Welcome to a new Thread somewhat inspired by the recent discussion of favorite nude scenes... :buggedout:
Just supposing my virgin eyes had ever, ever seen a XXX-rated "adult" movie with "hardcore" onscreen sex acts, I certainly wouldn't post about it on this fine website! :teddyr: :lookingup: However, I do like to watch a lot of weird movies, including some rather, errr, graphic weird movies... and... sometimes, inevitably, I'm watching a rare experimental art film from the early 1970s and suddenly I realize... "Wow... there's a lotta' penis in this movie!" Alternately, if you've ever watched a Jess Franco film made after 1970, substitute the term "bush" for "penis".
Where's the line? How do you know if you've accidentally started watching a PURRRRRRRN??? DEBBIE DOES DALLAS? That's a porno. DEEP THROAT, for all its cultural significance, is a porno. But is CALIGULA a porno? It stars four or five of the most respected British film actors of the 20th century, but it was produced by the publisher of Penthouse magazine and it sure has got a lot of male members entering pieholes. What about BROWN BUNNY? Only one male member, only one piehole, but it's a long scene... and yet but they're also movie stars... PRON???
Okay, I admit, Madame went out of town for a few days and I broke out the flicks that I might be less likely to watch with her in the house. I've got a few such reviews loaded in the barrel. I figured this is as good/safe a place as any to discuss the somewhat less Safe For Work viewings that might accidentally pass our eyeballs on occasion, but which seem like they might be totally legitimate cinema! But... also, maybe not.
Post 'em if you got 'em! I'll post my first one tonight or tomorrow. It's a great Film! But is it porn?
There are a lot of movies I can think of that have a single brief hardcore scene, but very few I would think of as approaching the boundary of an XXX movie. For definition's sake, I would say that to cross the line there have to either be multiple hardcore scenes, or one that is extended (no pun intended)--say, maybe five minutes long?
CALIGULA (which I haven't seen) is probably the best example. I think some of Jess Franco and Jean Rollins films later had hardcore scenes added to them; I don't know if that would count?
The best example I can think of straddling the line may be THUNDERCRACK (1975) (https://366weirdmovies.com/275-thundercrack-1975/). There are so many sex scenes that it tips into actual porn, but not enough to be truly arousing... you could cut out the sex entirely and have a fairly coherent full-length mainstream movie.
I think it can be a very blurry line. For example, it's fairly obvious which Franco films were trying to just be straight up pornography compared to the ones where there's a little bit more to it. I think ultimately the distinction is would you call it a movie with hardcore scenes or a hardcore movie?
You guys are being much more analytical about this than I've been (yet) and I am here for it! :cheers: Like the saying goes, "I know it when I see it" - except, sometimes, I just don't know!
THUNDERCRACK is a great example for this thread (though I haven't watched it since college) - a very long, complete movie w/ tons of plot and dialogue that also intermittently has hardcore scenes. (If you cut 'em the film would still exceed two hours, I think.) I am at work right now :bouncegiggle: posting about such definitively NSFW matters, but I will review DAYDREAM (1981), another film that I think defines this category, later today...
DAYDREAM (1981):
Tetsuji Takechi writes and directs this remake of his own 1964 film, which as I recall is not very impressive. But I still found the '81 version living vividly in my mind 15-20 years after first seeing it. Somehow I mislaid whatever copy I once owned, and it's weirdly hard to find/watch... at least for a horny masterpiece, which you'd think would have a much more vibrant following. Anyway, I located another copy, and - I like it more than I did the first time.
A man awaiting an appointment with his dentist allows his mind to wander into deranged fantasies about a beautiful young woman currently getting her fillings drilled. :lookingup: It's possible Larry David saw this flick and it inspired the classic SEINFELD episode and line about "Is he a dentist or is he Caligula?!" In fact this dentist isn't just a sex maniac, he's also a literal vampire, complete with silk cape. The voyeur's consciousness drifts out of the office and follows the young woman as she flees the Vampire Dentist through a disco, a swinging penthouse torture pad, a spooky amusement park ride, and a shopping mall. VD keeps catching up with her, harassing her, and having his way with her... but, of course, VD is just the avatar of the man in the waiting room, who is the real threat.
