Hollywood vs Hard Core.

The title of the book - if not the subtitle - is a bit misleading, in that there is a lot of history of Hollywood from the 1920s onwards before we get to the showdown between Hollywood and hardcore in the 1970s.

Moreover, even then it perhaps isn't so much a direct encounter as an indirect one, with Hollywood being saved through primarily through the actions of Republican politicians. Nonetheless, this can be forgiven in that the longer historical perspective proves informative as well as ultimately tying everything together.

In the 1920s and 1930s attacks on the movies came from two main consistuencies: small-town and rurual Protestants and big city Catholics. Whatever their other differences - as exemplified, for instance, by the KKK - one thing both groups had in common was a widespread anti-Semitism that was played into the fact that most of the studio bosses were Jewish.

The Studio Code was thus brought into being and belatedly enforced. Truth be told the major studios did not mind too much, for the self-regulation it entailed worked to their advantage and, coupled with control over the majority of the first run theatres in the cities, ensured the money kept coming in.



While the New Deal administration had began anti-trust action against the restrictive practices of the studios, the Second World War put things on hold. By the time of the anti-trust action in 1948, Stalin and Communism had replaced Hitler and Nazism as the chief threat to the American way of life, a shift emphasised by the rise of McCarthy and the HUAC. (Another player here, who would become more significant 20 or 25 years on, was Richard Nixon.)

Tapping into an anti-Semitic legacy seemingly little reduced by the Holocaust and heightened by the likes of the Rosenberg case, HUAC duly rounded upon Hollywood Jews. Though some, like their non-Jewish counterparts, were merely anti-fascist and liberal rather than actual communists, they were all tarred with the same un-American brush. Not, however, that the old entrepreneurial capitalist studio heads necessarily escaped either, as they were increasingly replaced by anonymous (and WASP) corporate management.

Into the 1950s and 1960s, the Studio Code became more a liability than an asset. With the rise of television, the teenager and the European art film - which Jon Lewis astutely recognises, per David Friedman, was targeted to different audiences in different ways - the old idea of the movie for everyone became untenable. Meanwhile the Studios increasingly became parts of wider corporate portfolios, with possibilities for synergistic marketing.

1968 saw the introduction of a new ratings system, one that has stated in place, with modifications, for the past forty years. Central here was the division between the R rating and the X non-rating, with which its new president Jack Valenti hoped to draw a line between the studio produced or distributed R film, with its MPAA certification, and the independent X film, without an MPAA rating.

The idea was that the R would allow Hollywood film-makers, many now modelling themselves on the European auteurs, to make more adult films attuned to the increasingly profitable counter-cultural zeitgeist, whilst also keeping the likes of Russ Meyer ghettoised.

For a few years the fate of the idea was hanging in the balance. The likes of Brian De Palma, with Greetings, John Schlesinger, with Midnight Cowboy, and Robert Aldrich, with The Killing of Sister George made films that were released as X rather than R, while Meyer was ironically contracted by a major studio to direct Beyond the Valley of the Dolls shortly after. Porn films, meanwhile, first soft then hard, began to emerge and sported their X or, later, XXX certificates as a mark of pride:

"Independent distributors could not release a picture with a G, M, or R rating without first submitting their film to the MPAA/CARA board. But nothing stopped independent, even hard-core distributors from applying the X rating to their films. Independently made and released (mostly soft-core) X-rated films were made somehow legitimate because they shared a rating designation with a studio prestige picture like Midnight Cowboy. While the indie titles seemed to gain respectability by association, the Schlesinger film suffered by comparison. It, like all those awful indie soft-core pictures rated X in 1969, was, for some filmgoers at least, just another dirty picture."

June 1972 to 1973, the period of The Godfather, Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones was pivotal. Though certainly containing violence unacceptable pre-1968 - what is Sonny's killing but Coppola's response to the end of Bonnie and Clyde?- the film, the biggest grosser of the year, was R material. The X-rated Deep Throat, however, was probably far more profitable in terms of return on investment. It was also technically crude, with little that could be said about it in film-critical terms rather than cultural ones. Mainstream reviews of The Devil in Miss Jones only months later were of a different order: Here was an X rated hardcore porn film with decent production values and direction, performances that were just as accomplished in acting as sexual terms, and a degree of intellectual cachet via its Sartrean allusions. It was, in other words, closer to another key film of the time, the major studio backed Last Tango in Paris, than was comfortable. It was also very successful at the box-office, this despite increasing legal problems.

For it was around this point that the Republican right, under Nixon, stepped in to save Hollywood. The previous administration's commissioned report on pornography, which had taken a liberal, no demonstrable harm stance, was rejected. Eventually, under Reagan, a new commission was formed and duly reported what their masters wanted to hear, that it was bad. Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones and other porn films were taken to court and, while winning some cases, lost others. Often the decision hinged upon the specific jurisdiction, highlighting a distinction between liberal and conservative, blue and red states that has continued into the "culture wars" of the 1980s and 1990s and beyond.

