Secondhand Smut #9: The Filthy Dump

Dark Dreams (1971)

Director Roger Guermantes’ (whoever he may be) feature is about a newlyweds Jack (Harry Reems, no introduction needed) and Jill (Tina Russell, again no introduction needed) that on their way to their honeymoon get involved with a bunch of hippies that are supposedly performing black magic rituals and loads of sexual encounters ensue.

The screenplay by one Canidia Ference (who is also credited as the producer) is pure pulp book-like gold, the cinematography by Werner Hlinka [camera operator of Teenage Tramp (1973)] is stunning (I believe that the film was shot on 35mm), and the score by Charles Morrow [composer of the additional music in Altered States (1980)] is – simply put – fantastic, so this is definitely one that you should not miss.

It all ends predictably with a gang rape, but before that you should look out for an interracial sex scene between star Harry Reems and June Dulu, which is something that wasn’t that common in 1971.

Secondhand Smut #8: Analog Repulsion

The present installment of your favorite dirty column was inspired by The Films of Jess Franco, a collective book edited by Antonio Lazaro-Reboll and Ian Olney, which although it adds no new information or trivia, it does analyze the shit out what we already know; a great academic work that should be purchased by all connoisseurs of erotic cinema. But without further ado, on with the reviews!

The Image (1975)

Jean [Carl Parker from The Score (1974), which was reviewed in this column’s previous installment] and Claire (Marilyn Roberts) seduce Anne [Rebecca Brooke from Confessions of a Young American Housewife (1974)] into the world of BDSM and indulge into a series of erotic games that include everything, from whipping to chaining, and from feet licking to pissing.

Also known as The Punishment of Anne and The Mistress and the Slave this was directed by adult film auteur Radley Metzger (who also penned the screenplay, based upon the same-titled novel by Catherine Robbe-Grillet) and it aims high. Featuring the gorgeous cinematography of Robert Lefebvre (this was his last credit) and an impressive soundtrack, it rarely disappoints.

Sure, it may not be as good as, say, the similar The Story of O (1975) and the neo-noir approach of the voiceover is quite heavy-handed, but this is still a masterpiece and it must be seen by all connoisseurs of classic adult cinema.

Secondhand Smut #7: Living Dead Format

 Your favorite dirty column, Secondhand Smut, is back and will be reviewed random old porn with no particular order or reason; just for your eyes only. The column’s return was inspired after the author read Pete Chiarella’s A Whole Bag of Crazy: Sordid Tales of Hookers, Weed, and Grindhouse Movies. And another noteworthy book that recently came to my attention was flesh trade: tales from the uk sexual underground, in which writer Bruce Barnard goes on a mission to explore as much of the British-based sex work as possible; I liked the journey, but not its conclusion. But anyway, without further ado, let’s dive deep into the film reviews.

Butterflies (1975)

Denise (Swedish starlet Marie Forsa) is terminally bored by her unexciting life in the country where she lives with her equally unexciting boyfriend and decides to leave all that behind, go to the big city and make it to the luxurious and exciting world of fashion modeling. It is there that she meets club owner Frank (Harry Reems, no introduction needed) and the two fall in love, until the lady is disappointed when she finds out that her rich man is a womanizer.

Written and directed by Joseph W. Sarno (again, no introduction needed), this comes (quite expectedly, to be honest) with stunning camerawork and impressive visuals, but its soap opera-like plot is tiresome and the end result is ultimately boring. Watch out for a hilarious sex scene in which Reems pounds in fast forward!

Secondhand Smut #6: Interracial Sex Havoc Leftovers and Other Oddities

Yes, this is another collection of Porn reviews and you ask why. Let me clarify that I believe that porn is the most intimate film genre. It is the only corner in the history of film in which performers allow their fellow performers to penetrate them literally and if this is not performance art I don’t know what is. The performers exchange bodily fluids, and they encourage the viewer to touch himself and even orgasm. If that’s not audience participation or engagement with the subject material, I don’t know what is.

