the "the" Clarice Lispector of cinema, and not "the same as" Clarice Lispector, but one is able to witness a similar artistic intention: to describe oneself beyond the normal parameters. to engage with a sense of being, and feeling, alive. and you can blow that if it doesn't feel true. Fred Halsted feels true
Fred Halsted feels impressive for reasons I can't currently put into words. hell. yeah
Assploitation Drops a Hot Wet American Mixtape of Sizzling Porno Soundtracks on Club Mel (https://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/club-mel-assploitation-hot-wet-american-mixtape)
Nine oh-so-tasty Hot Traxx (if you will) from the 80s. Turn it up.
that's fun
Quote from: jenkins on July 28, 2020, 08:01:09 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/PajwEnQ.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/VrB7KzA.png)
how am i to know the differences between these movies, what they can and cannot offer me, and how they are or are not comparable to other movies, when there is not an avenue for discussion?
at the video store in my country hometown the adult films lived behind a curtain. i do not think that it is reasonable to exclude these movies from critical discussion, even if they are not made for critical discussion. they are made regardless, and the law of probability says some will be bad, and the law of probability says some will be good. i for one one would like to hear a critical analysis of the accomplishments of fuck films, especially if tiny moments of unnoticed magic exist, which is likely
this thread was previously titled Opinion: Letterboxd should allow pornography
https://twitter.com/jlalibs/status/1425552688490635271?s=19