Interesting vid of the Crone browsing movies in Toronto.  That he picks Hour of the Wolf as his Bergman-of-choice warms my heart.




And here's somethig a bit older....



 

I remember watching that second interview a while back. Good stuff, and pretty funny how much less talkative Carpenter is than the other two.

As for the first clip, I watched an interview with Michael Bay on the same channel. Man, Bay is such a bozo. Back when I used to dislike him, I'd probably find the interview insufferable, but now I kind of love it.
 

Private Lessons

Rock wrote:

Private Lessons

When she invites him to her room and lets him watch her undress, he rushes out to tell his buddy what happened instead of going to bed with her.

The biggest problem I've always had with these 80s era virgin boy fantasies is that the boys in these films are almost always intolerable dweebs.  It's not really the dweeby part, because they're supposed to be socially and sexually awkward, but that they are rarely endearing, and it isn't surprising to see that most of these actors never really had much of a career.  Eric Brown comes off like some producer's nephew, like some kind of favor for a bad bar mitzvah gift.  He was similarly awful in a similar deflowering fantasy, They're Playing With Fire, with an even sexier Sybil Danning that still somehow manages to be a much worse film, and Brown's charmless face is a big reason why it doesn't work.

My Tutor is almost a remake of Private Lessons, but with less blackmail and softer humor.  Caren Kaye is adorable enough to be both next-door cute and knowingly sexy.  The film also has a great scene with Crispen Glover experiencing his first prostitute.  But, again, our innocent fawn, Matt Lattanzi, is such a vapid boy toy that it isn't surprising that his other major roles were Xanadu and Grease 2.  (But he did manage to marry Olivia Newton-John, who slightly favors Caren Kaye, and has a bit of a vapidity problem of her own.)

So, although it's hardly a "good" movie by any stretch, it seems that Class may be the best of this batch of vicarious teen boy statutory fantasies (although it cheats a little by making him 'barely legal') because it has both a high-octane sex tigress in Jacqueline Bisset and a young Andrew McCarthy who can convincingly play the innocent babe with awkward terror but with an engaging energy that makes the mutual attraction believable.  Tom Cruise's star-making role in Risky Business is legitimately good for a number of reasons, although his 'more experienced' muse doesn't have the same maternal connotations of these other films, but shows what one of these kinds of sex fantasies could have been had it been cast with someone with Cruise's abilities.  Weird Science may also fit the bill, except it also cheats (the boy 'faints' before consummation), and, again, Ilan Mitchell-Smith's very limited talents would stall his career soon after.

One other film of note, maybe not very good either but an interesting twist on the template, A Night in Heaven, has a teacher-student affair which acts more as a vicarious rock-the-cradle fantasy for middle-age women than boys, and our boy, rather than a shy wallflower hiding his britches, is more of an ideal Adonis who's moonlighting as a male stripper.  The leads, Lesley Ann-Warren and Christopher Atkins, are serviceable in both the sex and charisma departments.

It is a shame that these kinds of films have been discarded as "creepy" or inappropriate, because I do think that there's quite a lot of palpable pathos and humor to be mined from these nascent sexual experiences and the adolescent fantasies fueled from anticipating them.  True, I'd say that most of these kinds of films aren't particularly interested in mining human experience so much as cashing in on adolescent sexual frustrations (as lucrative as corn in Iowa), but such coming-of-age films are endearing for a reason, even the not-so-good ones, and even though something like The Graduate is obviously superior in talent and depth, I believe underneath its quality as a film, many Boomers still cite it as a favorite because it was one of the few mainstream films to embrace the sexual emergence that a generation of then-frustrated high schoolers felt intimately.  Part of my fondness for last year's Licorice Pizza is no doubt due to revisiting some of these themes, flaunting some of them (the statutory age thing) while compromising others (no actual nudity or sex).  But what it gets right is that air of inexperience and exhilaration of discovery.

As for Sylvia Kristal, I do think that she's a fine actress who got stuck in the Emanuelle stereotype of soft-core sex roles.  I recommend her Lady Chatterley's Lover, a film that's better than its reputation as late-night cable spank.  (I have a soft spot for D.H. Lawrence generally, and films of his Women in Love and Sons and Lovers are also recommended.  There's also a later Chatterley from the BBC which has an equally lovely Joely Richardson.)  Also, Kristal is impressive in Mata Hari, although the film itself is a middling effort from cult director Curtis Harrington.