I was originally planning for this sixth installment of Secondhand Smut to review the entire Debbie Does Dallas film series, but I failed to track down the myriad of films associated with it so this plan went down the drain. I then wanted to review the Loose Ends films series, and although I could get my hands to copies of all those films, I did not as I could not find as much information about them as I wanted. You see, I know that they were the first adult feature-length films to include BSDM and I always get charmed by firsts, but in order to write an article I had to find out more background stories than I did. So, finally, what was I left with? I compiled this May 2015 - October 2015 Secondhand Smut issue with reviews that for some reason or another were left out from my more regular column, namely Interracial Sex Havoc. I hope you enjoy as much reading the piece as I did writing it.

9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (1976)

Most of the time the mainstream directors that had a past in porn, had a past which was decent. For example Wes Craven had made The Fireworks Woman (1975) which is highly regarded by both scholars of classic smut, but also the director’s fans who like digging a bit further. Even Lloyd Kaufman’s Sweet & Sour (1974) is a very good effort. Well, in the case of Abel Ferrara this is not the case.

Abel Ferrara went on to make many favorite films of mine, including the early masterpieces The Driller Killer (1979) and Ms .45 (1981), but 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (1976) which was his first feature-length project is an utter failure. Sure the girl-girl interracial sex scene is interesting (and I should have included it in my Interracial Sex Havoc column back when I was still researching the ‘70s) but this film makes a very boring viewing experience with its lack of a real story (it was written by Nicholas John who went on to pen several screenplays for later mainstream Ferrara fare).

Hot summer in the City (1976)

Secondhand Smut #3

Back in April 2014, I announced the closure of the Secondhand Smut column. But the truth is, you just can’t end bad habits. Believe me, I know because I’ve been chain-smoking for the past 16 years.

Now, I had plans for the third installment to cover my findings from May, June, and July 2014, but I simply couldn’t find anything worthy to include here. This changed on September 2014, when my friend Periklis took me to a flea market I wasn’t aware of. This was the kind of place I needed; one of the first things I noticed was a DVD of Hot Asian Girls next to the bible. I bought neither, but you get the point. The beast was unleashed.

3 pulp books I bought for only 2€

Carnal Marriage

Oh, I just love how this book smells like old pulp shit. This smell reminds me of seedy basements full of porn books that grandfathers used to read while grandmothers were unaware watching television. More than 20 years ago, I broke into such a basement and found a box full of Gérard de Villiers books.

Anyway, the back cover of Carnal Marriage lists some other books by the same publisher (Βιβλιοθήκη για Όλους – Library for All), and those include the works of Nietzsche, Frued, etc. Also, the first page tells us that the publisher faced charges for this book, but those were dropped.

Secondhand Smut #5: Devil in Miss Jones

Secondhand Smut’s fifth installment is covering the porn I watched from December 2014 to April 2015. Said smut is devoted to the Devil in Miss Jones franchise. There are tons of information regarding its history out there, and even more tons of words reviewing it and analyzing it (even academically if that’s your thing), but what you’ll read here is my thoughts after going a film-by-film marathon.

The Devil in Miss Jones 3: A New beginning (1986) and The Devil in Miss Jones: The Resurrection (2010) was ignored as I was not able to track down copies of those in time for this article. Der Teufel in Miss Jonas (1976) is an unofficial remake, and The Devil’s Agenda & Miss Jones (1991) is an unofficial sequel, and hence they were ignored.

Devil in Miss Jones (1973)

One of my favorite porn films of all time is Gerard Damiano’s Deep Throat (1972), and one of my favourite autobiographies is Georgina Spelvin’s The Devil made me Do It. So it was only natural that I would fall in love with the Devil in Miss Jones (1973) that the two of them made together and is considered by many the best adult film from the golden age.

It is about the titular lady (Georgina Spelvin) who (in a sequence that brings student short films in mind, but I am saying this as a good thing) commits suicide when she’s slashing her wrists with a razorblade.

