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70s High 'Art' Porn

Started by Blumf, May 03, 2017, 11:17:30 PM

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Blumf

in the The Film Screenshot Game 2 thread...

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on May 03, 2017, 10:17:04 PM
QuoteThe 70s Alice in Wonderland upmarket porn film from...[googles]...1976.
It is, and it's one of my favourite musicals as well. It's a shame it features hard core porn in a lot of ways, as much as I am normally a fan of such stuff there's really no need for it as the performances are (mostly) strong and the songs are really great.

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on May 03, 2017, 10:36:44 PM
That's genuinely the only reason I watched it, as I started a thread a while back about unusual musicals and someone recommended it. It's here in full: https://www.xvideos.com/video1010157/alice_in_wonderland_-_an_x-rated_musical_fantasy - but obviously nsfw - I'd suggest skipping forward to the 5 minute point to see that the songs are actually decently produced.

Edit: At 45 minutes 45 seconds there's a short but funny song called "What's A Nice Girl Like You Doing On A Knight Like This", but that's more nsfw than the previous song.

There was a period in the 70s where porn was getting ideas above it's station. Bigger budgets, fancier scripts, pretensions of being mainstream. Sometimes they even got close, like the dual version of Caligula (1979)

But, for whatever reasons, the 80s happened and that ground-breaking spirit disappeared, possible because of VHS. Nowadays, we've got full on video grumble on tap, you can see tits and everything, is it time to revisit big production porn as a mainstream concept? Could a big name director get a classy R18 into multiplexes? And ignoring the many hurdles that would take, would we even want that?

And whilst we debate that, we can go over the films of that bygone era.

Sydward Lartle

A couple of years ago I decided to check out some of the 'famous' porn films, the ones that even people who have no interest in pornography whatsoever will have heard of - Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door, Debbie Does Dallas and so on, as well as some of the notorious 'roughies' like Forced Entry, Sex Wish and the Taming of Rebecca.

Guess what? They were all fucking shit. Bad acting, bad direction, bad writing, bad photography, you name it. Even Al Goldstein, the editor of Screw magazine, once candidly observed that "porn is basically dull" - and it is. Yes, it helps if you find the lead actors attractive, or if the porn in question floats your boat, but watching these 'classics'... well, to quote Eddie Hitler, "I've had bigger stiffies watching Playbus."

And Robert Kerman was much better in Cannibal Holocaust.

Small Man Big Horse

As soon as I saw it I thought I might've influenced this thread! Can't say a lot about the 70's higher budget porn as Alice An X-Rated Musical is the only one I've seen, though I feel I should watch Caligula one day just for the experience. As for modern porn, well of course there's Michael Winterbottom's Nine Songs, which I quite liked despite most people not doing so, and Gasper Noe's Love, which I've yet to see due to poor reviews. I couldn't help but worry that Nine Songs was exploiting it's actors at the time and did feel a bit uncomfortable about that aspect, but after a quick bit of research just now neither seems to have any regrets about appearing in the film which is something at least.

mothman

If you can have quite explicit violence in a film, then I guess in theory there's no reason why you couldn't have explicit sex as well. In theory. But would you need to? Really?

The current vogue for big(ish)-budget porn parodies of mainstream films (your Axel Braun ouevre) kinda provides a test case. To pick an example at random, there was a quite-well-done Tron 2 parody (called, of course, Pron) and a couple of the scenes were very good and could probably be spliced into the actual real film without looking out of place from a production-standards perspective (the scene with Zoe Voss for example). But would it derail the proper film itself? I honestly don't know.

Looked at another way, would a Hollywood action film - I'm struggling to think of some high-profile example - be improved if the standard Hollywood sex scene within were expanded so you could totally see it going in and everything?

Sydward Lartle

I did, however, manage to uncover a British sex comedy from the seventies that amazingly isn't complete bollocks!

