Bad Bad Gang Ain't Bad At All

Released via Synapse's Impulse label, John Donne's BAD BAD GANG is a worthy companion to Impulse's previously released FARMER'S DAUGHTERS.

Definitely X-Rated and featuring plenty of rape and anti-social behavior, it, nevertheless, keeps the violence very soft and rapes not too far left of consensual.

Shot in Orange County, California on the backroads of Modjeska Peak mountain and the Silverado Canyon area, it's an interesting attempt by early XXX-rated filmmakers to blend a Roger Corman-style biker pic with porn, which was on the rise at the time.

Simple premise sees two couples holidaying in a trailer ambushed by a gang of dim-witted bikers. Two women are carried off to a nearby cave where they are tied up, sexed up, and roughed up by said bikers while the biker molls look on in disgust. That disgust becomes a desire to get even with their leather jacketed partners for the molls, so they return to the trailer to fuck the men folk who lost their ladies to the gang.

All ends reasonably happily.

The reason to watch this scratched-up slice of exploitation is for the sleazy sex and 70's attitude. The hardcore, fortunately, doesn't obsess itself with blowjobs –– instead, the ladies and gents engage in a lot of cunnilingus and some standard intercourse –– and the coverage of the sex is pretty creative. Lesbian fans won't be disappointed, either, because not a female in the cast (including Rene Bond) doesn't dive between the thighs of her sister at some point in the proceedings.

BAD BAD GANG is let down somewhat by the poorly staged violence, and it's very apparent that director Donne did not know much about staging anything but fucking and sucking when he made this baby. An opening sequence of the bikers following the trailer down a country road is high end for a pic of this ilk, but it doesn't stay that way for long.

Kudos to Impulse for dredging up this relic and re-instating scenes cut from general release prints. This is as complete as it gets.

I always love seeing a new roughie, but it's always disappointing, too, to discover that most were rarely directed by anyone with serious filmmaking chops. Nevertheless, for fans of sleaze that isn't quite as hardcore as the marketing suggests, this is a nice gift.

Whipping Up Some Golden Age Book Bondage

From WR (Whip and Rope Publications) comes a title that triggers no confusion: A. deGranamour's MELISSA'S BONDAGE DEBUT.

The author was prolific in this niche, and often branched into erotica with a historical perspective such as SADISTIC PIONEERS.

This also featured pencil drawings by a "Ms. Jackie".

A title that purported to be a serious examination of spanking culture, but was little more than juicy anecdotes.

It always helps to list an M.D. on the cover.

Author G. Bennett Lockwood sounds serious.

"The Well-Spanked Farmgirl" from Wyndham Press (writer not noted), a publisher not affiliated with a similarly-named firm specializing in educational tomes, is adorned with some simple, evocative art. Of course, one could argue that the above is an education.

Again, no author mentioned, although some sources identify the author as Jaime Maran.

Female Teacher: In Front of the Students

What's to be said about Yasuro Uegaki's Female Teacher: In Front of the Students (just out from Impulse/Synapse) is all good. Very, very good, in fact.

Nikkatsu, the old Japanese film studio that, after sixty years, suddenly turned dark and erotic to make ends meet, has, admittedly, made its share of lame efforts such as Nympho Diver and I Like It From Behind, both recently released by Impulse/Synapse. I suppose some folks bought them, but, for mine, they have little appeal because they're doing nothing that hundreds of British and American softcore porn flicks haven't already done.

You can't say the same about Nikkatsu flicks like Assault - Jack The Ripper, Rape!, White Rose Campus - Then, Everybody Gets Raped, Sex Hunter - Wet Target, Sex Hunter (the Ikeda film), Secret Chronicle - She Beast Market, and Zoop Up - Rape Site. All of these feature exploitation elements that are very culture-specific, and do not shun the sticky mix of sexual violence and eroticism that many Western films are afraid of.  Although S/M is being mainstreamed (and reduced to blandly flavored vanilla) by works of dubious literary merit such as 'Fifty Shades of Grey' (a massive bestseller), its harsher, more incendiary essence has been shaved away.