Okay, DAYDREAM is primarily an Art Film, 100%. One set-piece after another is lavishly designed and photographed, and a couple of them are unforgettable. Secondarily it's a Horror Film. If you have any dental anxiety whatsoever, I doubt you'll even make it through the first 10 minutes to make it to the sexy parts. After that, there's more peril and bloodshed than most "porn", and the film's violent climax is sincerely disturbing. Only tertiarily is DAYDREAM a sex film, though it is unquestionably about sex and about sexual dysfunction or hang-ups. There are some prolonged sex scenes (naked people grinding et al), though they probably only constitute 10% of a 110 minute film. (A lot more of it is sex-y, though not actually sex.) Also, it's softcore - and for better or worse, Takechi bowdlerizes his own graphic sex footage by obscuring it with inset images of close-ups of faces, masks, etc, and occasionally just blurring stuff out (kind of artistically) as the censors would inevitably have done. As a result, the actual sex footage... isn't erotic at all. Ironically, I suspect Takechi probably financed this by marketing it as pinku. Maybe this is one definition of "Porn" - porn via market necessity!
So, I really love DAYDREAM. At its best it recalls two of my favorite films, HAUSU ('77) and POSSESSION (also '81). But I have a hard time thinking about recommending DAYDREAM to anyone. Yeah it's only got about 10 solid minutes of naked pumping, but that's literally 60 times as much naked pumping as is in POSSESSION, which by the way is already a tough sell to the uninitiated. DAYDREAM's gender politics are also even more difficult to digest than POSSESSION's (which isn't exactly a picnic). DAYDREAM is practically "Male Gaze: The Movie", and its abuse of the female lead (particularly near the end) is hard to watch even for a tough old piece of leather like myself. To Takechi's credit, DAYDREAM does have an extremely subtle and clever epilogue that reveals the criticism of its voyeur lead: even when he can have the object of his desire, he's happier fantasizing about her!
Quality: 4.5/5
Verdict: Not Porn! But sufficiently Porn-adjacent as to be for select audiences only...
Quote from: M.10rda on May 02, 2025, 02:08:40 PMMaybe this is one definition of "Porn" - porn via market necessity!
apparently the supreme court's definition of 'porn' is: any presentation which has no artistic merit, and causes sexual thought...
on that basis I'll nominate HOBGOBLINS
btw I once had a
5 hour dentist appointment, and it was one of the least sexy experiences of my life. guess I drew the short straw there.
think my actual answer might be SATAN'S BLOOD (1978), released just after a whole load of censorship red tape had been scrapped in Spain ... It practically falls over itself to be a pr0n0 in disguise as a naked ritualistic slash and orgy movie. (not the most convincing disguise admittedly)
Lars Von Trier's the IDIOTS (1998) is not what I would consider porn, but it does include some hardcore sex scenes that are certainly XXX.
Now something like HARDGORE (1975) is most certainly porn in the guise of a horror film.
The 1989 remake of BLOOD AND SAND starring Sharon Stone is very soft core but has some sex scenes which made me go Oy and 😳😳. The same for the Canadian film THE SURROGATE with Shannon Tweed.
As I said, DAYDREAM is a little hard to track down. On my first recent try, I ended up with a file that was labeled "Daydream" but which was actually
DAYDREAM 2 (1987):
Which I watched instead and pretty quickly realized wasn't quite the movie I remembered. It's clearly made more quickly and for less money, though it does relate very similar events as the '81 version. Basically Takechi's DAYDREAM trilogy, like Raimi's original EVIL DEAD trilogy, is the same story told three times with different elaboration. This one opens the same way as the first two, in a dentist's office where liberties are being taken with a hapless young woman.
The crucial difference in DAYDREAM 2, which manages to address one of the major issues with DAYDREAM'81, is that the male Vampire Dentist and the male Voyeur are mostly peripheral characters. The primary antagonist is the VD's female dental assistant, who is a real freak and very enthusiastically assumes all sexual harassment and molestation-ringleading duties from the VD. The female Victim is still very much a victim, but the action is now related mostly from her perspective, and her Gaze actually ends up objectifying the male lead/voyeur character! These changes might not impress Alison Bechdel, but they do help to make DAYDREAM 2 feel more nuanced and less like a masculine exploitation fantasy.
Offsetting this advance, however, is the much more pervasive and explicit sex. Gone are the self-imposed inset images obscuring naughty stuff and, unlike many/most Japanese sex films, there is no blurring of private parts or (on occasion) penetration. The first sex scene is long - like, a third of the film's running time. Surprisingly, though, I wasn't bored. Takechi's camera takes great interest in the almost geometrical patterns created by his actors' bodies (no, srsly, it's downright artistic!) and the actress playing the Victim is, well, gifted enough to create some sort of clear character arc through facial expressions and (mostly) a series of cries, grunts, moans, and whimpers.