Outer Touch, AKA Spaced Out from 1979, with Ava Cadell, the late Glory Annan, Kate Ferguson and Tony 'I can't believe it's not Robin Askwith' Maiden, directed by Norman J. Warren of Inseminoid fame. Yeah, it's cheap, the effects are all nicked from Gerry Anderson's archive and it's not rip-roaring hilarious, but the women are nice-looking, the script's quite funny in places and the soundtrack's good... what more do you want?

Blumf

The talk of Hollywood actions films is very much the point. You get to see the bullets going in, so why not the wangers? I'm sure Paul Verhoeven could do a good job of both (and probably wanted to with Showgirls)

Quote from: Sydward Lartle on May 03, 2017, 11:40:29 PM
Outer Touch, AKA Spaced Out from 1979

I saw that a month or two back. If you like your Confessions Of... films (I do), it's certainly on par.

Saw Percy (1971) ages ago on TV, so I assume somewhat cut. That stood up (fnur) on it's own merits, script wise.

marquis_de_sad

Obligatory mention of the book Immoral Tales and the "Eurosleaze" it covers by directors like Jean Rollin, Jesus Franco, and many others. People like Alain Robbe-Grillet are covered in that book too, but his work doesn't really fit the thread subject (despite being full of nudity and sex obsessed).

As for the US, I like Radley Metzger's films. The Lickerish Quartet is definitely worth a watch.

Sin Agog

#7
Man, Jean Rollin's films are way too dreamy and atmospheric for me to think of them as anything other than some sort of pastoral horror sub-genre with the occasional ripped bodice.  Got the fuzzed out soundtrack to Shiver of the Vampires somewhere.

I seem to recall one genuinely highbrow 70s porno that happens to feature a bath of shit at one point.  Guess I'll have to go on a google safari to come up with the name. EDIT: It's Through the Looking Glass.  Hehe, it comes up just underneath the Burton movie in a google search.  I bet it's had a few accidental clicks in its time.

Oh, and probably shouldn't forget the Japanese take on all of this, Pink Film.  I think School of the Holy Beast may be one of only two I've seen, though.

I wonder if that chambara/samurai trilogy about the samurai who tortures wrongdoers by impaling them with his giant wang until they either talk or croak counts.  God, another one I need to look up the name of, though I do remember that, giant penis aside, they're superior samurai movies. Oh yeah, Hanzo the Razor.

mobias

People say the internet killed the porn business but the internet gave people what they want - endless fucking. People don't want plots and bad acting.  I just want to get straight to the Belgian spit roast. I don't want or need half an hours build up as to why its happening.

zomgmouse

Two directors I've not seen but whose work would undoubtedly fit in with this description: Borowczyk (Polish, arthouse, controversial but critically acclaimed) and Marins (Brazilian, trash, DIY, cult weirdo). Two sides of the same coin.

Sydward Lartle

The Amorous Milkan (1975).

Behold the film that, along with the nasty business of him knocking his wife about, ended Derren Nesbitt's career.

SteveDave

Quote from: Blumf on May 04, 2017, 12:05:06 AM

Saw Percy (1971) ages ago on TV, so I assume somewhat cut. That stood up (fnur) on it's own merits, script wise.

Based on a novel by Robyn Hitchcock's dad. Har. Cock.

imitationleather

Quote from: mobias on May 04, 2017, 08:41:15 AM
People say the internet killed the porn business but the internet gave people what they want - endless fucking. People don't want plots and bad acting.  I just want to get straight to the Belgian spit roast. I don't want or need half an hours build up as to why its happening.

Basically this. I have watched some of the '70s and early '80s stuff and was surprised by the amount of effort put in to the production but basically I'm not going to watch porn for entertainment or with someone. It's because I'm turned on and need a speedy release. There was just no format for it to be instantly delivered back then. Oh yeah, jazz mags. So weird to look at them now. Impossible to imagine how you could wank over one.

I remember in the Tate Modern watching a video of an artist who had sold herself for some stupid sum. Standing there with a group of people watching them have sex in a hotel room and having to be serious was so terribly boring and unsexy it nearly put me off doing it. Only nearly, mind! It's what has always made me unattracted to the idea of a real life orgy.