Nothing is shaved away in Impulse/Synapse's Female Teacher: In Front of the Students, a truly subversive Nikkatsu flick that some would describe as "troubling" for its perspective on rape. To take its politics too seriously would be to misunderstand its intentions. It is, afterall, a skin flick for a skin flick audience, so it takes a fantasy often imagined by women to its natural end point. If you think it condones the view that a raped woman can be sexually charged by the resulting trauma, you're projecting too hard. This is fantasy Japan-style, not reality.

The pretty Rushia Santo is 'Reiko', a new teacher at an elite high school. Forced to discipline a group of spoilt brats led by the particularly nasty Takuya (Toru Nakane), she finds herself intimidated by the boy. After an unnerving exchange with the group, Reiko is raped in one of the school's showers. Humiliated, she doesn't report the rape, but she keeps a piece of a jigsaw puzzle dropped at the scene by the masked rapist. Over the next few days, she attempts to identify her attacker, and flashes back to key images of the rape, but  her search is sidelined by a series of highly erotic seductions that relight the fire of the incident.

Like Toshiharu Ikeda's little-seen Sex Hunter (not be confused with Sex Hunter - Wet Target) and the notorious Captured For Sex 2, Female Teacher: In Front of the Students exudes an atmosphere of sexual nihilism and abandon that is downright intoxicating. Director Uegaki demonstrates a superb eye and flair for dark eroticism, and creates a seventy minute masterpiece that sucks us into a sexual maelstrom while never ignoring the story's emotional journey. Santo is excellent as a woman on an odyssey of deep exploration, and delivers a strong emotional, physical, and intensely sexual performance as a teacher torn between tradition and the delicious call of the dark.

The film has an amazing look. It's gritty and beautiful all at once, and the compositions, subtle camera moves, and extreme close-ups are striking. The sex runs the gamut from hetero to lesbian, and there is a potent threeway worked into the mix. The narrative never flags, and the sense of anxiety experienced by Reiko is always felt by the audience.

A great selection from Impulse/Synapse, and, hopefully, a sign of the direction future releases will take. Films like this offer a rare and exotic glimpse into the human mind, and underline why nobody does it better than the Japanese.

Captive Women of Pulpy Porn

 

They were a product of the good old days when the good old days meant there was a big difference between fantasy and reality. Now, because of ambitious DA's and politicians, the lines have been deliberately blurred.

There's still a yawning chasm between the real and the imagined, but you wouldn't know it.

On-line porn favors some of the scenarios here, but most of it is cheap and shabby and lacking imagination.

Hopefully, text-based pornography will endure in digital form if not on paper, even though these very fine examples of the genre scream for a revival.

The fellow on the left looks decidedly ape-like, and the rural setting would not have been out of place in Craven's Last House on the Left. Surely a role for the late David Hess?
  

 

Enthusiastic biker does his thing as the victim's husband (?) considers the ramifications of abandoning his drink in favor of rescue.

The figure behind him (a black man?) appears relatively unconcerned and marginally disfigured. 

It made most middle class readers comfortable to think that, on the w(hole) sex criminals were deformed tragics and uneducated hicks. A young Ted Bundy may have had a different opinion. 

 

 

The cameraman is a terrific touch here, his activities pre-dating an era (now) where filming the sex act has become extremely common. He's using one of those great old cameras with the rotating lenses. A good choice for illicit porno making, my friend!

The use of the long phallus seems very matter-of-fact with the male showing little emotion.

 

Another photographic opportunity pre-internet with wide distribution doubtful... lucky for the lady perhaps?

These days, one photograph is forever.

Back then, most photos ended up in someone's locked desk drawer or buried between pages in a nondescript book, far from the wife's prying eyes.

Another reason the 70's may have been the good old days for some.

 

The Captive Women Series stretched (excuse the pun) to hundreds and hundreds of titles and were a bargain at $2.50 apiece. Now, many sell for over $100. 

