classic porn

The Race to Release the First Linda Lovelace Biopic

via AVN

HOLLYWOOD—While mainstream movie producers have long flirted with porn, gradually introducing more and more nudity and softcore sex into their productions, and occasionally even a little hardcore—Brown Bunny and 9 Songs come to mind—it’s clear that they’ve never understood the genre (nor, sadly, have most mainstream reviewers), and the early buzz on at least one of the competing biographical “studies” of the late Linda “Linda Lovelace” Boreman seems to bear that out.

Take Inferno, the troubled Matthew Wilder project that was originally slated to star the even more troubled Lindsay Lohan, who’s now been replaced by Watchmen‘s Malin Akerman. While it’s true that Akerman seems to have no trouble revealing her ample tits—her “sex scene” with co-star Patrick Wilson may have been the highlight of that poor adaptation of the brilliant graphic novel (Akerman’s own performance was particularly lacking), and plenty of pimply teenagers no doubt got off on her topless attempt to seduce Kal Penn and John Cho in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle—she’s apparently got a bug up her ass about doing actual research for the Lovelace character.

“Akerman told us … that the role of the distressed porn star is too ‘dark’ to jump into too soon,” The New York Post reported in late April. “When we delicately asked if she’d ever watched porn, she said, ‘Of course. When I was 17, my boyfriend was into it. It was all experimental, but it’s not my thing. I would giggle.’ She added, ‘I’ve been to strip clubs. I think girls would rather watch a beautiful love story and see the couple make love at the end.'”

Whether Akerman’s assessment of what “girls would rather watch” has merit is beside the point. Linda Boreman’s main claim to fame was her starring role in Deep Throat, a comedy all about blowjobs, but which contained plenty of hardcore fucking as well, and if Akerman giggles while watching porn and wants to see “couples make love at the end,” she’s in for quite a shock when she finally gets around to researching the role. Although the stories circulated by Boreman at the behest of anti-porn activists like Andrea Dworkin, and publisher Lyle Stuart, whose company released her two main anti-porn books, Ordeal and Out of Bondage, claim that while making Deep Throat, “there was a gun to my head the entire time,” everyone on that set disputes the claim, though there seems to be little doubt that her then-husband and manager, Chuck Traynor, was very controlling of her personal life as well as her career.

So, instead of watching the three Lovelace movies—Deep Throat II and Linda Lovelace for President, both softcore, are the other two—what will Akerman be looking at for inspiration?

“I’ve been studying a lot about battered women and we all have that big question mark as to why they stay in the relationship and why they don’t leave and it’s so complex,” Akerman explained.

In any case, Akerman’s been cast, so what Wilder has to do now is to come up with the financing, and a report on the L.A. Times blog from April 28 says that Wilder hopes to have a deal in place with his Louisiana-based investors “soon.” If that happens, he’ll then cast the rest of the movie, probably starting with the Traynor role—but with principal photography due to begin around June 1, he’ll have to hurry.

Will the movie ever get done? Christopher Rosen of Movieline.com thinks, “Maybe. Wilder has put too much effort in Inferno for it not to happen. Plus, the film has enjoyed over a year of free press before it has even started significantly filming. You can’t buy that kind of publicity!”

But Inferno isn’t the only Lovelace pic on the horizon, and the situation put us in mind of Jugsy, a title inspired by Warren Beatty’s Bugsy, a mainstream flick about gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. In this era when porn parodies were virtually verboten, owing to several copyright infringement suits in the ’80s for titles like Down & Dirty in Beverly Hills and Dickman and Throbbin, two separate companies, Western Visuals and the fledgling (!) Wicked Pictures, each released Jugsy; Wicked’s directed by Herschel Savage and starring Heather Lere, Madison and P.J. Sparxx, and Western’s directed by Robert McCallum and starring Lynn LeMay, Nikki Sinn and Stacy Nichols.

In that vein, it seems that there’s a competing Lovelace film on the horizon, tentatively titled Lovelace. It’s to be directed by Jeffrey Friedman and Robert Epstein, the creative team behind Howl, the story of the events surrounding the San Francisco obscenity trial that targeted Allen Ginsberg’s legendary poem of the same name.

Lovelace, which its writers/directors have called a “nontraditional biopic,” is rumored to have Kate Hudson attached as its lead, but neither Friedman nor Epstein will confirm that. However, as of the date of the L.A. Times blog piece, they were nonetheless hoping that the project “will come together within the next few weeks.”

But, “Producers will generally back off a project if a competing film beats it to the production starting line,” claimed the Times‘ blog’s Steven Zeitchik. “But the fervor to make movies about real-life figures can sometimes lead to two rival films being made, which happened in the mid-2000s with a pair of films about Truman Capote.”

