I’ve never pretended to be a perfect person, nor have I tried to hide my slightly tarnished past. In fact, I think it’s made me more interesting, and a bit less judgmental. During the first decade of the 2000’s I produced a plethora of Playboy and ‘Skinimax’ films along with some racy television shows. I was never involved with hardcore pornography, but, along the way I did meet people like Cecil Howard and Howard Ziehm who’d been part of a period from 1970 thru 1984 that some nostalgically call, “The Golden Age of Porn.” These colorful characters shared tales from that outlaw filmmaking period. On another occasion I met a retired first amendment attorney, who’s courtroom stories were even more entertaining.
So, armed with a little knowledge I set forth to answer one of those nagging questions… why did seventies adult films have elaborate plots and how did they devolve into today’s plotless sex rodeos? Hint: If you think it was all about artists trying to create something notable and elevate the genre… Well, guess again.
Answering this eternal question means hopping into the Wayback Machine, traveling back to the dawn of smut films—1893. Yup, that’s when Thomas Edison invented the first movie camera, known as the kinetoscope. Historians estimate it was about twenty minutes before some rakish Edison employee convinced a woman to undress in front of their newfangled machine—and an industry was born! The first confirmed erotic film was 1896’s “Bedtime for the Bride,” shot, naturally, in Paris.
In 1915 America jumped onto the blue movie bandwagon with the nine-minute hitchhiking opus, “A Free Ride.” This crude short became the template for every stag film that followed. Its leading man even sports the world’s first porn ‘stash, which actually falls off at one point. Historians estimate that 90% of the films made before 1929 are lost forever, but, somehow, “A Free Ride” survived. That’s amazing considering it was printed on explosive nitrate stock—hot stuff indeed. It’s even part of the Kinsey Institute library! Hundreds of virtually identical stag reels followed.
These shorts were screened in brothels, stag parties and at men’s social clubs such as the Shriners and Masons. Usually, some roguish entrepreneur would drive around a regional circuit armed with a trunk load of dirty films, a projector and a dream. These daring smut peddlers were rarely arrested because organizations like The Shriners and Masons counted local sheriffs and judges among its membership. Such pillars of local virtue weren’t about to jeopardize their clandestine evenings of whiskey, cigars and dirty movies by arresting the delivery boy. In more rural districts this wandering projectionist could increase his profits by providing the booze and cigars. Hey you know, that story could be turned into a funny movie!
Somewhere along the line, organized crime jumped into this lucrative racket. By mid-century the mob had factories cranking out one reel ‘loops’ to run in peep shows, or sell on 8mm film to collectors. Knowing they had a good thing going, the mobsters kept their product out of real movie theaters. That domain was left to a group of semi legitimate film producers, collectively known as “The Forty Thieves.”
During the mid-fifties the Forty Thieves grew increasingly bold, shooting salacious low budget films solely to exhibit brief flashes of female skin. But audiences wanted to see more. 1954’s “The Garden of Eden” introduced the nudist camp film—a sub-genre devoted solely to naked people playing volleyball. But New York’s district attorney wasn’t a sports fan, and busted the producer for obscenity.
In a landmark court case, a judge ruled that nudist films weren’t obscene because they depicted a legitimate ‘lifestyle.’ In the blink of an eye, theaters were flooded with nudist camp movies, depicting naked people doing everything EXCEPT having sex. All of these films are chaste, silly and mind numbingly boring, but they introduced the concept of socially redeeming content being protected by law—and that was about to become important.
This opened the door to hundreds of soft-core sexploitation films. Often these were dark, violent affairs where carnal behavior was always punished… but not until the final reel! These softcore sickies continued into the seventies, growing more daring with each year. But the producers stuck to the credo of, “Sell the sizzle, not the steak,” by never showing a glimpse of male or female genitalia, and NEVER actual sex. This self-censorship kept them out of legal trouble, while packing inner city grindhouses. This balancing act worked for years, with sexploitation films playing in movie theaters, while hardcore loops were consigned to peep shows and floating underground emporiums. Everything was fine, as long as nobody rocked the boat. Guess what happened?
In 1970 an enterprising porn loop producer named Bill Osco released, “Mona, the Virgin Nymph”—the first feature length hardcore film with an actual plot. It only cost seven thousand dollars, but grossed an estimated two million. More hardcore films followed, including “Plan Nine from Outer Space” director Ed Wood’s “Necromania.”
These films were high risk endeavors that could land distributors and theater owners in legal hot water. Theaters showing hardcore pornographic films could be busted and the owners hauled into court. But, with the right lawyer, that cinema could continue to operate during the prosecution. The free publicity ensured packed houses and high profits that outweighed the fines—it was a calculated risk.