Related:

The Current State of Mind

For the past few months, I've found writing about movies a difficult proposition. Only one film, Sion Sono's brilliant Himizu, has truly captured my head and heart; the rest -- and I'm talking The Dark Night Returns, The Campaign, Lawless, The Expendables 2,  The Master, and Samsara -- have fallen short.

Is good cinema in decline, or have I become jaded after hitting close to 5000 movies seen (!)?

I'm afraid I can't answer that one.

I'm looking at X-rated cinema with different glasses, too.

For the first time in decades, explicit depictions of sex are boring me to tears. In the past, I'd pick up special editions of Golden Age porn flicks like Inside Annie Sprinkle as soon as they hit the stands. Have I put money down for the same company's  The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann? Not yet. Does the upcoming restoration of Chuck Vincent's Roommates and Misty Beethoven excite me? Somewhat. And I'll pick it up eventually. But the thrill has diminished.

Then there's my recent reaction to another type of porn

My face hit the pavement two years ago when a good friend introduced me to a series of really harsh web porn segments going under titles like Facial Abuse, Deface Her Face, etc. I've always been curious to see everything I can get my hands on as a type of tolerance test, but these vids just depressed me. They depressed me even more than usual. I expose myself to a lot of traumatic material, and I never know how I'll react to it, but these vids made me sad for the "performers" who are paid probably next to nothing by asshole porn producers who get off on debasing these girls.

Yes, the girls are getting paid and are signing release forms, so I'm not saying that anything illegal is happening, although that could be debated, but I am saying I don't find it titillating or engaging to watch a bullying asshole belittle, verbally insult, and ruin a young woman's day (or month, or year) under the cover of a "professional job".  As a human being, I find it hard to watch such harsh treatment of fellow human beings. This stuff isn't "acting" -- it's mean-spirited reality.

I don't think most porn is debasing. The majority of it is pretty vanilla with little actual "abuse" content. The depressing part was seeing cute young ladies "abused" with no thought to their pleasure at all. These are not roughies like Forced Entry, Hot Night in the City, or Weekend Fantasy -- they're just cheap vids shot in a room with crappy production values, a single camera, and a single male hurling abuse, while having his ugly penis sucked by a crying girl.

What bothers me most about porn of the face-fucking variety is its totally one-sided construction. And most of the guys in these videos come across as bullying assholes, which they clearly are, and I never get any sense that they actually like women. Remember the late Jamie Gillis? He made some harsh movies, and many of them involved rape scenarios and brutal games. But one never felt that Jamie actually disliked the women. On the contrary, he was deeply into these women, and the scenarios always came across as even-handed, even when one partner was dominant and the other was submissive.

Yes, there's a market for this stuff, but that doesn't mean it's not depressing to watch, especially if you view sex as the most fun when its reciprocal or at least "controlled" by both parties.

The one thing I've never liked about porn of any kind is the emphasis on blow jobs. I hate porn blow jobs. I don't want to watch some guy's penis being sucked in a big close-up. I also don't want to see a close-up of another man's hairy balls swinging as he saws in and out of a lass's insides. I prefer the emphasis being on the women. That's probably why lesbian porn appeals to men. It's totally female-focused. We see the female body without some guy's ass crack obscuring the view.

Personally, I love seeing women pleasing other women with their tongues. It's super-intimate and the women usually love it if it's done right. For me, at least, it pushes the right buttons. I have no trouble deriving vicarious pleasure from the act of one woman loving another.

My current blah attitude to porn has a lot to do with the lack of true affection on screen. I want to see people who are really, really into each other. When a guy is hot for a gal, there are no limits, no boundaries, no excuses. That's true desire, true lust, true passion. How many current porno flicks reflect that? How often are deviancy and fun mixed together? How often is the passion out of control? Not often.

The Facial Abuse flicks are the opposite of passion for me. They're mean spirited. They're about hurting people. About dominating vulnerable women without her express co-operation or "permission". They're not even bad Sado-Masochism. They're just ugly and monotonous.

Even Max Hardcore had more style, game, and humor than these guys.

