Hard-To-Find Porn

Hard-to-find porn: A Discovery of Rare Old Porno Which Was Then Lost

I have a taste for the classics and for rarities. I frequent rummage sales and antique stores to look for valuable and beautiful artsy stuff as well as rare works of adventure fiction. I have found very cool stuff, including old 1960's and 1970's paperback novels and pulp fiction like the action hero Mack Bolan "The Executioner" novels by Don Pendleton, Ian Fleming's James Bond novels and similar spy/adventure novels like the Nick Carter Kill Master series. I also love collecting old LP's (rock, opera, classical, oldies) and rare movies, as well as kitschy campy stuff for ornaments in the house.

Of course this same taste in rarities extends to porno. I was lucky enough to view some old porno a few years back. It so happened that an older friend of mine (in his 60's) had acquired quite a collection of rare porn. This was porn that had originally appeared in porno theaters of the 1970's. Some were even remade as videocassettes from even older porno that was underground porn of the 1960's. When my friend passed away, his stuff was thrown out or "donated". His wife was behind this. But what to do about his porn collection? Well, I'm a girl who likes porn and so I ended up with the videos. There weren't that many. His wife had thrown out most of them. What I saw was three worn out porno videotapes, which I'll be reviewing and talking about in this article.

The thing is, I can only write about it from memory. Not long ago, I also discovered that somehow these videos had vanished. Either they were thrown away carelessly by someone else (friend, housekeeper, significant other, etc) or maybe someone had stolen them!! I still remember these videos fondly and thought it was worth writing about in Literotica. In this article, the first of many which will deal with adult subject matter, I'll be reviewing these very old adult movies which time has forgotten. But first some background on the 1980's videocassettes I saw.

In the 1980's, the adult film industry went through major changes. In the previous decade of the 1970's, watching adult movies in theaters was so "in" and fashionable that it was known as "porno chic" and everyone from celebrities to your next-door-neighbor went to go see these dirty movies. Some of them, they say, were not entirely about the sex. At this time, these films aspired to be something more and were produced with higher production values, great music, some dramatic scenes and solid plot. It started in New York City and made its way to San Francisco and then Southern California's San Fernando Valley. Before long, theaters in most big urban areas were showing porno exclusively.

The world followed the trend of porno chick: Paris, Amsterdam and Sweden. The actors and actresses formed "the other Hollywood" and became huge stars -- Linda Lovelace, Harry Reems, John Holmes and Marilyn Chambers were just some of the names. Of course foreign porn stars also became famous in their respective countries. This era was known (later) as the Golden Age of Porn. But before long theaters showing porn closed down, and it became rarer to see them open. Only a few of these porno-theaters remained open and they became a sort of American curiosity, showing not only porn in late night hours but also B movies and artsy but provocative foreign films. However, soon the idea became why go to a dated, dirty movie theater with those awful smells in ugly parts of town when you could just watch porno from your own living room? Porno then went into VHS and beginning in 1983 and a new market of porn was born. The "theater" era of porn was over.

The porno from the 1980's was in many ways visually innovative. These videos were made using specialized filming techniques, many of which are still employed today such as close ups of genitals, cum shots, close up of the face and various camera angles. When compared to more recent VHS porn or DVD Porn, these were very campy, very cheesy, often funny and really "bad" porno. They were like B movies with the most minimal plotlines and dialogue scenes. Every major porno situation cliché came up in this porn -- the handyman seducing the housewife, the pizza delivery boy offering more than pizza to the girls at a party, the police officer and the girl willing to sex him up to escape a ticket, the car mechanic and his customer, cheerleader and football athlete, you name it, it was there.

Most of this porn was made in the San Fernando Valley, California, simply known as "The Valley" but South Florida soon followed. And then of course so did other parts of the world -- Brazil, France, Germany, etc. Video stores now stocked porno in special rooms marked XXX, usually behind an isolated door or bead curtains. The porn stars who appeared in VHS porn made just as much money if not more than the porn stars of the big screen. In fact, several of the same porn stars who had done numerous porn films in the 70's found themselves inevitably doing VHS porn.

I will be reviewing some of these videos in the hopes that you can try to find them for me or buying them yourself. None of these videos were soft-core. I'll highlight the best scenes and give my opinions about what made it good or bad. You can also search for several of these classic porno from some internet websites and some video stores might just have them around. I haven't had any luck in finding them again. At the end of the reviews, I'll provide links to these websites. Onto the first video review:

KISS KISS BANG BANG: Starring Karen Summer, Laurie Smith, Jon Martin, Jamie Gillis, Mauvais De Noir:

This VHS movie is hard to find, so you'll have to dig deep to find it. It's most likely out of print or might be found under a different title. Again, I found this particular video by way of an older friend of mine had bought this video from some Los Angeles porno store but this was some years ago. My friend passed away and among some of the stuff he didn't want to keep (and neither did his wife wish to keep) was his porn collection. So I took the videos myself, along with some audio cassette tapes of 1980's groups including rock and pop artists (who remembers cassette tapes?), some old paperback novels (yes romance novels and soft core erotica for women, as well as some Sidney Sheldon novels and old Fawcett Books historical novels) and finally some little kitschy ornaments.