Even on a tighter budget, Takechi creates vivid variations on '81's formula: the Victim has to escape a hotel room plagued by optical effects that again evoke Obayashi's imaginative visuals in HAUSU; she and her male lover are interrupted on the dunes by the Dental Assistant and two topless henchwomen w/ machine guns in a sequence straight out of a Franco fantasy; and in my favorite sequence, the Dental Assistant corners the Victim in a spoooooooky train-car that I swear was later recreated in exact detail for the "Resident Evil 0" video game. :bouncegiggle: DAYDREAM 2 ends very much as a(n 80s) horror movie, too. Unfortunately there are no subs on this one (as there are on '81) so what little dialogue there is remains a mystery to me. But, I liked it!
4/5
But, it is more like Porm than '81 was. Less Porn-y than CALIGULA, more Porn-y than BROWN BUNNY.
Quote from: zombie no.one on May 03, 2025, 03:44:41 AMQuote from: M.10rda on May 02, 2025, 02:08:40 PMMaybe this is one definition of "Porn" - porn via market necessity!
apparently the supreme court's definition of 'porn' is: any presentation which has no artistic merit, and causes sexual thought...
Seems fair... indeed, for those of us w/ no other options in the early 80s, the JC Penneys catalogue fit the Supreme Court's definition!
There's one called "Night of the Giving Head" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1388785/ I've been meaning to see for years. I'm pretty sure it is porn though.
Quote from: lester1/2jr on May 03, 2025, 02:56:03 PMThere's one called "Night of the Giving Head" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1388785/ I've been meaning to see for years. I'm pretty sure it is porn though.
I read the storyline and you're right 😂😅😊🐢
>>>An ionizing radiation is penetrating through the holes in the ozone layer, changing male sperm. Females who come into contact with it turn into sperm-craving zombies, while the males lose consciousness after ejaculation.
.......That's a whole lotta' exposition merely to justify some onscreen oral!
I remember when LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1972) was considered to be boarding on porn by some. Ah, such innocent times.
I'm not a big porn scenester but I used to follow Caroline Pierce from "Night of the Giving Head" on Twitter. Really nice and intelligent lady. With a really big ass
Quote from: lester1/2jr on May 03, 2025, 04:56:24 PMI'm not a big porn scenester but I used to follow Caroline Pierce from "Night of the Giving Head" on Twitter. Really nice and intelligent lady. With a really big ass
😳😅🤣😀😀
Quote from: RCMerchant on May 03, 2025, 04:45:33 PMI remember when LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1972) was considered to be boarding on porn by some. Ah, such innocent times.
The apartheid censor board also banned that one 😳
I probably should've known what I was getting into, watching something called
PHALLUS THE MAN (1999):
...But in my defense it's an early (pre-SUICIDE CLUB) film by the great Sion Sono. A guy doing Takeshi "Beat" Kitano cosplay and his long-haired buddy murder everyone in a back alley casino, including one dude wearing blackface. :bluesad: The buddy gets gutshot, so TBK drags him out into the alley, makes out with his sucking wound :bluesad: :bluesad: :bluesad: and then gives his mortally wounded friend a rough railing. :buggedout: Then he picks up two male hitchhikers, watches them make out in his back seat, drives them to a deserted warehouse district, repeatedly has rough sex w/ both of them....... they bowl and frolic in a field... :tongueout: and then
?SPOILERS IF ANYONE CARES?
he murders them for no reason. Then a second guy in blackface :bluesad: has vigorous sex w/ a cute long-haired boy and TBK shows up and murders them in quite grisly fashion, then he seems to feel better.
?END SPOILERS?
In my defense, I had no idea the hour-long PHALLUS THE MAN contained nearly forty minutes of man-on-man action. Okay, now that I check its Letterboxd entry, I see that most reviewers outright call it "gay porn". :lookingup: Maybe I should do more research before I watch weird stuff. There are no penetration shots and the actor who plays TBK seems to be going out of his way to signal that his sex scenes are simulated....... but man, this really seems like porn, and dark, mean porn at that.
I've called the lead character "TBK" in jest but other Letterboxd reviewers have picked up on this too and seem to think Sono is consciously commenting on (or criticizing?) Kitano's tendency to incorporate non-consensual sodomy in several of his major films. I guess one could also connect the dots to Tarantino, per the pawn shop scene in PULP. Also as in RESERVOIR DOGS, there's one female character who has no dialogue and she's dead moments after she appears. To be fair, there's very little dialogue anyway. It's a Sion Sono film so it has striking use of color, some nice shots, and there is a little humor amidst the depressing sexual violence.
