X-Rated the last days of Soft-core
‘So long as I am in the White House, there will be no relaxation of the national effort to control and eliminate smut from our national life.’ President Richard Nixon October 24th, 1970
This statement was in reply to ‘Obscenity and Pornography in America Commission.’ findings. During 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled ‘that people could read and look at whatever they wished in the privacy of their own homes’. This deeply concerned the U.S. Congress in the hope a more palatable approach to a threat to perceived American values and President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized a Presidential commission.
The Smut that had creped under and into the swinging sixties had been there a while, through various media portals, but it roots lay in the nineteenth century. As printing became increasingly economical, printed materials with a sexual content became more available, this had circulated relatively freely amongst the English speaking elites during the eighteenth century, but was now freely available. With this increased audience came an increase in demand, and with the increased demand came an increased supply. Because the audience was now more broad-based, the material became briefer, simpler, and more straightforward. Pamphlets were produced with just pictures so even literacy was no longer a requirement, from this production organizations of suppression sprung up, such as ‘The Society for the Suppression of Vice’ in the United Kingdom (UK), and the ‘Watch and Ward Society’ in Boston, and the ‘New York Society for the Suppression of Vice’ in the United States (U.S). The ‘New York Society for the Suppression of Vice’, created in 1873, was largely the product of Anthony Comstock he actively crusaded with various levels of success for greater restrictions on indecent materials, light literature, pool halls, lotteries, gambling dens, popular magazines, weekly newspapers, contraception, and abortion.
1890 brought the advent of the cine camera and with it the first pornographic film in 1896. Films depicting Nudes were widespread in the silent era up to 1920s but a USA moving towards prohibition and with the work of the ‘New York Society for the Suppression of Vice’ sexually explicit materials became exclusively clandestine, As censorship bills were introduced in many states and localities.In 1922, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America was formed by s to clean up the motion picture industry, many films were deemed to present too much nudity, sexuality, criminality and violence. The U.S Film market now had an industry standard which closed off access to the more risqué produced Local and European fair. With the advent of 16mm home cameras during the 1930s the ten minute. ‘stag films’ , ‘blue films ‘, ‘smokers’ or ‘coochies’ both hetro and homosexual in content were now able to be produced more efficiently by underground amateurs.
The first in America was in 1915 with ‘A Free Ride’ although there is no record of how many were produced and they were produced in almost all European, USA and some Latin American Countries The films were also circulated privately or by traveling salesman but being caught viewing their 10 minutes of smut or possessing them put one at the risk of prison these films basically remained the same until altered by censorship developments in the late sixties but they were the only real way to get illicit thrills.
In a post word war II era of the entrepreneur, pin ups and a cash rich audience, the smut peddlers started to get around Hollywood's choke-hold on theatres by "roadshowing" taking the film across the country and setting up anywhere and there was an incredible number of movie theaters These hucksters were working in a legal limbo they'd often have two prints, one "hot" and one "cold." or edit film on the road to get around the local laws, They would show anything that Hollywood wouldn’t touch relying on movement, individual state laws and greasing palms to stay ahead of the police. If nudity was implied in the advertising it get more bums on seats and the profits generated began to see an increase in these type of films, in 1954 a Nudist film ‘The Garden of Eden’ got a Federal Judgment ‘Nudity per se is not obscene’ the door was ajar.
Crashing through it came one Russ Meyer, wartime filmmaker, Playboy centerfold photographer and admirer unfeasibly large female superstructures. He produced a film ‘The Immoral Mr. Teas’ (1959) a film without any pretense of being nudist film more a peep show in the process he created a new genre the "nudie-cutie" film, it moved into the sixties with many imitators but was the first nudie film to make a profit over a million dollars(American), This led to a string of self-financed films four more nudies then others that slot into different genres of exploitation films gradually becoming more bizarre, violent, and acid washed as the decade fought to liberalize.
Because of cash flow issues he produced a quartet of monochrome sexploitation films but Meyer was obsessed with the double D-cup and gloried in hot-headed females, He knew how to package them for maximum effect representing what's most seductive and repulsive about the USA at this time these films are now called "roughies”
Lorna (1964), ,A stiff swirl of cotton-candy blond hair, lips like over-stuffed couches mating, a lethal weapon body—there was something plain wicked about Lorna Maitland Her terminally unimpressed scowl seemed to suggest that your balls were not long for this world,
Mudhoney (1965), Motor Psycho (1965),Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965). "Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Violence. The word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favourite mantle still remains - sex. Violence devours all it touches, its voracious appetite rarely fulfilled. Yet violence doesn't only destroy. It creates and moulds as well. Let's examine closely then this dangerously evil creation, this new breed encased and contained within the supple skin of woman
With more money he moved onto some colour features with:
Mondo Topless (1966), Common Law Cabin (1967), Good Morning and..Goodbye! (1967).