The crucial point, however, was that times were a changing back (to paraphrase Frank Zappa) and that Nixon's own criminality had not yet been found out. Thus, the possibility that the independently produced X film might seriously challenge the major studio R was effectively closed off.

So too, after a few more years, was most of the innovative Hollywood film-making that had briefly flourished when the studios were in disarray. 1975 brought Jaws, 1977 Star Wars. In between them we had Taxi Driver, where Scorsese desaturated the colours in the final bloodbath to secure an R. After Star Wars we still had the independent Dawn of the Dead, which Romero valiantly released with an X. But safe, non-threatening movies that said less about politics in the wider sense were increasingly the order of the day. After all, have not Craven, Romero and others long since gotten used to the contractual requirement of turning in an R as they have sucked from the corporate teat, even if there are then also the requisite "unrated" - cynically, perhaps even also contractually obligated - scenes for today's DVD releases.

Jon Lewis's reading of this key period is intriguing for what it says and does not say. On the one hand, he posits that porn cinema allowed for the new right to attack the counter-culture by proxy, that the "different strokes for different folks" message with which Deep Throat concludes had to be refuted. On the other hand, in light of his earlier discussions of anti-Semitism's role here, he does not engage with the apparently disproportionate involvement of (non-religious) Jews in US pornography.

So, what is it?

Was it that Deep Throat was a Mafia production, with the only Jewish involvement as far as I am aware being that of the (now born-again Christian) Harry Reems?

Was it that the mob-connected but Jewish Reuben Sturman, perhaps the most important figure in porn at this time, was not a film-maker?

Is the Jews in porn thing a later development?

A myth subsequently promulgated by the religious right?

Reservations about the exploitation movie type title and some omissions aside, a thought-provoking read.

May Jack Valenti rot in hell, preferably being sodomised by an AIDS-ravaged John Holmes out of his mind while freebasing ;-)

T-Shirts

Not personally of interest, but probably no harm in doing a Public Service Announcement type post:

http://www.randrtees.com/store/

"Our new shirts Giallo and Bloodletting. Both inspired by the film Suspiria.

The names on the graves on our Giallo shirt are Argento and Bava."

The Sexplorer / The Girl From Starship Venus

This is apparently Quentin Tarantino's favourite British sexploitation film, one that he saw on its initial US release at a drive-in in the mid 1970s; it's also a film that he liked enough to acquire his own print of, which he has screened in some of his Grindhouse type events.

While Tarantino's endorsement is undoubtedly useful for attracting curious audiences to The Sexplorer, the truth is that it's such a fun little film it's hard to see anyone not being won over by, which knows it strengths and weaknesses and plays to them, encouraging you to laugh along.


An innuendo laden US poster for the film, under its Girl From Starship Venus title

We open with a cheesy sci-fi theme - one of several - and a mock-portentous voice over, as the Starship Venus prepares to land on the planet Dom, the Purple Planet, to investigate its inhabitants. The spaceship, which proves to be the size of a ball bearing, lands in what is described as an uncharted sea. But it is actually a puddle in the middle of Picadilly circus, London.

Having extricated itself, the tiny spaceship discharges one of its crew, the surveyor, who then takes the form of a Dom, or human. The surveyor's cover is that, if anyone asks, they are the author Mark Twain.

Never mind that Twain is 170 years old, nor that 'he' has the form of a female, more specifically German-born nude model and sexploitation actress Monika Ringwald, nor that looking down at her naked, "ugly" form for Twain's moustache, described by the spaceship's data bank as a patch of superfluous hair, the surveyor identifies it with her pubic hair.

Given the potential for misunderstandings in all this, it's fortunate that the first place the surveyor happens to investigate is a sauna, where most of those present are also nude. Thinking that she has been robbed, the staff kit her out with a dress and send her on her way.

Having made the discovery of "another Dom of differing configuration," "some sort of mutation," flatter and with their moustache spreading further up, the surveyor next ventures into an adult bookstore, followed by a gents, together allowing for some initial observations: The "canopies," the tribe of her assumed form, seem happier and the norm, while the "tubulars," the other, perhaps dangerous, mutant tribe, seem overly anxious.

By this time another pattern also begins to in the Surveyor's interactions with the tubulars: When they aren't running away, they are keen to take advantage of her. The bookstore manager tries to interest her in a photo shoot and telling the photographer on the phone that his new find is "a bit dim but well stacked - just the right combination." Then, in a porn theatre, another patron tries to "refuel" her with his "probe" in the manner that the tubulars on the "holoplay" screen have just attended to the canopies.

