Jon Abbott - Strange New World: Sex Films of the 1970s

Strange New World:

Sex Films of the 1970s

Jon Abbott

ISBN - 13 : 978 - 1505670172

ISBN - 10 : 1505670179

Text Jon Abbott, 2015

All promotional materials, publicity stills, magazine covers and video and DVD sleeves reproduced in this book are from the authors collection, and are copyright their respective commercial sources. They are used solely for their intended function, and there is no intention to infringe on that copyright. This book is an independent and impartial work compiled from published information and publicly available broadcast materials for historical and sociological purposes, and there is no intention to infringe on the rights of the owners.

The day will come when cinema will have to repay the debt that it has incurred with the subject of love and sexuality, which it has always treated with hypocrisy, falseness, and reticence

--Francois Truffaut

People don't rent or buy films to see less... rather, to see more!

--Tinto Brass

Amazing thing, film. Show women a camera, and they show you their behinds

--Jean-Luc Godard, through his doppelganger, Paul Javal, in Le Mepris

Cover: Maria Forsa hitch-hikes 1970s style on the cover of the superb Butterflies (aka Blafferen ) DVD from Another World.

Back cover (print version only): Robin Asquith in the famous publicity still from Confessions of a Window Cleaner eyeballs Gloria Guida in Quella Eta Maliziosa ( That Malicious Age ).

Strange New World:

Sex Films of the 1970s

Jon Abbott

Also by Jon Abbott

Irwin Allen Television Productions, 19641970: A Critical History of

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants

McFarland, 2006

Stephen J. Cannell Television Productions: A History of All Series and Pilots

McFarland, 2009

The Elvis Films

Createspace Independent Publ., 2014

Cool TV of the 1960s: Three Shows That Changed the World

The Man from UNCLE, Batman, and The Monkees

Createspace Independent Publ., 2015

for further details search Jon Abbott on Amazon and/or see the back pages

Preface

People who notice that the bricks in my living room wall are actually DVD cases can't resist reading the titles out aloud.

Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus! Kung Fu Hustle?

I Married a Monster from Outer Space!?

Ter-ri-fying Girls High School

The Hideous Sun Demon!... Satans Baby Doll... Fulltime Killer!...

Whats The Girl from UNCLE?

Whats a Gidget Collection?

The answer to all of the above is that I love trash. Not just any old trash, but Quality trash. It doesn't have to be sexy trash, or lurid trash, although I like that too, it could be anything from 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoons to 1950s giant bug movies, from vintage Stan Lee Marvel Comics to sleazy pulp paperback covers, from gangster films to spy shows, from Mort Weisingers Superman comics to Harvey Eisenbergs Tom and Jerry comics, from Godzilla the fire-breathing atomic dinosaur and Gamera the flying jet-propelled turtle from Japan to Lino Banfi and Alvaro Vitali comedies from Italy, from Republic serials to pre- Star Wars pulp sci-fi with rockets, robots, ray-guns, and rock men. Yes, Im tough to live with.

My daughter likes to tease me about Attack of the Giant Leeches (theyre black bin bags in a cave). My son kind of likes G-Men Never Forget. My wife rolls her eyes at The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (it's a 60s film, so its the girl whos invisible, not the swimwear).

And sometimes people get it wrong. Dasepo Naughty Girls isnt a porn film, and has no nudity in it at all; the magnificent Cutie Honey (actually a live-action sex-free Manga) doesnt even belong in this book. And Tickle Me is an Elvis film (but Jocelyn Lane is gorgeous in it).

Based in Britain, Ive had over 400 magazine articles published in the U.K. over the last thirty years, and several books in the U.S., with individual pieces having appeared frequently in titles such as Television Weekly, Starburst, Media Week, The Dark Side, Adult Movies on Video, Cult Times, Dreamwatch, What Satellite, and Comedy Review, and regular columns at one time or another in Video Today, Stills, What Video, TV Zone, Video World, Starlog U.K., and Home Entertainment. Most of those features concerned themselves with American television, some of them with film, and two conversations, as if read from a script, have repeated themselves like recurring dreams at dinner parties, soirees, barbecues, and press junkets with dispiriting regularity throughout my writing career.

The topic, ladies and gentlemen, is hypocrisy.

The first one goes like this:

And what do you do?

I write for magazines about film and TV

Oh, really? Isnt it awful about all this American rubbish on TV these days?

(pause for effect--I let that hang in the air for just a split second)

Actually, I love it. Its the American TV series that I write about. I find most British shows slow and boring and badly made

Oh. Oh. Oh... Well, there are a couple of American shows we do watch

They would then start reeling off titles like MASH and Golden Girls or Bilko and Star Trek, or Frasier and Friends (and on one memorable occasion, Santa Barbara ), and it gradually transpires that they watch as much American TV as anyone else.

And the other conversation veers off like this:

Oh, isnt it awful that theres so much sex and violence on TV/in films these days. I cant watch anything with sex and violence in it.

Oh, Im the opposite say I, provocatively. I wont watch anything unless its got sex and violence in it... Oh, yeah, I love it.

Actually, Im a bit of a wind-up artist. Sure, I love my Stallones and Schwarzeneggers, my Die Hards and Chinese gangster films, and almost anything with a couple of naked girls in it, but a lot of the time Im watching The Flintstones, Top Cat, Thunderbirds, Batman, The Untouchables, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Lucy Show... all that sex-free goofy stuff from the 60s; I also like James Cagney, John Wayne, Corman, Scorsese, Altman, Tom and Jerry, Frasier, Seinfeld , and Laurel and Hardy.

But folks, the porn industry is worth billions.

Billions.

Bill-i-ons.

I dont earn billions, and I dont spend billions, so there must be a couple of other guys out there besides me enjoying the female form in all its glory, and watching hopefully attractive young couples go at it like sewing machines.

I admit it, I enjoy a good trashy sex film with a glass of wine and a bag of chips. And so do most of you. The sales figures say so. Our culture says so. The advertising industry says so. And everyone in the media knows that if you put a sex scene or a nude scene in a film, play, or TV show you treble the audience. Given that everyone knows this, its quite frankly amazing that there isnt much more sex and nudity in the media than there is. We should be drowning in it.

But people can still be a bit weird about sex, even in the 21st century. We have the censors, the moralists, the religious zealots, the prudes, a certain kind of feminist, the official bodies, the nobodies, the regulators, the press that pander to the lot of them, and the plain old mixed-up to, uh, mix it up. A beautiful woman with her clothes off puts a smile on my face, lights up my life, makes my day. Apparently, judging from the way the rest of the world seems to carry on about it, thats just me. And yet somehow, the human race keeps reproducing, sex films never fail to make money, and the porn industry flourishes. It seems theres just as much hypocrisy about sex and sex films as there is about American television and violent movies (ahh, so thats where he was going!).