QDRPHNC

Aside from the better production values and such, one of the things I find interesting about 70s porn is how some of it is almost like childish fantasies of sexual situations, before you'd ever experienced them. Almost wholesome compared to what you get these days, jesus.

imitationleather

Nah mate. Same themes present. Lots of '70s and '80s incest and inter-racial stuff. It's just the normal ones are what get talked about. It's like today where you get weird stuff on the front page of PornHub and you think "Who watches that?" And the answer is loads of people.

I am not saying inter-racial and incest sex are the same! Just that the porn back then went down taboo roads too.

QDRPHNC

Quote from: imitationleather on May 04, 2017, 07:01:45 PM
Nah mate. Same themes present. Lots of '70s and '80s incest and inter-racial stuff. It's just the normal ones are what get talked about. It's like today where you get weird stuff on the front page of PornHub and you think "Who watches that?" And the answer is loads of people.

I am not saying inter-racial and incest sex are the same! Just that the porn back then went down taboo roads too.

I didn't say all of it, did I? Wrong. O

prwc

Quote from: Sydward Lartle on May 03, 2017, 11:30:50 PMnotorious 'roughies' like Forced Entry, Sex Wish and the Taming of Rebecca.

I like those films for how scummy they are, they're just exploitation films with more explicit sex really, but they don't even approach "art" (thankfully).

For more artsy experimental stuff it seems the gay porn of the time was much more adventurous. Fred Halsted's LA Plays Itself being a terrific example. It must be one of the very few XXX films the MoMA holds a print of. The filmmakers Wakefield Poole, Jack Deveau and Peter De Rome all made some excellent works clearly influenced by Kenneth Anger and other avant-garde filmmakers of the time. Then there's Gary Graver, better known as a cinematographer and Orson Welles associate than director in his own right.

Hetero examples I can think of include High Rise (1973), The Devil In Miss Jones and Corruption (by Roger Watkins of Last House On Dead End Street infamy). And Wes Craven ventured into this area with his buried film Angela, The Fireworks Woman which is a surprisingly strong film, I'd rank it higher than most of his other output (though I'm not much of a fan of his admittedly).

The Rialto Report podcast is a must for anyone even slightly interested in vintage smut, this episode is an interview with the director of the aforementioned Through The Looking Glass (probably my favourite example of this kind of film).

billtheburger

I'm still intending to recreate the boat orgy scene from Caligula in Lego.

mobias

Quote from: imitationleather on May 04, 2017, 06:27:43 PM
Oh yeah, jazz mags. So weird to look at them now. Impossible to imagine how you could wank over one.


Don't agree with that I'm afraid. I shot my bolt all over an copy of Fiesta I found whilst clearing out some old boxes a few weeks back. I'd forgotten how much I used to enjoy sticking the pages together of a good porn mag in the pre internet days. There's something a bit more real about the sort of borderline boilers who appear in second rate jazz mags.

billtheburger

Quote from: Blumf on May 03, 2017, 11:17:30 PM
Could a big name director get a classy R18 into multiplexes? And ignoring the many hurdles that would take, would we even want that?
I don't know if I'd go to the cinema to watch one, but I wouldn't doubt the hoards of Fifty Shades of Grey crowds would do it for the laugh if it had come from a mass market bestselling paper back.

There is loads of authentic films that stick the grumble in.
Lars Von Trier literally sticks it in in Antichrist & Nymphomaniac & Chan-Wook's Thirst had some explicit unsimulated sex. They're probably the biggest names to get away with it.
The French stick some hardcore in now and then, Baise Moi, Catherine Breillat, Q (AKA Desire) etc.
There is a wholey underappreciated romantic Spanish film called Diet of Sex, which is practically full blown pornography.

Quote from: Blumf on May 03, 2017, 11:17:30 PM
And whilst we debate that, we can go over the films of that bygone era.
Of course.
What would you like to know?

