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?

Blonde Ambition Special Edition

Video*X*Pix, the company that released the definitive DVD of Inside Annie Sprinkle last year, has returned with what can only be considered the definitive DVD of the Amero Brothers' Blonde Ambition, an astonishing porno musical that was originally released in the U.S. in 1981.

I saw it originally at a Detroit area porno palace after reading an extremely positive Hustler review. The mag had given the film its FULLY ERECT rating. In retrospect, I'm not so sure it deserved Hustler's highest accolade, which would usually be an indicator of a film's heat, but it did deserve high marks for its mind-boggling production values (for a porno pic) and filmmaking ambition.

Co-Director John Amero, who supplies a great commentary, cites Gentleman Prefer Blondes as an influence. The film was marketed to those who enjoyed that film AND Deep Throat. Quite a broad audience.

Only a handful of porno feature films have attempted what Blonde Ambition attempted. Bill Osco's Alice in Wonderland (whose DVD I worked on a couple of years ago) shared the Ameros' lofty goals, as did the watershed Opening of Misty Beethoven, Radley Metzger's carnal opus.

As wack material, Blonde Ambition isn't terribly erotic. The sex scenes are standard, though well shot, and the heat between the performers is negligible. The recently deceased Jamie Gillis makes an appearance as the director of a Gone With The Wind porno parody, but he doesn't participate in any sex scenes. According to his commentary, which is well worth a listen, he did spend some quality time beneath the hoop skirts of several actresses between takes.

Despite my reservations about its sex appeal, Blonde Ambition is well worth owning because it's an amazing relic of a time now lost. The film was shot by the notorious Roberta Findlay, whose own porno directing career was many degrees darker than what's on screen here. Director Amero even mentions that Findlay found it difficult working on a porno film where the sex was well lit and the overall tone was bright and fun. Her own porno flicks were dark, dismal excursions into sexual hell (bless her soul!), and couldn't have been more different than this.

R. Bolla, a porno stalwart now better known for his role in Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust, has a considerable role in the film and receives a complimentary blow job, as does porno veteran Eric Edwards, an actor who'd appeared in other Amero flicks. Both men had off-Broadway credits prior to the making of this film.

Of special note here is cute Benny Hill Show actress Suzy Mandel, who appears in various hardcore sequences.

Thanks to John Amero's clever cutting of her scenes, her non-participation in the film's actual hardcore comes as a surprise. Contractually, she was not obliged to perform hardcore. Amero, on the other hand, was free to blend footage of her porno double as he saw fit.

There are interesting bits and pieces to look out for here. The name on top of a sign for Miracle Pictures, 'Ben Dover', refers to a character who makes a brief appearance. I can't help speculate that British porno director Ben Dover was inspired by this film when it played (in R-rated form) at London's Prince Charles Theatre near Leicester Square. The film was financed by a Swedish exhibitor of blue movies, Kjell Nilsson, for the paltry sum of $30K. It looks like half a million at least, and that's acknowledging favors extended to the production. Thankfully, it made its money back quickly, and was sold worldwide in three different versions.

Video*X*Pix's treatment of the film is a loving one. Although the commentaries are excellent, I wish they'd been recorded and mixed with more love. The British interviewer of John Amero (who sounds a lot like Severin Films' David Gregory, though it might not be) is difficult to hear at times, although he should be applauded for asking all the right questions. Ironically, the sound level on Amero is much too high. The Jamie Gillis "tribute" on the set's second disk is a compilation of scenes featuring Jamie from films such as William Lustig's Violation of Claudia and Chuck Vincent's Roommates.

A small booklet of liner notes and history of the production is also included, as is a film strip of frames from the movie.

Overall, this is an excellent package, and a fine celebration of talented filmmakers, real filmmakers, who cared about the genre they were working in.

It's a testament to their ambitions that Blonde Ambition has earned such prestige treatment thirty years after it was shot.