As my tolerance for seriously one-sided hard porn diminishes, my affection for classic porno novel covers, extreme art, guro, and Japanese erotica intensifies.

Why?

Context. And it's all in the imagination.

Perhaps I'm going full circle.

How about you?

Perversion For Hungry Eyes

 

David Lindsay wrote about the world "being rotten with illusion from top to bottom... the most sacred and holy things ought not to be taken for granted, for if examined attentively, they will be found as hollow and empty as the rest... Behind this sham world lies the real, tremendous and awful Muspelworld, which knows neither will, nor Unity, nor Individuals; that is to say, an inconceivable world." 

I have a lot of time for Colin Wilson, the author of a mind-boggling variety of books (fiction and non-fiction). When I stumbled upon his earnest digest examining the obscure works of David Lindsay, I was compelled to read. Clearly, so was Wilson. In fact, Wilson's read a great deal more Lindsay than I have, my association with him limited to the truly troubling A Voyage to Arcturus and The Haunted Woman. Read several years ago, both left an imprint on me like a long journey one can't forget, a journey insisting on a replay. 

Wilson's approach to Lindsay comes from a certainty that the man was compromised, stifled by a blight he calls the reader over one's shoulder (or: self-consciousness of imminent publication). Writes Wilson: "It's a pity he was not more like Lawrence, who was too sure of himself to suffer from self-consciousness, and is subsequently never afraid to write as he would talk." 

Wilson's slim but meaty volume is a midnight love letter to the writer in which he praises, cajoles, and attempts to school him. Wilson conveys a strong sense of disappointment in Linsday, and attacks the writer's use of cliches, but concedes Lindsay "was not really a solitary visionary... He was expressing the spirit of the age..."

He includes the book with a wonderful quote from Einstein:

"One of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is to escape from everyday life, with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires."

This is such a wonderful book by about a strange, brilliant bookman. 

 

This is a Road Book in the Twain style. Road Movies are more common these days, but Road Books endure, nonetheless. I wanted this one to endure longer, so I read it slowly over a two week period, savoring its magical essence. 

It is magic. Magic like Jonathan Carroll's The Land of Laughs is magic. As you read, you smile a lot. You nod. You smile. You take the book away from your eyes and hold it at arm's length to appreciate it. I did a lot of arm extending while adventuring with King of Citizen Bands.

It's about freaks on an odyssey, freaks searching for a better place to be, a place where they're free to be themselves. It's a bible for non-violent Outsiders.

There is The Dwarf who isn't, the King (of Citizen Bands), and a blind girl who trusts them both. Nathan Tyree, who writes in a clear and colorful style, loves these people. I think he'd defend them with his life. His affection for them is, in fact, what makes the journey so involving and inviting. It's not like the drama itself is bloody and lives are threatened and lost at every turn. No, the drama emerges from the Outsider status of the characters, their struggle for acceptance, their letting go of old ways.

I'm struggling to think of another book I've loved this much recently (present company excluded). 

 

I read Mr. Overby is Falling before King of Citizen Bands. It's taken me this long to write about it. 

Still, six months later, I can't shake its surprises.  

It's head-scratchingly difficult to discuss without giving up its secret. There is a big secret and it's a well earned one. 

'Mr. Overby', our protagonist, is not unlike the lead character in Bobcat Goldthwaite's God Bless America, a film I can recommend with reservations; I'll discuss the reservations at some other time, but they involve keeping your expectations at a realistic level.  Overby, unlike that film's protagonist, doesn't feel like he can do much about what's wrong with the world. He doesn't have the balls or the organizational abilities. Until they're handed to him.

That's enough about the plot. Mr. Overby is Falling, true to its title,  is a decent into hell, a hell most people will not be comfortable with. Some reviews (there are a few) have attacked the book for its content while circling its actual value as literature. 

In other works of this nature, the solution to the problem becomes a bigger problem. This doesn't go in that direction. It goes in a much darker one.

Using just seventy-nine pages to do it, Nathan Tyree rightly fucks you up with this book. God bless the guy.