Significantly, the film-makers use these misunderstandings in a self-deprecating manner, with the theatre manager throwing the Surveyor out and remarking that they deal strictly in fantasy, not reality. His bookstore counterpart, meanwhile, was played by Ringwald's real-life manager, Alan Selwyn.

Though it would be stretching the point to call the film feminist, there's nevertheless a definite something to Sexplorer's mocking of its primary male audience, even as it gives them the T&A that they've come for.

Indeed, given the way in which the men often respond to the surveyor's tendency towards silence, I was reminded at times of the dynamics of Abel Ferrara's Ms .45 and Zoe Tamerlis's mute heroine, perhaps as hybridised with John Sayles's Brother from Another Planet, as a film with alien whose 'just happening' to look like an African-American also leads to all sorts of misunderstandings.

There's also perhaps a hint of a vegetarian subtext as the Surveyor later passes a diner and wonders about the Dom's putting pieces of scorched bird into their bodies, as a "ritual" she describes as being "primitive" in a manner recalling an early, unreflexive, 20th century colonialist anthropologist.

Although The Sexplorer isn't what you would call imaginatively or particularly well directed, it doesn't need to be. The voice-off dialogue between the surveyor and the crew back on the ship and the survey and the Doms she encounters are witty, while Ringwald herself is attractive to look at and suitably unconscious about showing us her goods. More generally, her foreignness appears a help rather than a hindrance, precisely because not knowing how to act, react or speak like a member of the culture is what the film is all about.

Being a Derek Ford production, The Sexplorer was also released in a different version to that reviewed here, one incorporating hardcore inserts. Whether these feature Ringwald or an other female performer I don't know.

To finish with the obvious pun: Anyone out there come upon this hardcore version?

[See http://templeofschlock.blogspot.com/2009/01/girl-from-starship-venus-1975.html for another review of the film]

Mental Hygiene

Written by Ken Smith, Mental Hygieve is a survey of the US classroom film from its beginnings around the end of the Second World War, when concerns over the impact of the depression and the war on the nation's youth began to belatedly be addressed, to its end around 1970, when film-makers inability to adapt to an approach of showing rather than telling rendered their work increasingly out of touch with their target audience.

Following an general overview / introduction to the form and a time-line of significant events and films, the book divides into three main sections, on genres, film-makers and the films themselves.



The genres encompass "fitting in," or conformance with social norms, mores and rules of etiquette, with much that seems ridiculously over-the-top from half a century or more distance; "cautionary tales"; dating do's and don'ts; "girls only," or menstruation; drugs; sex education; "bloody highways," with real accident footage and methods of gathering it that wouldn't be out of place in an Italian mondo film; and "sneaky sponsors," ranging from manufacturers of sanitary towels, to the meat and dairy industry, to insurance companies, to the Mormon church.

Four key film-makers, three based in the Midwest, are discussed, namely Coronet, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Sid Davis and Centron, with Smith bringing out their distinctive personalities and styles. For example, Encyclopaedia Britannica productions eschewed music, while Davis's films tended towards sensationalistic, downbeat endings of a "do as you're told or you'll be dead" sort. (Centron meanwhile was the company Henk Hervey of Carnival of Souls fame worked for; seemingly he made his only feature film while on vacation.)

Over 250 films are reviewed, in all the sub-genres and from all the producers discussed in the preding chapters, outlining the content of each film and points of significance, amusement or trivia interest, along with choice lines: "What Jimmy didn't know was that Ralph was sick. A sickness that was not visible like smallpox, but not less dangerous and contagious. You see, Ralph was a homosexual."

That almost all the films discussed are of US origin gives the discussion coherence and provides an insight into the collective psyche of the country in the quarter century following World War II. (Those looking for a comparative study with other countries are thus going to have to do the work for themselves - assuming that comparable output has not suffered a similar fate to the countless hundreds of US titles not included here that Smith indicates have been lost, discarded or destroyed.)

From the presumably representative sample available, the vast majority of the films produced were aimed squarely at white, middle class America and were dedicated to promoting social conformity.

Uncomfortable issues around gender, class, race and sexuality so evident today were never really raised, with the assumption always being that it was the individual who had to adjust themselves, their attitudes and behaviour to fit into the one true American Way.

The brevity of the films and their need to work for a wide audience precluded complexity, with issues usually being addressed in straightforwardly black and white terms, without little sense of ambiguity or nuance especially in the earlier films. This said, it was also sometimes expected that teachers would be using the films as a springboard for discussion, with Smith questioning how far this happened in practice.