Then Miss Jones goes to the afterlife, where she meets Abaca (John Clemens) who tells her that despite her quite excellent track record as a mortal human being, the guys upstairs (i.e. heaven) cannot accept her because suicide is a crucial sin, so she’ll have to go downstairs (i.e. hell).

Secondhand Smut #4

Do you remember when I announced the closure of the Secondhand Smut column? Well, here I am again. With nothing secondhand but certainly Smut. I’ll explain.

I had plans for the fourth installment to cover my findings from August, September, October and November 2014, but this simply wasn’t meant to be. So, here I am, reviewing some Smut that I recently got my dirty hands on.

Sweet & Sour (1974)

The male lead is a photographer (of mainly pornographic stills) and he just found his muse off the streets who is a musician. Together they will experience sexual acts that are moving this film in a very conventional way; that is, until the violent outburst of the ending which makes the whole journey worthy.

There’s no telling how much of a Lloyd Kaufman fan I am. He’s mostly known for his independent ‘70s and ‘80s flicks, but I’m more in love with his ‘90s and ‘00s masterpieces. Sweet & Sour (1974) is an early pornographic film of his. The copy I have is in terrible condition and I pray that someday Vinegar Syndrome will release a good restoration on disc.

Hardgore (1976)

Maria [Dianne Galke from Teenage Runaway (1975)] is a nymphomaniac with masochistic tendencies as we learn, and so she is locked in a nuthouse. She should suspect that this institution for mental patients has something to hide though because the nurse who’s showing her into her room is teasing her and soon the two of them get to have some hot lesbian action. Later Maria will find a couple of dildos in her room too; professional help, right?

A nurse will have her throat slashed and this is the movie’s turning point. From then on everything seems to be lit in a horror movie way. Just when you thought you’d get scared though you see a dildo attached to a medical machine providing pleasure to the female lead, and just when you thought you’d get horny you see a dick chopped off.

The female lead is kidnapped by some people who force her into ceremonial group sex (there are several black magic symbols here on display, or maybe they are Satanic, or both, or I don’t really know). There is a man in a Devil mask that is conducting most of these orgies. And there are a few flying penises that are shooting insane amount of semen, resulting in a bukkake scene. You can’t call it bukkake per se because the term was first used for post-1980 Japanese films, but I don’t know what else to call that scene.

There are some more bloody scenes here, in the form of murders, or ‘forced accidents’, and the whole thing reminded me a lot of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ best moments even though it works mostly as a Slasher film. It didn’t seem to be very popular back then, but this combination of hardcore pornography with hardcore splatter seem to be attracting many new fans nowadays as this film has finally its cult following and is mentioned way too often online.

Secondhand Smut #2: March & April 2014

Welcome back to this bi-monthly (and arguably bi-sexual) column about my second-hand smut findings (both films and literature). I review treasures (or trash, depending on how you look at it) and I provide you with high resolution scans of their covers. The reviews are kept short in order to have as many as possible each time.

I hope you enjoy as much as I do!

D.O.A. (1950)

A man [Edmond O'Brien from 1984 (1956)] is walking at a police station, during the fabulous credit sequence. He finds the captain and says that he has been murdered. The rest of the movie is a series of flashbacks that will let us know how did this happen. The protagonist was poisoned while he was partying, but even though we know he’s about to die (the doctors say he could live up to two weeks at the most) the film [directed by Rudolph Maté, cinematographer of La passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928)] is still very interesting, because everybody in it seems to know more than he or she would like to admit (it is sort of an interesting whodunit). The story is very clever and I demand a remake.

This PAL DVD was released here through a newspaper and I bought it at a secondhand store for 1 euro, so I wasn’t expecting much, but still the copy’s quality was shit. Is it me or every low budget black & white flick from this era lacks proper restoration?

Secondhand Smut #1: January & February 2014

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