As for the video, the copy was worn and used. I don't remember the date/year of this film but it looks to be from about 1983 or 1984, when porno first got into VHS. There is very little plot. Two girlfriends meet up for breakfast while their respective boyfriends are away and have "girl talk", though this eventually leads to scenes of their explicit sexual fantasies and sexual flashbacks. When I borrowed this video, it seems to have been taped over so I didn't catch all the scenes. The rest of the cast is mostly female, including one sultry black actress in her video debut.

Laurie Smith and Karen Summer did many straight-to-video porn in the 1980's and chances are if you own retro 80's porn, you'll find these girls in them. They were not big porn divas and seemed to be doing it for the fun of it. They're clearly girls from the Valley who jumped into porn early in the 80's. The male stars of this video are veteran actors of 1970's porno -- Jon Martin and Jamie Gillis, the latter who was very big in the industry and who in the late 1980's came up with the idea of "Gonzo Porn" or "reality" porn in which average men get the opportunity to bang a porn star. This was parodied in the 1997 movie "Boogie Nights" with Heather Graham, John C. Reilly and Mark Wahlberg, a movie about the death of a huge 70's porn star in California. But I digress. Here's the story of this porno flick:

Pretty blonde California girl Andrea (Karen Summer) has a boyfriend, Daryl (Jon Martin) who is committed to her but her brunette best friend Leslie (Laurie Smith) believes that Daryl has been checking her out and lusting after her. The opening scene is a dream sequence. Leslie and a masked stud (Jon Martin) are fucking in a luxurious looking master bedroom right under a chandelier. It's missionary position which then becomes girl-on-top and back to missionary. She is having a lot of fun, he is totally silent. She's wild and talkative. "Oh yeah, make me fuck you," she says as she rides him. By the way, it would appear the masked stranger is played by another actor (not Jon Martin) possibly the actor credited as Mauvais De Noir. He is wearing a hideous, almost drag queen-ish looking mask. At the end of the scene, she unmasks him and it turns out to be Daryl, the boyfriend of her own best girlfriend.

Her alarm clock wakes her up and she tries to analyze the meaning of her dream. The music in the background is very sexy and we hear Laurie Smith's voice-over as we overhear her thoughts. She won't dare tell Andrea about this particular dream. She then hops into the shower and in a soft-core manner, she slowly masturbates while thinking of Daryl. The scene then cuts into Andrea's big home(presumably in the San Feranndo Valley) and she answers the door to greet Leslie. The girls have breakfast and casually talk about work and life. They are both supermodels. Andrea enjoys romantic novels and has posed for romance novel covers. Leslie's boyfriend Michael is away on a job in New York for three weeks and she has been sexually frustrated.

The first sex scene is, for me, the hottest and most incredible sex scene in any porno ever made. Andrea talks about how she would like to write an erotic/romantic novel. "But it's got to have lots of sex, I mean lots, or else it won't even sell" Leslie tells her. "Don't worry, it would have a lot of sex" Andrea assures her. Cut to Leslie in the role of "Rachel", the heroine of her novel, in a sexy white gown and beside her is Martin (Jon Martin), who is also her boyfriend Daryl in real life. He has a "professor" academic type of aura, he's very distinguished-looking and older. He' s wearing a well-tailored grey suit. They are relaxing in what seems to be a country house or cabin and it's obviously winter time. A warm fire is burning in the fireplace behind them and they are having champagne.

Rachel and Martin are in love but have not seen each other in a long time and are finally alone. Now, the time for formalities is over and they are ready to make love. "Oh, Rachel, you don't know how long I've waited for this moment", Martin says. It's obvious they haven't consummated their love yet. But Rachel expresses her concern and fears. She had previously been abducted by a gang of wicked men (this scene is not shown as the focus is the romance between Rachel and Martin, but we assume they are probably of the Hell's Angel motorcycle gang type of men or just nasty mountain men). She was forced to commit sexual acts on the men and raped repeatedly in their hide-away. Apparently, as much as Martin loves Rachel, he was unable to rescue her! She has been freed somehow and she finally returned to her true love.

While Martin comforts her by saying that she doesn't have to worry about not being a virgin, she reveals to him that she found herself enjoying what the rapists did to her. Martin is not disturbed by this. On the contrary, he's turned on. And besides, he says, it's not the number of men who have had her body that counts, it's whether she gave her heart to any of those beasts. "Never, Martin, never" she declares, my heart belongs to only you." "And now your body will be mine also," he adds. She replies by declaring, "Oh, Martin, you're so kind and so forgving. Take me and love me as only you can." Yeah, these lines are worse and cheesier than any romantic movie or novel I've ever read myself and it's obviously just a funny parody, as if belittling the romantic style itself. They kiss passionately.

