A Hair Of The Porn That Bit You

In my last post I was calling upon the visitors to our little cyber-bar to see what they would like to see appear here in this little corner of our WWW, as I was finding my creative well, not dry per se, but at least deeper than the rope on the bucket would reach.

SkylersDad was the first to respond with the idea that I compare and contrast 70's mustache and hair porn with the new contemporary clean shaved look.This was to be a challenge. A Challenge of Epic proportions. The Gauntlet had been thrown down. And really? Who am I to refuse a free Gauntlet? If he threw down two I'd have a set, and winter is coming.

After a long period of intense contemplation, speculation, and agitation, I decided that the topic needed to be researched, and thoroughly. How long did I think it over you might ask? Three, maybe four seconds. There are just some decisions that are resolved quickly.

I set about my task.

My research would be much more informative and scintillating if I could have figured out how to turn the "SafeSearch" off. I would have had access to an unlimited amount of naked people from various time-frames. From what I understand, they even have short movies, but this is just hearsay.

I could have discussed how soundtracks could make or break a scene. I could point out the faults of new directors and their choice to make way too many close-ups. I could make some kind of astute comment that the casting of these films is totally reliant on who shows up. All of this and more would have made this article a critic's delight and a readers mouth's water.

But it was not to be.

So, instead, we will have to rely on my faulty memory and compare and contrast the four films of each of these era's that I can recall seeing. Mind you, the sampling is small, but I feel fairly representitive of their time. I recall reading somewhere, "That there is nothing new under the sun" and I think that this might apply to the subject at hand very aptly. People have been doing the oldest dance of man since there have been people to do it, but who could have told Mr. Kodak what his little innovation would be used for.

70's Porn: I have seen "Deep Throat" and "Debbie Does Dallas". I once saw a version of "Behind The Green Door", but it had been edited for t.v., and without the sex, I couldn't follow the plot. It was like watching a familiar play by Shakespeare, but everyone was playing every part and speaking all at once.

The plot to "Deep Throat" was simple. The main character was born a mutant, and her point of satisfaction could only be found at the back of her throat. The fact that her mother helps her solve this riddle, and then finds her a date!?!, is the part I always found the most disturbing.

"Debbie Does Dallas" was very straight forward as well. The cheerleading squad were participants in a school fund-raiser. Something not unheard of in this day and age. They were raising money to send fellow cheerleader, Debbie, to Denver so she could attend college there, and If I recall correctly, join her boyfriend. From my limited research, there was a film made of her arrival in Denver, but the cast could never repeat the magic of the first blockbuster.

In both of the 70's porn movies that I have seen, both make the pretence of making a real, honest-to-gosh movie. They have scenes outside, with dialog. There are minor characters that enter and exit a scene, and at no point do you see them naked, or ever appearing in the film again, yet every character has a hairdo just a little bit larger than the one before them. This seems to be some unwritten rule. And the mustaches! Wow! From elaborate handlebars to walrus mustaches that would have made Tom Selek look like Clark Gable in "Gone With The Wind", these guys displayed some lip-hair that would make a walrus blush. All of them could have made a Clydesdale feel short-changed. They could convince any women to give them a go. They tried very hard to ooze machismo, and that worked for them. These films tended to give the impression that when you weren't in line to buy expensive gasoline, or double-dipping at a fondue party, you were were nailing anything that would hold still long enough.

For something close to a more recent era, I'm afraid my selections are even more vague and eclectic than the last.

The first was a movie that was a collection of scenes from a whole years worth of work from an adult film company. If the collection was the best they had of the whole year, they had a lot of explaining to do to the stockholders. Picture for yourself on one sexual train-wreck after another. If you can see the boom mike in the shot, whatever movie magic you were shooting for is lost.

The other film was "Party Doll A Go-Go; One and Two". By my rough estimate, this film is twenty some odd years old now. I saw it as a double feature on a sleep-over with a buddy of mine from church. One of the most interesting features of the film was the fact that they made no pretence at a plot. Here are these people, armed with no story at all and clean-shaven at every point, and they are interconnected vaguely, and they want to roll in the hay with everybody else. The sets were contrived and false. The part of this movie that makes it stick out in my memory at all is the soundtrack and the dialog. The whole thing was done in beat poetry, with the bongos, slide-whistles, sound effects, and surf music, and that is what made the whole film. I would pay large sums of money for it's soundtrack. It is my all time favorite soundtrack, adult movie or not. It even hedged out "Resevoir Dogs", and that is saying something.

It is a good couples movie.

All in all, I must say this: the 70's porn still retained some small element of innocense, in much the same way as a junior-high dance, or a spin-the-bottle game. Sure, these people were getting naked and "getting it on", but the overall feel was something like tenderness and wonderment. "Party Doll A Go-Go" was alluring in the fact that they made no attempt at making these people "real" in the fact that they had jobs, bills, family, or obligations, but that these were people who were eager to have a go at each other and were willing to celebrate just being alive. The camera often catches them laughing.

The clips movie was a lot like watching an episode of "Jackass" of sex. Everything these people did was simply a dare they undertook for money. It was as joyless and sexy as having a boil lanced. Sure, all the gents were clean shaven and had perfect hair that could not be messed up by even the most acrobatic and violent sex act, the was no hint that perhaps, just maybe, they were enjoying themselves. The only thing that these movies had in common was that they tried to convince you that everyone is having a lot more sex than you, and if the clips film is to be taken at face value, I'd rather not.

Doc