Still, Friedman and Epstein seem to have a better handle on their subject than Wilder.

“Lovelace also isn’t an easy personality to decipher. Said Friedman, ‘You need to take an interesting perspective on the story because her own perspective on her life kept shifting.'”

Considering that just six years after Boreman restated her “gun to my head” claim before the Meese Commission, and one year before she died, Boreman did a pictorial for Leg Show magazine because “there’s nothing wrong with looking sexy as long as it’s done with taste,” we’d have to agree.

See more of Linda Lovelace now!

 

The Big Fuck

When Alpha-France released this film in June of 1977, it caused quite a stir and commotion.

The film centers around a woman, Karine, and a man, Alban, who find happiness with each other during a torrid affair. As the film begins, one year has passed since they were last together and each is missing the other terribly.

Director Frederic Lansac does a decent enough job juxtaposing their current situations, Alban shacking up with a young, inexperienced girl and Karine with a man who finds almost as much enjoyment organizing labor demonstrations as being with her.

Through the course of the movie, both are seen writing heart-felt letters to each other. The correspondence segments are intertwined with various flashback scenes of the trysts each has had during the course of the past 365 days.

In one scene, Karine rides her man to orgasm after he has been roughed up by the cops. In another, she is taken from behind in the kitchen as she scrubs the dishes. The shot is interesting in that we see her reach ecstasy in the reflection from one of her freshly cleaned skillets.

Meanwhile, Alban recalls fucking his young beau in doggie style on the floor of the living room, cumming onto her ass. He also recounts waking to her masturbating in bed, her fingers rubbing her puffy pussy lips. He helps glide her hand across her folds as she sensually licks the underside of his throbbing cock. He eventually cums into her mouth. It’s one of the hotter scenes of the film.

During the course of the story, Alban also recalls some of his other exploits: his secretary, a massive swinger’s orgy, and even a blonde girl who reminded him of his true love. You’ll find some costume play, an oral sex daisy chain and some girl-on-girl action throughout the scenes.

Both suffer their misery to the breaking point when they kick out their significant others. A chance meeting near the pond where they first met brings them full circle for the big fuck at the end, worthy of its namesake.

Alpha-France produced some quality classic porn in its time, but as you watch this film or any of their others, you should take into account that it was a different era. Gratuitous amounts of tawdry and very dirty sex were not the thing. Many of the twelve scenes here do not end in money shots and they are relatively short by today’s standards. In fact, the entire film clocks in at a grand total of 61 minutes.

But, if you’re into natural women with big tits and bush, and un-buff men, storylines and nostalgia, be sure to take a gander at The Big Fuck and the entire Alpha-France line. It’s some of the best from its era.

Stars:   Sylvia Bourbon Karine Gambier Erika Cool Dawn Cummings Carole Gire Guy Royer Alban Ceray Siegfried Cellier Thierry De Brem Barbara Moose

Categories: Euro Feature Classic International 70’s Gold

Running Time:   61 minutes

Released:   06/1977

Studio Name:   ALPHA-FRANCE

Director:   Frederic Lansac

Exclusive: Steven Morowitz of Video-X-Pix on the First Classic HD Porn Transfer

Inside Little Oral Annie

Inside Little Oral Annie

Interview by Timothy Snarr

“New porn!” I exclaimed rather jubilantly.

Moments earlier, my co-worker Robert, an experienced filmmaker and Video Production Specialist here at AEBN, had wandered into my office to discuss some of the details surrounding an upcoming project. Almost immediately, his eyes drifted to the non-descript white box sitting on my desk. The flaps of the reinforced cardboard container pointed skyward, its jagged edges and severed strands of still-attached packing tape the remnants of an epic struggle.

“What is it?” he replied curiously, inching closer to grab a quick peek at the contents.

Without hesitation, I reached inside, carefully wedging my fingers between the box and the merchandise, and pulled out a stack of classic DVDs. On top was the Joe Sarno-directed Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle. Underneath sat the Amero Brothers’ wonderfully crafted Blonde Ambition. In the center, bookended by both films, was Radley Metzger’s Sexploitation masterpiece Maraschino Cherry. Having seen Annie assume the bottom position so many times throughout her film career the image of her smiling face and large, bare breasts on top of anything, even a diminutive pile of DVDs, was a pleasant irony not lost on either of us.