Jinnistan wrote:

Rock wrote:

Private Lessons

When she invites him to her room and lets him watch her undress, he rushes out to tell his buddy what happened instead of going to bed with her.

The biggest problem I've always had with these 80s era virgin boy fantasies is that the boys in these films are almost always intolerable dweebs.  It's not really the dweeby part, because they're supposed to be socially and sexually awkward, but that they are rarely endearing, and it isn't surprising to see that most of these actors never really had much of a career.  Eric Brown comes off like some producer's nephew, like some kind of favor for a bad bar mitzvah gift.  He was similarly awful in a similar deflowering fantasy, They're Playing With Fire, with an even sexier Sybil Danning that still somehow manages to be a much worse film, and Brown's charmless face is a big reason why it doesn't work.

My Tutor is almost a remake of Private Lessons, but with less blackmail and softer humor.  Caren Kaye is adorable enough to be both next-door cute and knowingly sexy.  The film also has a great scene with Crispen Glover experiencing his first prostitute.  But, again, our innocent fawn, Matt Lattanzi, is such a vapid boy toy that it isn't surprising that his other major roles were Xanadu and Grease 2.  (But he did manage to marry Olivia Newton-John, who slightly favors Caren Kaye, and has a bit of a vapidity problem of her own.)

So, although it's hardly a "good" movie by any stretch, it seems that Class may be the best of this batch of vicarious teen boy statutory fantasies (although it cheats a little by making him 'barely legal') because it has both a high-octane sex tigress in Jacqueline Bisset and a young Andrew McCarthy who can convincingly play the innocent babe with awkward terror but with an engaging energy that makes the mutual attraction believable.  Tom Cruise's star-making role in Risky Business is legitimately good for a number of reasons, although his 'more experienced' muse doesn't have the same maternal connotations of these other films, but shows what one of these kinds of sex fantasies could have been had it been cast with someone with Cruise's abilities.  Weird Science may also fit the bill, except it also cheats (the boy 'faints' before consummation), and, again, Ilan Mitchell-Smith's very limited talents would stall his career soon after.

One other film of note, maybe not very good either but an interesting twist on the template, A Night in Heaven, has a teacher-student affair which acts more as a vicarious rock-the-cradle fantasy for middle-age women than boys, and our boy, rather than a shy wallflower hiding his britches, is more of an ideal Adonis who's moonlighting as a male stripper.  The leads, Lesley Ann-Warren and Christopher Atkins, are serviceable in both the sex and charisma departments.

It is a shame that these kinds of films have been discarded as "creepy" or inappropriate, because I do think that there's quite a lot of palpable pathos and humor to be mined from these nascent sexual experiences and the adolescent fantasies fueled from anticipating them.  True, I'd say that most of these kinds of films aren't particularly interested in mining human experience so much as cashing in on adolescent sexual frustrations (as lucrative as corn in Iowa), but such coming-of-age films are endearing for a reason, even the not-so-good ones, and even though something like The Graduate is obviously superior in talent and depth, I believe underneath its quality as a film, many Boomers still cite it as a favorite because it was one of the few mainstream films to embrace the sexual emergence that a generation of then-frustrated high schoolers felt intimately.  Part of my fondness for last year's Licorice Pizza is no doubt due to revisiting some of these themes, flaunting some of them (the statutory age thing) while compromising others (no actual nudity or sex).  But what it gets right is that air of inexperience and exhilaration of discovery.

As for Sylvia Kristal, I do think that she's a fine actress who got stuck in the Emanuelle stereotype of soft-core sex roles.  I recommend her Lady Chatterley's Lover, a film that's better than its reputation as late-night cable spank.  (I have a soft spot for D.H. Lawrence generally, and films of his Women in Love and Sons and Lovers are also recommended.  There's also a later Chatterley from the BBC which has an equally lovely Joely Richardson.)  Also, Kristal is impressive in Mata Hari, although the film itself is a middling effort from cult director Curtis Harrington.

Class is on my radar, although I found McCarthy pretty whatever in Less Than Zero and Pretty in Pink (maybe because he got brutally outacted in both). Perhaps he holds his own better against a foxy older Jacqueline Bisset, I am willing to risk the hour and thirty eight minute runtime to find out. I think Weird Science goes down pretty well, because you have Anthony Michael Hall's dorky overconfidence to prop up Ilan Michael Smith. Hall is another actor who probably could have nailed these roles, certainly better than the dweeb in Private Lessons (see also: Sixteen Candles).