Again his films had ridiculous plots but common themes alluded to a drug-charged era of rebellion and musical revolution still linked with unfeasibly large knockers on kick ass women. In that newly permissive environment and the attempted censorship crusade the film production code became obsolete in late 1968 replaced by a new rating code, sexploitation films could nowshow full frontal nudity as well as simulated sex and be rated X. As a result these films now had to compete against increasingly racy Hollywood fare which had became much more graphic
Sexploitation film Vixen (1968) made Meyer a multimillionaire and propelled him into the arms of 20th-Century Fox and the new X-rating was given to his first film with them, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), It was an enormous hit, but after the lukewarm reception for ‘The Seven Minutes’ a mediocre, thrill-free thriller that Meyer coughed up in 1971,He went his own way, self financing a Blaxploitation period piece Black Snake (1973), which was dismissed by critics and audiences as incoherent in 1975; he released Supervixens, a return to the world of big bosoms, square jaws, and the Mojave Desert that earned $17 million (American) on a shoestring budget.
But by the early seventies, Meyer might have won the battle with his jiggle flicks but he'd lost the war. Less than five years after establishing sex as a crucial cinema experience (in 1968, one Chicago theatre owner reported that patrons were actually buying tickets just to see Vixen's racy coming-attractions trailer), the independent moviemaker discovered he'd inadvertently opened a porndora's box, as stag films merged with Meyers low-budget bra-busters and became 1970s porn or hard-core.
It was not until the early sixties when the Supreme Court began actively to scrutinize the contents of material found to be obscene, its attempt at prosecutions largely failed. Resulting that by the late sixties obscenity regulation generally became dormant, with a consequent proliferation of openly explicit material.
During 1969 hard-core pornography (depicting explicit penetration.) was legalized in the Netherlands & Denmark and this led to an explosion of commercially produced pornography with Sweden following in 1970. Due to Censorship apathy being a pornographer was now a more legitimate occupation. In 1968, theatres’ in San Francisco and Los Angeles started showing silent, "Beaver" and "Split Beaver" Film graphic colour films had near anatomical manipulation of female genitalia, despite forced police raids the films were being openly shown in a theatatrical context. Plus vast amounts of smuggled Nordic pornography were being to appear. This very quickly led to Deep Throat(1972) becoming the first hard-core film produced in the U.S it became the most profitable and widely played sex film in history reportedly grossed $100 million after an initial $22,000 investment. It featured a sort of plot and attempts at humor but was a cultural juggernaut.
In 1972 Nixon was re-elected with a landslide by March 1974 Richard Nixon was gone, a victim of his own sleaze, Hollywood, filmmakers were increasingly using sexual content and ultimately the video recorder would render soft-core obsolete. By the late seventies Meyer was left with no audience as the hard-core hucksters peddled their XXX-rated titles. Meyer called it quits after Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens (1979) unwilling to get down in the mud or to make a film in a Motel room in a day.
The works here depict what was exciting about pornographic films in the heady days of the late sixties early seventies a time when funk music ruled the air waves, hair and lapels were big, a maverick breastmeister was corrupting society and censor were blowing a gasket about soft-core. Illicit thrills were gained from the imagination of what could be seen, lobby cards, posters and post cards screamed full frontal female nudity or championed big breasted bad assed women which were enough to send men idiotic with anticipation but they rarely delivered but made a lot of seedy men in raincoats happy.
As Meyer knew once you've unwrapped them, the thrill is gone.
Notes
In 1969, President Richard Nixon made his only appointment to the President's commission on pornography, which had been begun under Nixon's predecessor.
Puritan attorney Charles Keating had founded the Cincinnati anti-pornography organization ‘Citizens for Decent Literature’ in 1971, the Bible-thumping Keating unsuccessfully tried to stop the showing in Cincinnati of the Russ Meyer film Vixen! Saying ‘More than anyone else in his time, Russ Meyer was responsible for the decay of values in American society’
Russ Meyer who died in 2004 had "I was glad to do it." Cut into his tomb stone
In January 1993 Charles Keating was convicted of racketeering and fraud in both state and federal court after his Lincoln Savings & Loan collapsed, costing the taxpayers $3.4 billion. Although Overturned on Appeal it’s an ongoing saga.
Sexploitation or "sex-exploitation" a class of independently produced, low budget feature films generally associated with the 1960s and serving largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit sexual situations and/or gratuitous nudity. The term is often considered to designate a subgenre of exploitation films as a whole. Sexploitation films were generally exhibited in urban grindhouse theatres, the precursor to the adult movie theaters of the 1970s and '80s that featured hardcore content. The term soft-core is often used to designate non-explicit sexploitation films after the general legalization of hardcore content. Nudist and Roughie films are often considered to be subgenres of the sex-exploitation genre.
Black exploitation, or "blaxploitation" films, are made with black actors, ostensibly for black audiences, and about stereotypically African American subjects such as slum life, drugs, and prostitution. A prominent theme was African-Americans overcoming the Man through cunning and violence.
Mondo films, often called shockumentaries, are quasi-documentary films that focus on sensationalized topics, such as exotic customs from around the world or gruesome death footage. Similar to shock exploitation, the goal of Mondo films is to be shocking to the audience not only because they deal with taboo subject matter (for instance, foreign sexual customs or varieties of violent behavior in various societies), but because the on-camera action is allegedly real. Though some Mondo films contain certain amounts of educational material, it is chosen in order to shock its audience.
