The Back Room: The First Visit

The groove that my needle has been dropping on lately is adult films of the 70s and 80s. Maybe it's the binge watching of The Deuce that has me hooked. Maybe it's the desire to trace the influences of Boogie Nights subject matter back to their source. Or maybe I'm just super horny and want to give myself a legitamate reason to be both visually and mentally stimulated.

I grew up in a conservative home with parents who had conservative views. My dad being more liberal when it came to watching movies. The first time I saw porn was through the internet. It existed solely as a means of sexual pleasure. A discovery of 2 Hustler magazine in the basement followed. The closest I would get to an adult film would be the softcore Cinemax flicks at late night. Then there was the curiosity of the back room in a video store.

Video stores of yesteryear had the forbidden room. The room in the back where they kept all the adult titles. You knew that behind those beaded curtains, unknown pleasures await.

Directors like Gerard Damiano, Andy Milligan, Chuck Vincent, Henri Pachard, Roberta Findlay, Doris Wishman, Alex DeRenzy, Wakefield Poole, Bob Chinn.
Stars like John Holmes, Desiree Costeau, Jamie Gillis, Samantha Fox, Vanessa Del Rio, Annette Haven, Joey Silvera, Seka, Nina Hartley, and Veronica Hart.

The stigma of adult film of the 70's, is that its depiction in mainstream film is that of stag loops. There's that scene in Taxi Driver where Travis takes Betsy to an adult movie and it's a series of loops. Mainstream media has long depicted porn from the viewpoint of having its faced pressed up against the window and not actually going into the store.

Joe Rubin, one of the founders of Vinegar Syndrome, had this to say in an interview regarding the subject: "Pornography is a word which allows viewers to have their expectations closed off. This is true of any genre based terminology. When you apply a word that has a common, popular definition to a work it becomes easy to try and figure out how that works fits into the term, not to look at the work on its own merits and apply terms after the fact."

There's an inevitability when talking about adult film where you have to talk about the change from film to video. It's Floyd Gondolli telling Jack Horner that the future of porn is video. Amateurs and not professionals. Butter in my ass and lollipops in my mouth. There is a truth that rings loud and clear in Jack Horner's romantization of film. Yesterday was The Opening of Misty Beethoven. Today it's Brazzers and Bang Bros.

What struck me most when digging into the adult films of the 70s and 80s was the range of style and influences present in the works. There is a bounty of quality porno chic works of the 70's but for now I'm going to focus on just two.

Radley Metzger took the legitamacy of porn in the 70's further with Naked Came the Stranger and The Opening of Misty Beethoven. Radley got his start filming trailers for Ingmar Bergman and Francois Truffaut. He would cite Orson Welles, Michael Powell and Alain Resnais as influences on his work. Naked Came the Stranger was released in 1975 and signaled the ambitions of this director. He would direct under the name Henry Paris, a pseudonym he would use on his next set of films of which he is best known for. As big as Stranger was, it was Misty Beethoven that would be deemed his 'Citizen Kane'. Multiple takes, keeping the frame busy with constant movement. This wasn't common in adult film.

Cinematographer Paul Glickman helped push the visual elegance beyond what was possible for most adult cinema. The location shooting in Paris and it's red light district brough this European softcore tone to the shoot. The level of production value for a blue movie was unheard of at the time.

A sexualized version of Pygmalion, Constance Money plays the titular character whose sexual escapades gets the attention of Dr. Seymour Love. Played by one of the more famous adult actors, Jamie Gillis. Dr. Love makes a bet with his friend Geraldine that he can transform a common street whore into the next "Goldenrod Girl", a distinction awarded by high society. What you get is a deliciously funny farce that doen't bother cutting away when the sex gets explicit.

The scene with the three waiters is something to behold.



Then there's the centerpiece: the pegging scene with Ras Kean and Gloria Leonard. Soundtracked to John Moran's Rebel, it was the first time pegging was shown in an adult film. Among the other cast members, there is Casey Donovan. A gay porn actor most notable for...well, let's just jump right into it.

Since we covered straight porn, let's look at the other side of the lens with gay porn. The one that started it all: Boys In the Sand.



Boys In the Sand starts out on the beach with two beautiful naked men. Shot on Fire Island, a place where the LGBTQ community flourished. The guys in this movie are cut. Casey Donovan was even marked as "every gay man's fantasy" in the review.
It's a genuinely well shot film. He doesn't There's a great documentary on Amazon that chronicles the life of director Wakefield Poole called I Always Said Yes: The Many Lives of Wakefield Poole.

In the commentary, Wakefield mentions how the movie starts out with innocence, moves into knowledge of one's self, then ends with decadance.

Yeah, but where do I start? 

New to 70's hardcore? Lemme help. I'm not too far into it myself. Yet. But my first experience was Hot and Saucy Pizza Girls with John Holmes and one of my favorite adult film stars in Desiree Cousteau. It is directed by Bob Chinn and it's a movie where you can cut all the hardcore out and you still get a story. It's a comedic farce but an enjoyable story nonetheless. It also doesn't overstay it's welcome at a lean 76 minutes. It's pretty cheap on Vinegar Syndrome's site. I mean it's pizza and porn. You should be salivating over the winning combination. So put the 'za the oven, grab a tissue, get to work and try not to just lazily turn it off after you're done.