It is also important to remember that these films were not bankrolled by the US government as propaganda, as had been the case with adult educational films of the New Deal and Second World War that preceded them. Rather, they were produced by private enterprises, sometimes for sponsors with a particular product or message to sell, but more often than not without. Moreover, while some of the film-makers were clearly motivated in the first instance by profit, others, like Davis, seem to have had a genuine belief in their work and the messages it was promulgating.

Omissions prove equally telling: Films about the dangers of VD invariably emphasised syphilis rather than gonorrhoea, despite the fact that the latter disease was seven times as prevalent, and never mentioned prevention in the form of the condom. Films about road safety foregrounded the responsibilities of the individual driver rather than those of the Detroit auto manufacturers, who were more interested in developing "muscle car" engines than safer vehicles until the publication of Ralph Nader's seminal and self-explanatory Unsafe at Any Speed in the mid-1960s. Films about drugs inevitably presented the one-sided, sensationalist Reefer Madness style accounts with the supposed vox pops of actual youthful users actually scripted and delivered by actors.

Conveying conformity also entailed its own contradictions. On the one hand the films promoted the message that you should be like everyone else, but on the other hand you should also resist peer pressure around drugs, alcohol, driving too fast, going too far sexually and so on. Likewise, the films never seem to have made it clear how different life in the US was from the despised USSR when being different was not an option: Yes, you could be a part of the consumer society, but what if you had other ideas about your life or the kind of things that you should be free to consume?

An interesting and informative read, Mental Hygiene encouraged me to revisit my Educational Archives box set and start wondering what's else like it is out there in the likes of the Prelinger Archives.

Recommended.

The VRA debacle - a brief chronology

1973
UK joins the EEC.

1983
An EEC directive is passed saying that national "standards" laws also have to be passed before it. Basically, other member countries need to know what your standards laws are to facilitate free trade, that they can or cannot sell these goods in your country. Meanwhile, in the UK, there is the beginnings of a moral panic over the so-called "video nasties".

1984
The British government duly passes the VRA, placing constraints the upon video industry. It fails to formally notify the EEC. Thus, German, French, Italian and other EEC/EC nationals would unknowingly commit a crime by trying to distribute their videos in the UK. Ignorance of the law is, after all, no defence.

1985 - July 2008
Thousands of pre-cert titles disappear from video shelves because it is not economical to have them mandatorily certificated. Many small distributors fold, much to the benefit of the major studios, who had been caught on the hop by the rise of home video. These same companies are also placed in advantageous position with regard to the BBFC as a whole, because they can keep resubmitting a film for classification and paying the requisite fee until they get the certificate they want. Smaller companies are not in a position to do. Prosecutions of individuals continue, as does the impounding and destruction of imported material.

Society becomes no safer - indeed, the shocking murder of Jamie Bulger by two boys takes place in the context of "video nasties" being illegal. Nonetheless, the gutter press quickly stirs up a new moral panic, blaming one of the BBFC-certificated Child's Play series for inspiring the crime; that neither of the killers ever saw the film is besides the point.

Subsequently the BBFC begins to relax its policies, with a number of previously banned films being re-released uncut. Meanwhile, the development of the internet and the replacement of video by DVD means that consumers are increasingly importing what they want to view from abroad anyway. The resulting influx of previously banned material does not cause the collapse of society, as the moral minority had claimed it would.

August 2009
Someone notices that the VRA was never properly ratified. The British government's response is to say that the legislation will be hastily re-enacted and the EC properly informed this time. This does not offer anything to the 1700 or so people successfully prosecuted under a quarter century of the VRA and thereby given fines, sentences or criminal records; those priced out of the market by the apparent requirement to have a BBFC certificate, or indeed all those who ever shelled out money to that organisation for something they did not necessarily want. They'll be lucky to get an apology, never mind any form of compensation or redress.

Was the Video Packaging Act of 1985 properly ratified? Are are any other laws that might turn out not to have been properly ratified which people are suffering under? How come none of the lawyers in Parliament or who took on VRA-related cases as either prosecution or defence never even noticed?

And, more worryingly for trash cinema fans, who is to say any new legislation won't contain new clauses to tighten things up?

So, if you want your copy of Grotesque, as banned last week by the BBFC, you'd better get it now - although having just watched it a couple of nights ago I can't say it was particularly engaging, but it's also no worse than other Japanese ero-guro stuff I've seen as far as sadism, torture and mutilation go...

Video Recordings Act never properly implemented

25 years of the VRA and now it is discovered that it was never properly implemented:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6808592.ece

Unfortunately rather than recognising that it was bad legislation, passed in a moral panic, that ought never to have been passed in the first place, it is being re-implemented.

Order your un-classified films now and take advantage of the loophole?

Sexploitation at BFI

http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/bfi_southbank/film_programme/september_seasons/sexploitation

I hope this tours...