Blumf


billtheburger

Some good stuff out there.
I have often spread my positive thoughts about the Danish Zodiac series, which are like a hardcore Carry On. I like some of the imaginative Alpha France releases like Pussy Talk. Josefine Mutzenbacher is a great tale of the road to being a brothel madame. The Opening of Misty Beethoven is mad as fuck, but superbly shot by Radley Metzger, as is The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann. And then there is Downstairs Upstairs which was the first hardcore film I got to see and, thus, will always be held in high regard.

And there's some poor.
The often highly regarded Johnny Wadd films (and big floppy cock) certainly didn't impress my wife. The Taboo series is just too uncomfortable for my tastes. The Vixens of Kung Fu should have been great, but is a bit of a let down - maybe this should be remade big budget.

& then there is Caligula. This is a film we sat through, pretty much mouth agape, thinking it was utter shite. But than as the days passed afterwards, we both began to realise that there are a lot of special things about it and it is certainly worth the 156 minute run time.

Epic Bisto

There's quite a bit of good seventies grot that's worth checking out. It can be a minefield when trying to find the good stuff, though.

Pussy Talk and Felicia are fine examples of well made and proper saucy porn, courtesy of the French. As for the Yanks (hurr), the late Radley Metzger's oeuvre is classy and professional, whether it's The Opening of Misty Beethoven, The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann or Barbara Broadcast. Larry Revene's Roommates is surprisingly sensitive and well acted - definitely one that the missus can watch as well.

On the less classy route, Henri Pachard's films are supposed to be quite good, but I've only seen Neon Nights. Good stuff that, as is The Ecstasy Girls, but that one's a nightmare to find uncut. For true masochists who love fucked up and deranged epics that guarantee no stiffies whatsoever, Waterpower and Femmes De Sade are pretty rough viewing.

I also highly recommend the Rialto Report podcast series. It's fantastic, thoroughly researched and presented very honestly and sensitively.


On the book front, Georgina Spelvin's The Devil Made Me Do It is essential as it charts the early years, how she quit being a ballet dancer and married life to join an anarchist film collective, which led to catering and then starring in The Devil In Miss Jones...more than anything, it provides fascinating insight into low budget filmmaking and all the behind-the-scenes stuff in addition to what she got up to in front of the camera. An excellent addition to anybody's bookshelf. Also, Jerry Butler's Raw Talent for catty gossip value alone. Larry Revene's book is supposed to be a corker too, and talks about the mob involvement with porn.

Chriddof

Quote from: Epic Bisto on May 20, 2017, 10:02:21 AM
For true masochists who love fucked up and deranged epics that guarantee no stiffies whatsoever, Waterpower and Femmes De Sade are pretty rough viewing.

I've not seen it, but isn't Waterpower the one film that Jonathan Ross wrote about in The Incredibly Strange Film Book, where he renamed it "The Enema Bandit"? I remember someone on this forum bringing that up a while ago and also claiming that Ross had apparently rather glossed over the nasty bits.

Epic Bisto


Jittlebags

Cafe Flesh is good, in a Sex Positive kinda way. As is the 1976 Alice one with Kristine de Belle. Erotic in a strange (and possibly not good) way is la Bete. Rossa Venezia, a Jess Franco involvement is a bit rubbish, although I quite like the Romana scene.

billtheburger

I took one for the team and watched Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass as a double bill.

The first was very entertaining and self aware. I especially liked the clapper boy being left in a shot during the final chase scene.

The second, however, was an extremely uncomfortable watch. It was borderline horror with no real reference to the Lewis Carroll story other than the title. The most interesting part is beyond the looking glass where we find a hellish landscape with depraved acrobats pissing into their own mouths.

Swoz_MK

Quote from: Jittlebags on May 21, 2017, 11:05:51 PM
Cafe Flesh is good, in a Sex Positive kinda way. As is the 1976 Alice one with Kristine de Belle.

I bloody love that film. I can sit and watch that like a "normal" movie without my hands going down my Spider-Man pyjama bottoms.
The music if fucking brilliant. I have found an original one-sheet on a couple of occasions but bottled buying it.