2.5/5
Probably would score higher for those who like watching men have sex with men. Apparently Sono made some other early "porn" and though I'm a Sono fan, I can skip 'em.
The Brown Bunny (2003) is an independent arthouse film which is pretty bleak and depressing, with one explicit scene and one nonconsensual but not explicit scene. Doesn't fall under the umbrella.
Caligula? Yeah, it has some scenes, but it's not at the level of Deep Throat or Debbie Does Dallas, which were directly intended to be smut.
Romance (1999) starring well-known adult performer Rocco Siffredi runs the line pretty close. In Australia, it was the first movie with unsimulated sex to be granted classification under R18+.
9 Songs (2004) is another mainstream independent art film which includes unsimulated sex, this time between the two leads. It's worth watching for an arthouse take on that aspect.
Nymphomaniac (2013) is still not quite on the porn level because it uses body doubles and digital editing to make it seem as if the actors are doing it. It is still a sex-heavy movie, though.
The wiki article will give endless hours of holes, rabbit and otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsimulated_sex
Great link! I like 9 SONGS and I like Catherine Breillat, though I've never seen ROMANCE, somehow...
How would you rate Bilitis? There is nothing explicit in it, but it is all about indulging in erotic fantasies about schoolgirls. And Catherine Breillat was involved, although apparently she thought the whole thing was beyond idiotic (I agree).
Good call/question on BILITIS... and thanks for reviving this thread for at least a tangential yet related discussion! 'Cause honestly I don't know when might be the next time I watch quasi-porn...! :bouncegiggle:
I remember BILITIS fondly (quote-unquote) from a book of video capsule reviews I owned in my youth, which made it sound like the most salacious thing imaginable. By the time I watched BILITIS some years back, I was past the age at which it would've provided any punitive value to me. I found it dull and not very thoughtful (in spite of Catherine Breillat's involvement) and almost entirely lacking of the sort of sleaze value that I still sometimes enjoy about films of this era and sub-genre. If intent is important, it's definitely Porn-y, as I think the director and distributors were attempting to attract creepy older men and pubescent lads, but there's no sex of even the softcore variety iirc and very little nudity. BILITIS seems like the kind of lite fare I'd have stayed up late in junior high to catch on Skinemax, and even then I'd have felt disappointed. I motion that we need a new category for films like BILITIS - "Faux Porn"? "Failed Attempt at Porn"?
I've watched several of Breillat's directorial efforts and I like them as character studies and mild art films, but all those I've seen also always under-deliver on the explicit content, at least based on their premises. ANATOMY OF HELL is 90 minutes of the infamous Rocco Siffredi and his partner laying around naked having serious conversations. :bouncegiggle: That said I skipped ROMANCE somehow thus that must be where Breillat exercised all her urges to get proper filthy...
I disagree with you on the sex and the nudity. For a movie for general release, you've got plenty. True, there is just the one sex scene, and that is filmed in a restrained way, but the actresses are constantly taking their clothes off, or wearing transparent or revealing things. Rather than having a couple of nude scenes, here you have systematic fan service on a level I haven't seen since Special Agent Aika. This not 'let's make a horror/action movie and stick in some sexy scenes', this is, 'let's leer at women on every possible occasion.'
Compared to true erotic movies, it is tame I agree, but David Hamilton went as far as he could, while still retaining some plausibilty as a romantic movie you could go and see in a normal cinema.
It is unwatchable, though.
I concede the point to you - it has been as many as 10 years since I watched BILITIS - and I only remember being bored and not in any way titillated... nor do I even recall the sex scene! I do recall the rather pointless/undermotivated nudity, which is nothing I haven't seen in most slasher films or WIP movies. :lookingup: Perhaps that's why I prefer the Horror genre or Crime genre to Erotica when it comes to screen Exploitation... at least in Horror or Crime I'll get some story and violence to entertain me if the sexy parts ain't all that!
Fair point. And this is also why I would class Bilitis as porn, because aside from the erotic fantasies, it really has nothing else to offer (or even tries to)
Quote from: lester1/2jr on May 03, 2025, 02:56:03 PM"Night of the Giving Head"
:bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle:
Romancing the Bone
Good Will Humping
Genius :teddyr: