This year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of “3 AM.” What, you never heard of “3 AM”? Well, if you’re an Orson Welles fan, you’ll recall that film was directed by Gary Graver, the cinematographer on Welles’ “The Other Side of the Wind” – Graver needed to take on the skin flick job to because he couldn’t cover his bills working on Welles’ on-again/off-again project. As a favor to Graver, the Big O did uncredited work in editing a steamy masturbatory shower in “3 AM.”
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Many times in our lives we spend it eating our meals, but never really knowing how the meal is prepared. We never know how the sausage is stuffed, we never see the cow butchered, and “Pleasure” is, in a way, a look at how the cow is butchered for our entertainment. “Pleasure” isn’t so much an indictment of the porn industry, it’s more so a look at the rough and shoddy experience that is the porn industry and how much it can destroy someone that isn’t quite prepared for it. Our main protagonist Bella Cherry is a woman who will do anything to be a famous porn star, but the question lingers is how far is she willing to go to achieve that stardom?
With the advent of modern technology and the internet becoming accessible through any handheld device allowing the ease of pornography distribution, the emergence of a titan of porn distribution was inevitable. It arrived in the form of Pornhub, a multi-faceted database of every type of fantasy, fetish, and kink you can imagine–for better and for worse. The pornography industry has been one that’s become a topic of conversation since the early 1900’s. Does it influence sexual deviancy or deter it? Does it victimize its performers despite their vocal consent?
The long running series from Impulse Pictures continues chugging ahead and fans of classic and vintage pornography will enjoy what kind of time capsule these DVD’s bring to the forefront of film appreciation. While the DVD’s can be touted as porno, you can also appreciate these DVD’s as a film lover, film buff, film historian, or historian of pornography. The art of pornography has surely changed since the invention of moving pictures, and this continues the dive in to a great decade.
BOOTLEG FILES 706: “El Sartorio” (1907 Argentine porn film).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: I have no idea – maybe in an anthology of old smut flicks.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: The underground nature of early 20th century porn resulted in endless bootlegging.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not as a standalone, and probably not in a documentary on Argentine cinema.
The most widely seen film produced in Argentina was not one of Leopoldo Torre-Nilson’s political dramas or the Oscar-winning gems “The Official Story” and “The Secret in Their Eyes.” Instead, it is a smutty silent short of a mysterious origin that has gained contemporary notability for being among the oldest surviving examples of pornographic cinema.
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Most of the time we get such a backlog of short films and feature length indie films that we work hard to take them all on and review them before the year is up. In what we hope will become a new feature, “Shorts Round Up of the Week” is a column where we’ll be reviewing a round up of short films of varying quality.
If you’d like to submit your short film for review consideration, submissions are always opened to filmmakers and producers.
BOOTLEG FILES 613: “Bat Pussy” (early 1970s porn flick).
LAST SEEN: At this year’s Fantastic Fest.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On VHS and DVD.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: A rather inane violation of copyright protection.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Actually, there is a newly restored Blu-ray edition.
During the 1960s, DC Comics began to flex its litigation muscles when it discovered creative artists were borrowing its beloved Batman character without clearing permission. The company forced Andy Warhol to withdraw his “Batman Dracula” film, which was only being presented in art exhibitions and not theaters, while director/producer Jerry Warren fended off DC Comics’ lawyers after he put forth “The Wild World of Batwoman.” The threat of lawsuits also helped to keep several Philippines-based productions with their own unauthorized Batman characters from being imported across the Pacific, including the now-lost 1967 “Batman Fights Dracula.”