I’ve long adored local Netflix-style (and VOD, w00t!) movie service GreenCine for a million reasons; local, small business, incredible selection of movies, tons of indy films, oodles of hard-to-find sexploitation films, and the best cult and horror selection I’ve ever seen in a service like this. I often recommend them to people looking for great vintage softcore and those ever-lickable lesbian vampire films… Today they published their Sex In The Movies guide, and it’s fantastic; it’s not so much a guide to movies with sex in them, but rather a huge, well-researched and reference-ready article about the history of sex in film. Period. It covers the first known adult film, to grindhouse and sexploitation, to the beginning of modern porn and stops at the present. Here’s a great snip:
By the 1950s, these films were being referred to more often as “stags” since they were shown at men-only “stag parties.” Luke Ford, in his book A History of X: 100 Years of Sex in Film – an extraordinarily frustrating piece of work; poorly written, misogynist through and through, and yet weirdly useful – quotes William Rostler’s outline from his 1973 book, Contemporary Erotic Cinema, tracing the common plotlines in these early flicks that would be played out again and again for decades:
1. A woman alone becomes aroused after handling a phallic-shaped object. Masturbation follows. A man arrives, is invited inside, sexual play begins.
2. A farm girl gets excited watching animals copulate. She runs into a farmhand, or a traveling salesman, and sexual play begins.
3. A doctor begins examining a woman and sexual play begins.
4. A burglar finds a girl in bed or rapes her or vice versa.
5. A sunbather or skinny dipper gets caught and seduced.Recently, there’s been an interest in rediscovering these vintage films and collections have appeared with names such as Olde Time Erotica, Antique Erotica, Authentic Antique Erotica, Vintage Erotica – Anno 1930 and Vintage Erotica – Anno 1940. What surprises many expecting to see something rather tame and sepia-toned is the revelation that our grandparents and great-grandparents did just about everything we thought we come up with on our own. But after all, sex is sex.
Sexploitation and the Grindhouse
In the early and mid-20th century, there existed a fascinating limbo between mainstream movies, most of them coming out of Hollywood, of course, and no-holds-barred porn. The “sexploitation” phenomenon in the US has its roots in the 1910s, with the big stand-out year being 1913. That was the year of Traffic in Souls and The Inside of the White Slave Traffic, both promising to reveal the lurid underbelly of the world of prostitution (and here, it’s interesting to note that the original, literal definition of “pornography” is “writing about prostitutes”). (…)
Link.
Also — they’re good peeps; check out their Blue Cine porn VoD, with lotsa new hardcore Hentai. Mmmm, tentacles. Image: Cult Epics’ Vintage Erotica Anno 1930 — trailer.