All three movies were part of a care package that had arrived the previous day, a very generous ‘thank you’ from Steven Morowitz, Head of Production for Video-X-Pix. Steven had graciously agreed to an interview a few days earlier to discuss his company’s latest undertaking: a High Definition DVD transfer of the XXX classic, Inside Little Oral Annie. The first HD transfer of its kind, he and his current staff of two were feverishly putting the final touches on the project when I caught up with him. Somehow I didn’t feel as if my hour-and-a-half intrusion into his tight schedule merited any kind of reward, let alone a gift of this magnitude. After all, it was he who should be thanked for spearheading the preservation of an important legacy, one seemingly glossed over and forgotten by all but the most cliquish legion of die-hard retro porn fans and film historians. But, somewhere down the line, Steven had discovered that I shared his affinity for history and he insisted that I see first-hand some of the amazing reissues that his company had already released.

The company’s own history stretches back to 1965 when Steven’s father, Arthur Morowitz, a pioneer in both the video rental and home video markets, started Video-X-Pix. Originally called Distribpix, the company produced and distributed adult-themed features to premier movie houses coast-to-coast, during the height of the Exploitation and Sexploitation film eras. At the time, their roll call boasted a who’s who of future porn royalty. Ron Jeremy, Vanessa Del Rio, John Holmes, Seka and others called the label home. Their stable of pre-eminent filmmakers was no less formidable, housing such directorial visionaries as Joe Sarno, Ron Sullivan, Radley Metzger and The Amero Brothers. It was a neatly assembled entertainment collective unlike anything anyone had ever seen. Together, their vast output of films pushed the boundaries of good taste and irreversibly altered society’s perceptions of sex during the decade of free love. Their early forays into implicit soft-core skin flicks and well-timed bouts of pre-meditated rebellion also laid the foundation for the Golden Age of porn, clearing the way for movies like Deep Throat nearly a decade later.

Though film production at the company ceased in 1989, the lure of new technology and the growing demand for classic porn films spurred a Video-X-Pix renaissance in 2002. The recent discovery of a vault containing original 35mm Distribpix negatives certainly helped fuel their inevitable rebirth. By hitching the immediate fortunes of the company to Blu-Ray, HD and Video On Demand formats, Steven hopes to share the Distribpix legacy with a whole new generation of film lovers.

It is impossible to put a numerical value on hope, but Steven readily admits to spending way too much on a few of his releases. He’ll be quick tell you it’s a labor of love, and throughout our interview, as he recalled his father’s and grandfather’s stories of drugs and guns, of mob rule and public relations shakedowns, and of sitting of Seka’s lap as a young child, unaware of who she was at the time, the tone in his voice did not betray that sentiment. Yet, in a time when adult video producers and retailers are scratching and clawing just to survive thanks to the glut of free porn and Tube sites that permeate the internet, many might wonder why any business savvy entrepreneur would chance running a company from the red, even for art’s sake, for history’s sake…for goodness’ sake.

“Holy shit!” blurted Robert, a look of utter amazement crossing his face as I removed the semi-glossy slipcover from the Annie Sprinkle film, cracked open the heavy-duty case and let the 24-page booklet and Annie Sprinkle finger puppet spill out onto my desk.

Wonder no more.

(more…)

AEBN Wins Vod Rights To HD Version Of Classic Adult Film

CHARLOTTE, NCAEBN, the world leader in adult video-on-demand distribution, has obtained exclusive VOD rights to the High Definition version of Inside Little Oral Annie, a 1984 production that will be the first classic adult film to be released in HD.

The painstaking conversion of the film to HD from the original 35 mm negatives was done by Video-X-Pix, owner of the most extensive collection of older “sexploitation” films. It will be available exclusively on AEBN beginning in mid-September.

“The conversion to HD of this beautifully preserved master is a really remarkable achievement and AEBN is honored to have the exclusive VOD rights to one of the great adult movies from the golden age of erotic entertainment,” said Jerry Anders, Vice President for Sales and Marketing at AEBN. “The star of the movie, who was known as Little Oral Annie, was a world class talent in lingual stimulation, as her name implies, and this movie demonstrates skills that are unsurpassed even to this day.”

According to Steven Morowitz of Video-X-Pix, “The performance of LOA made Linda Lovelace look like a schoolgirl, so this re-mastering was a work of love. In converting the original master we even had to upgrade some of our equipment to be able to handle the large HD files, which are so big that without the proper connection, the system just chokes up. The HD re-mastering takes up 800 gigabytes of space on our hard drives. It now has a clear picture, crisp edges and true color. It was shot by sexploitation veteran Joseph Sarno, who made dozens of ’80s films and video features, so having good film stock and a talented person behind the camera certainly helps to make a successful picture. Inside Little Oral Annie is a great example of smut in the ’80s and it happens to be our all time best selling DVD in the adult market.”

Side by side comparisons are available at the Distribpix blog.