It's a porno, but I think Tom Byron is legitimately quite good in Private Teacher at this kind of thing. He's able to pull off dorky and obnoxious while still having a good amount of charisma. There isn't much sensitivity in the handling of the premise, unless you count the respect Kay Parker pays to Shakespeare by reciting his work with her Atlantic accent.

Rock wrote:

Class is on my radar, although I found McCarthy pretty whatever in Less Than Zero and Pretty in Pink (maybe because he got brutally outacted in both). Perhaps he holds his own better against a foxy older Jacqueline Bisset, I am willing to risk the hour and thirty eight minute runtime to find out.

I don't want to suggest that McCarthy is a great actor or anything.  Arguably not as good as Rob Lowe, although Lowe lacks the necessary innocence/vulnerability to carry a role like this.  It's just that McCarthy happens to be competent in the role in a way that's completely lacking from those others like Brown or Lattanzi that, in comparison, it feels refreshing.

Rock wrote:

It's a porno, but I think Tom Byron is legitimately quite good in Private Teacher at this kind of thing. He's able to pull off dorky and obnoxious while still having a good amount of charisma. There isn't much sensitivity in the handling of the premise, unless you count the respect Kay Parker pays to Shakespeare by reciting his work with her Atlantic accent.

But what about Honey Wilder?

Rock wrote:

Taboo II....I've seen the first two in the series (there are a few dozen, but only the first few are shot on film I believe)

Ahh.  I have Taboo 6, I think, the one with Nina Hartley, almost certainly shot on video.  It's funny because I don't have a whole lot of vintage porn films, maybe a dozen, but I definitely prefer them for a couple of reasons 1) fewer tattoos (it's just like an article clothing that you can't take off); 2) less surgical enhancements; 3) the bush was not yet shunned.

And pretty much all of those I got from this site, which I'm sure you and crumbs are familiar with, RareLust, which has a great selection of odd and obscure and sometimes even normal films.  The only issue is the direct download which, for me, can be time consuming because I'm too cheap to pay for the premium services of the third-party servers.  But just browsing over the current front page, there's plenty here to offer.

Jinnistan wrote:

Rock wrote:

Taboo II....I've seen the first two in the series (there are a few dozen, but only the first few are shot on film I believe)

Ahh.  I have Taboo 6, I think, the one with Nina Hartley, almost certainly shot on video.  It's funny because I don't have a whole lot of vintage porn films, maybe a dozen, but I definitely prefer them for a couple of reasons 1) fewer tattoos (it's just like an article clothing that you can't take off); 2) less surgical enhancements; 3) the bush was not yet shunned.

And pretty much all of those I got from this site, which I'm sure you and crumbs are familiar with, RareLust, which has a great selection of odd and obscure and sometimes even normal films.  The only issue is the direct download which, for me, can be time consuming because I'm too cheap to pay for the premium services of the third-party servers.  But just browsing over the current front page, there's plenty here to offer.

I checked out Rarelust, but haven't really used it. I'm mostly intrigued by their Hong Kong selection, as a lot of those movies don't have good Region 1/A releases. I tried downloading one title (Angel Terminators II), saw the estimated runtime of like 14 hours, and bailed. I tried signing up for the premium account (I figure I'll get it for a month, download a bunch of titles and cancel the subscription), but it was giving me issues trying to put in my Paypal, and I didn't feel comfortable putting in my credit card, so I decided against it. But the selection on there seems really impressive.

The pornos I've been seeing through...other sources, although I try to go the legal route when it comes to stuff released by Vinegar Syndrome or Distribpix, as they do great work restoring these things and putting out decent releases, so I figure they deserve my money. The state of releases is pretty dire otherwise in terms of A/V quality, so I feel less bad watching those...through extralegal methods.

I have not seen Taboo 6, but I see it's directed by Gary Graver, who's made a few I've enjoyed (Amanda By Night and 3 A.M. are the highlights and genuinely strong on a narrative level), so I've added it to the watchlist. But as to whether I'll watch Taboo 3 to 5 to prep, we'll see. (You laugh, but there is actually some continuity between the first two, and I believe even more so with the third one. Not anything you wouldn't be able to figure out on the fly most likely, but I like to give these movies a fair shake.)

As for how the ladies look, up until the early '80s, most of the actresses looked like people who could star in mainstream movies. It isn't until the mid-80s when you start getting a porn star "look", with Ginger Lynn and the like. The hairdos get substantially worse at this point (lots of hairspray-fueled frizzy abominations), so my preference is towards the earlier era on that level. That being said, the industry wasn't terribly diverse at this point (someone like Vanessa Del Rio stands out all the more for being a minority who also wasn't regularly fetishized for her race), but if anything the movies got more racist as diversity of talent improved, so it's perhaps a double-edged sword. To the extent that I've been watching these things as actual movies, I haven't gone past the early '90s (the switch to video changed the sense of craft in the genre, mostly in ways less conducive to cinephilic appreciation, although there are still movies of interest), and tattoos and implants became prevalent well after that point.

Which other ones did you grab, btw?

Last edited by Rock (7/14/2022 6:58 am)

I want to thank Rock for not taking up two pages of Plato Shrimp server space on Elliot Gould and kangaroos.

But I do have to point out....



Grover is not the Cookie Monster.

(WTF is wrong with Twitter that won't let me use their images?)

Jinnistan wrote:

I'm sure you can see what the money's worth too, because a lot of these things are VHS rips, so I'm sure you're paying for quality.

It's extra annoying when the movie has clearly been shot with some amount of style, but if course that gets undermined by the lousy transfer. I tried to seek out Nightdreams II (directed by Steven Sayadian, best known to normies for Dr. Caligari and to borderline cases for Cafe Flesh), but the only transfers I found were so degraded that everybody looked like a Simpsons character. Alas, I'll never know what happens in the middle Nightdreams movie. (I doubt the plots have anything to do with each other, but it's more fun to complain.)

Jinnistan wrote:

Well, this might get incriminating.

This is a judgment-free zone.

Jinnistan wrote:

Other Nina Hartleys, Dream Lovers and Sex with a Stranger.

Vintage Hartley is a bit of a blind spot for me, as she seemed to get started right during the shift to video, and I've spent a lot less time watching SOV stuff than what was shot on film. That being said, I'll give recommendations to Showdown, a laidback western-themed hangout piece, and the one I watched this week, Educating Nina, which I understand was her feature debut.

Jinnistan wrote:

A "instructional sex aid" from 1971 called Acts of Love

This one? I think Vinegar Syndrome put this out at one point.

Jinnistan wrote:

a 1977 one named Fascinations

This one? Pinku / roman porno is a bit of a blind spot for me (to the point that I don't quite know the difference). I see this stars Naomi Tani, who I think is one of the big stars of the genre. I saw Flower and Snake with her a few years ago, which I understand is a classic of the genre, and conceded it was well made but not my cup of tea. That was before my viewing habits totally deterioriated, so it's quite possible I'll like a lot more on a rewatch. I keep hoping to pick up a bunch of titles from Synapse / Impulse Pictures, but they don't seem to run sales very often (and the movies seem to come with no special features).

Jinnistan wrote:

a video-shot one called Dripping With Desire (with a lovely woman named "KISS", as a psychiatrist fantasizing about her patients).

I hope she wears KISS makeup throughout the thing. I see that's directed by Eric Edwards, who's one of the more agreeable '70s male stars (he's fun as an asshole boss in The Young Like it Hot and as a CIA type in Dracula Exotica). I have another of his directorial efforts, Motel Sweets, on my radar.

Jinnistan wrote:

And there was one called A Very Special Woman with German actress Karin Schubert, who starred in legitmate art-films for a while (I'm still looking for 1973's The Punishment), but eventuallt slid into soft and then hard-core porn.  Woman is something between, a bout a third is hardcore, but they tried to do some kind of plot about cartels.  As Schubert got a little older, she started to look a little more like Eddie Izzard, but she was nagasaki in her segments in this one.

I think you mentioned Schubert once, and I have a few of her movies on my watchlist. I saw Girl in Room 2A with her, but I confess it didn't make much of an impression. I do know she was in one of John Holmes' last movies, but I suspect that one is only of the most morbid interest, as he made it while secretly HIV-positive and not long before he died of AIDS.

Jinnistan wrote:

Serena Grandi's Delirium

This is the Lamberto Bava? I actually just ordered this on Blu-ray, I saw a screencap of a character with a giant eyeball for a head a while back and decided it was something I needed to eventually see.

Jinnistan wrote:

Bo Derek's Ghosts Can't Do It

Ah yes, the DJT classic. I assume it's preferable to the fabled pee tape.