IS IT PORN? (reviews and discussions of films about which you're just not sure)

[M.10rda]

Welcome to a new Thread somewhat inspired by the recent discussion of favorite nude scenes... 

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!    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?

[Rev. Powell]

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). 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.

[Criswell]

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?

[M.10rda]

You guys are being much more analytical about this than I've been (yet) and I am here for it!  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  posting about such definitively NSFW matters, but I will review DAYDREAM (1981), another film that I think defines this category, later today...

[M.10rda]

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.  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...

[zombie no.one]

Maybe 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)

[RCMerchant]

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.

[Trevor]

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.

[M.10rda]

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.  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.

[M.10rda]

Maybe 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!