If I could liken the tone of this book to that of any other writer's work, I'd have to say Bentley Little. Little's ultra-paranoid thrillers such as The Association, The Store, The Policy, and The Ignored share atoms with Mr. Overby. 

I envy anybody their first read.  

    

 

By nature, we're hopeful. That hope gets stomped out of us by experience, but, like a ball attached to an elastic band, we bounce back with hope renewed. Then, more stomping. 

Jonathan Carroll's After Silence is a fuckin' amazing book about a man whose hope gets stomped on and shattered. And, with that hope lying in pieces, he finds another reservoir. Yes, fueled by dreams and love (the two entwined in a fragile dance), he inches forward, propelled towards another stomping.

Sounds dark? It is.

Easily one of the most inventive living writers, Carroll never disappoints me. In a weird way, he's someone whose work I love dearly, so, even when I don't "like" him, I love him nevertheless.

In the indefatigable The Land of Laughs, he presented a snoozing dog talking in his sleep. With that introduction, I never left.   

 

Delany's wonderful sci-fi works are not as relevant to the "enjoyment" of The Tides of Lust (originally: Equinox) as is Hogg, his most disturbing novel. Still, if you appreciate his love of language and his stubborn adherence to theme, you'll take much from this controversial, pornographic, and banned-in-some-countries work.

It describes the adventures (sexual and otherwise) of a diverse group of people, its leading protagonist being a black sea captain and his dog Niger (one 'n'). Its banning and subsequent revisions (mostly to address the age of some characters) resulted in its initial publisher (Savoy) being jailed. The '73 edition (pictured) contains the original text and copyright notice.

Delany, who writes vigorously and has no truck with gender distinctions, lets loose with a volley of uncompromising sexual excess that is never less than metaphorically relevant to its themes of corrupt authority and sadomasochistic powerplay. 

Truly an extraordinary work.

Also well worth reading is Delany's book on writing itself:

 

Another Savoy beaut in which Charles Platt invokes sexual anarchy via a sci-fi/horror premise. A gas loosed on Southern England has unexpected consequences for those affected. They become rapid fuckers of everything and everyone imaginable, and no body part or bodily fluid is excluded in a spirited free-for-all that feels wonderfully fresh.

Today's wild and unpredictable world of internet pornography seems closest to what Platt predicted. Back in 1970, when the book first appeared, it probably felt like a natural extension of both the free love movement and the growing permissiveness of popular culture.

Ironically, today, despite the existence of a Wild West underground internet culture, the book would surely shock common sensibilities a great deal more. Fanned by witchfinder generals of both underaged and unconventional sex, our sexual culture, though shoved at us in PG-rated bubbles via commercial trojan horses, is, at the same time, being demonized by anybody with a microphone and and a dubious political agenda.

The book is a riotous good time, an example of unfettered literary freedom, a freedom so well exercised, in fact, that author Platt later revised some passages, dismissing his original scribblings as symptoms of reckless youth.

As horror, social statement, and porn at gut level, this is a goddamned masterpiece, a Fuck You, Charlie! to hypocrisy .      

Pretty Porno Paperbacks

Your Ad Here

Looks like someone didn't get the mail on the "switch". Once again, Liverpool heats up the neighborhood. Gorgeous art.  And is that 'The Riddler' (Frank Gorshin) pawing the blonde beauty?

 

The price is very reasonable. Still cheaper than a divorce.

 

Dwarves on Horses get their own porno novel. I wonder if he whispered sweet nothings into her ear in that funny, high-pitched jockey voice? That'd get her G-spot spinning.

 

"Love That Made a Panty-Waist Into a Man"? Gold! More gritty art and a story to stick under your mattress for just 50 cents.

 

It's a little rude of dad's mate to leave his hat on inside the house. Fairly minimal illustration with the prevailing dominance theme. I can imagine what he's planning to do with that cigarette, and it doesn't involve smoking.

 

I love this style of illustration. Very robust.

 

...and one hot story, that's for sure. First spotted this little number in a porno shop window on my way home from seeing Star Wars for the first time. I soon forgot about Princess Leia.

 

Not sure how interested the readership was in 'Little Brother' and his pervy antics. 

 

Race relations were good in porn way before they were good anywhere else.

 

Just a stark white cover and a sleazy photograph. Perfect. Still, I'd prefer an illustration any day. Leaves so much more to the imagination. The dude's cowboy hat is a classy move.

Porn Loop Orgy

 
A brave and passionate fellow named 42nd Street Pete has been compiling and introducing a stack of porno "loops" from the 70's and 80's for distributor After Hours Cinema. Loops were short films that were played over and over again -- in a "loop" -- in porn emporiums on 42nd Street, NY, and in other cities throughout the world during better times (for sleaze fans, anyway). In many countries, they were also sold in Super-8 compilations -- or alone if they were long enough.

The Extreme Sleaze Showcase/Part 3/The Peepland Collection is Pete's latest offering, and it's a good one.  Loops don't have complex storylines. They have simple premises. For example, my favorite in this collection is *Violence*. The premise is: A young woman riding a bike is kidnapped and taken to a barn. There, she she is raped and abused. That's it.

*Violence* fascinated me because it's visually similar to some rough little shorts I made myself in the early 80's; they had titles like 'Horsing Around' and 'Beyond the Pale, and although they were not hardcore, they had a similar storyline, and were shot on Super-8 (like *Violence*). Although Pete introduces and comments on these movies, he doesn't say a lot about their origins. *Violence* also appealed to me because it has what I can only call a Color Climax look.

 In the 70's and early 80's, Color Climax was the premier European producer and distributor of loops and magazines featuring every sexual bent imaginable (legal and illegal) . Notorious, now hard-to-find films like *Kilroy Was Here*  and *Debased Dolly*  were distributed if not always produced by Color Climax, and I have always associated the grainy Super-8 look of films like *Violence* with the company (now an on-line concern only).  If I'd frequented 42nd Street, my reference points would probably be different.

Many of the loops in this compilation are clearly American, but several appear to be European. The films are silent, so there's no dialog to identify anybody's origins, and the locations are fairly generic (countryside, the odd city street, sleazy rooms) Another reference I have for the Euro -- or Scandinavian look, more rightly -- is what I've seen of Bodil Jenson's bestiality loops. They, too, have that distinct and magical Super-8 quality where the colors are muted, the grain is thick, and film scratches dance across the screen.

Another suspiciously Euro aspect of *Violence* is the inclusion of shots of pigs during the rape. The pigs are not part of the sex, but shots of them hanging out, eating, roughhousing, and gawking at the proceedings are intercut in order to up the sleaze quota. Perhaps the original producers were appealing to the beasty crowd?


The Extreme Sleaze Showcase DVD's are all must-haves.

 The artwork for After Hours' DVD mirrors the look of porn paperbacks of the period

There is a bit of confusion in some of the attached notes. Although the loops collected for Part III are said to have originally been screened at 'Peepland', the written notes for Part II cite *Violence* as a loop that screened at Blackjack Books. It's a minor confusion, and I simply point it out to invite clarification.

One of the most curious loops involves Louie De Jesus (from Bloodsucking Freaks) going the whole hog with the wonderful Vanessa Del Rio. This is a hardcore scene, and features the little guy penetrating a porn queen who is undoubtedly all woman.

Super-8 loops aren't produced today, but their equivalent is the gonzo porn that keeps the internet humming, and DVD shelves (in some countries) filled. Although S/M-themed porn -- porn that is structured around scenarios and adheres to master/slave dynamics -- is still produced, material along the lines of 'Violence' is not as common. The work of adult filmmakers such as Simon Thaur,  Belladonna, John Stagliano, Khan Tusion, Rob Black, Rocco Siffredi, Jake Malone, Cristoph Clark, Max Hardcore, Nacho Vidal, and Thomas Zupko (among others) is descended from the rough loops -- like *Violence* --  that once made 42nd Street so special.

These collections are a priceless reminder of recorded sexual culture, a culture that echoes today, and will echo well into the future.