The real legal danger lay in transporting pornography between distributors and theaters. Shipping obscene material through the mail, or across state lines, was a federal crime with potential prison time. Those laws were tested in 1973 with the case of Miller v. California. Marvin Miller, a peddler of porn magazines and books had been busted under a law stating, ‘Every person who distributes or aids in distributing obscene material is guilty of a misdemeanor.’ A jury found Miller guilty of enough misdemeanors to add up to real jail time, but he appealed to the supreme court. That highest of legal bodies declared that, ‘All ideas having the slightest redeeming social importance has the full protection of the guaranties of the first amendment and that obscenity was that which was utterly without redeeming social importance.’ Their inclusion of the word ‘slightest,’ opened the floodgates!
Distributors of pornography, including organized crime families, could now protect themselves by ensuring their films had ‘redeeming social importance.’ That could be achieved by creating something that vaguely resembled a real movie. If they were busted, a first amendment attorney could argue the film’s wafer-thin social merits. Frightened local prosecutors avoided such legal cases, fearing they’d just deplete their municipality’s budget, while the theater owner could continuously top off his legal war chest by showing the controversial film. Law enforcement settled for relocating porn theaters to the outskirts of town, where they could operate without upsetting too many registered voters. Many of these “specialty theaters,” or “art houses,” like the thirty plus “Pussycat Cinema” chain were owned outright by organized crime.
The tactic didn’t always work. In 1972 the most famous X-Rated film, “Deep Throat” was put on trial for obscenity. “Throat” lost, with judge Joel Tyler declaring it, ‘A feast of carrion and squalor, and a Sodom and Gomorrah gone wild before the fire.’ But the filmmakers were only fined one hundred thousand dollars, while the ensuing publicity turned “Deep Throat” into one of the most profitable films ever made—proving that appearing legitimate was a winning strategy, even when you lost!
Appearing legitimate forced crime families like the Colombos, who’d financed “Deep Throat,” to partner up with filmmakers who actually knew what they were doing. Unlike today’s streamlined video productions, the process of shooting, editing and releasing a feature film was technically complex, requiring 35mm film equipment, editing, optical work, negative cutting, sound mixing and release prints. Even the most braindead porn film required smart people behind the camera. As a result, a legion of struggling filmmakers jumped into the X-rated market, bringing their artistic aspirations and pretensions with them. Noted directors like Wes Craven and Abel Ferrara cut their teeth in the 1970’s adult film arena.
But artistic pretension was also a winning legal strategy. Adult filmmakers like Radley Metzger made a point of adapting classic literary works into X-Rated films. His, “The Opening of Misty Beethoven,” is a reworking of “Pygmalion”… because nothing screams redeeming social value like attaching George Bernard Shaw! 1973’s “The Devil in Miss Jones” is a reasonably faithful adaptation of Jean-Paul-Sartre’s existentialist play “No Exit.”
These Wanna be Scorsese’s were willing to shoot hardcore sex to get their stories onscreen, while real life “Goodfellas” let them shoot whatever pseudo artistic nonsense they wanted… as long as they included plenty of graphic sex. It was a weird marriage of convenience.
All this newfound pretension spawned an alternate Hollywood style star system, with actresses and actors (to a lesser degree) becoming box office draws. This led to Hollywood style industry magazines, specialty film critics and awards shows. Better made films started earning more money, while also being less likely to attract legal problems.
But this newfound legitimacy also spawned a clever scam—a reverse take on Mel Brooks’s “The Producers” that went like this: even if the mob’s latest porno film wasn’t a financial hit, its all-star cast, publicity and critical reviews made it APPEAR successful. That allowed organized crime to use the dirty cash they’d made from gambling, drugs and prostitution to legally buy thousands of movie tickets. This trick instantly laundered the money, while sending it right back to the bosses—a virtually perfect crime! The mob bosses eventually got caught by stupidly allowing tiny porno theaters to sell more tickets than Madison Square Garden. Hey, nobody said these guys were geniuses.
This heyday of scripted, semi competent and occasionally elegant smut went on until roughly 1984. That’s when VCR’s became widely available and video killed the porno star. The concept of watching adult films at home took off like a rocket. More importantly, obscenity laws did not apply to what people viewed in the privacy of their own homes. All those adult theaters were bulldozed, and the pretense of redeeming social value was buried with them. Cheap, plotless, shot on video content quickly became the new industry standard.
The crime families who’d thrived in the quasi-legal world were now dinosaurs watching an asteroid hurtling down at them. Even the mob couldn’t control thousands of individual video stores. Once they lost control of the distribution they stepped out of production, paving the way for legitimate, if still shady, companies like Vivid Entertainment to take their place. Ironically, today’s largest financiers of pornographic films are AT&T and Comcast, who’s satellite broadcast license fees provide the porn world’s fiscal bedrock.
In an amusing sidenote, starting in the mid 1990’s all those cash fat adult video companies sank millions into developing technologies to post and stream their content online, anticipating huge revenues. In their haste they never bothered to figure out how to protect their products, essentially putting a revolver to their own heads. Online piracy ultimately killed dozens of major porn companies.
The moral of the story? The only thing more short-sighted, greedy and stupid than the mafia is corporate America.
Now, for some genuine, well plotted, action packed entertainment check out my horror novel PRIMEVAL WATERS, available in paperback or eBook wherever books are sold.