Cut to the sex itself. And I mean cut.

They don't show how this well-dressed couple got out of their clothes and we don't see any foreplay. Martin is on his back on the floor in front of the fireplace. The camera moves slowly across his lanky body and we see that Rachel is kneeling and sucking his cock. She is taking great pleasure in doing this. His cock is very big (of course) but not meaty. "I can tell that you like it, you like to do this don't you?" he asks and later he even asks, "is this what they made you do?" Although this is supposedly romantic, the darker aspects of the story seem to be the undercurrent. Martin obviously gets off on what she had done to the men who kidnapped her, which had included giving oral. She sucks his cock really good, he grabs her hair and she lovingly caresses the head of his cock across her cheeks. She repeats that she' missed him so much and before long she is begging him to fuck her.

He sucks her nipples briefly while she quickly slips off her gown, they kiss and he mounts her. The camera angles switch a lot, usually from a view of both of them to her face and body. She's the one doing most of the moaning, screaming and talking, and this was very typical of the VHS porn in the earlier part of the 1980's. The "money shots" appear to be the close ups of their genitals.

His cock is going in and out of her pussy (which is dotted with a little hair). Jon Martin, on the other hand, is a thin man with no body hair on him, not even a trace. She's only got a pearl necklace on her neck and he's got a thin gold chain necklace. A beautiful and somewhat dark music is playing as a soundtrack; a purely orchestral music - flutes, harpsichord, oboes, soft trumpets which seems to be imitating the Baroque style (classical music). It has a dark and yet beautiful, majestic quality and it's really good original music (for porn that is!).

The somewhat romantic portions seems to be in the intimacy between them. They are fucking like there is no tomorrow but at the same time they attempt to look like a couple classically in love. The girl continues to repeat that she's missed him. She says sweet things like "Oh, Martin, no one can make me feel like you do, never". He is more guttural in his cries and doesn't seem to be saying all that much but there is a fair exchange of words between them for intimate touches.

They don't seem to switch positions from missionary style but he varies the fucking by fucking her from the side instead of from above her and by getting her legs above her head (she's very flexible, probably all those Jane Fonda workout videos did the trick). Jon Martin is of course expert and experienced, and he provides her with genuine, intense physical pleasure as he fucks her very deeply.

Some of the sound is bad and distorted. You can hear the music really well and their voices but the quality of the sound is messy and you can at times even hear the soft-spoken director providing Jon Martin with at least one or two lines when there is only silence between them. He apparently wanted them to keep talking while they were fucking "Like that darling?" the unseen director says. This line Jon Martin had said only minutes earlier. The whole thing wraps up with her big orgasm and his. We see a close up of her orgasmic face, he buries his head into her neck and gives her a little bite and after a few more genital close-ups, we see Martin having his orgasm while still on top of her.

Back to reality: Andrea and Leslie are still having breakfast. Leslie is impressed by Andrea's idea for a romance novel (more like erotica to me than romance). They talk about their past experiences. They seem to be old high school girlfriends. Andrea had an affair with a college professor, Charles Burnett who "liked to fuck in the dark during snowstorms with the window open". This lead to Andrea becoming ill and hospitalized with pneumonia. The professor, obviously grateful for the sex, came to visit her. The girls have a good laugh as they remember the incident. The conversation has turned from fantasies to flashbacks. It's Leslie's turn. Leslie tells Andrea that she had recently gone out with friends to a porno theater.

Evidently, they were still around in the early 80's. She saw a group sex movie and it turned her on immensely. The star wasJamie Gillis. He was a very big star, in the same rank as John Holmes, and did a lot of porn films. I don't know whether the next scene is directly lifted from an actual Jamie Gillis film from the 70's or a newer one he made for VHS.

By the looks of things, it's a new scene designed for video. Jamie Gillis is wearing black leather; tight black leather pants and a vest but not shirt, showing off his good looking but hairy chest. He has partied with three girls -- two white girls, one blonde and one a brunette, and one African American girl, the newcomer to porn. They have come back to his place directly from the nightclub. He has a big house and he's obviously loaded. It's probably due to his being a big 1970's porn star or something.

Obviously the girls don't know this and think he's made his money doing something decent like running a business (ha!) The girls are stupid, materialistic gold-diggers and probably don't really care just how he made his money. They are also wearing too much make up and have big hair, some of which looks dyed or look to be wigs. They're dressed like street hookers but then again, this was the 1980's and I don't know about you, but lots of nice girls dressed up and looked like whores but this was some sort of fashion thing (it was the Madonna influence) and it was hard to tell who was really a whore and who wasn't. "Wouldn't you love to live in a place like this?" one of the girls says, "it sure helps to have a lot of money." Greed was good in the 1980's.

There is no foreplay and no conversation. Jamie Gillis offered them drinks, he steps out for a moment, leaving the girls to marvel at his big house and have gold-digger talk. Cut to the sex again. It's group sex. The pacing is slow and the first thing they do is suck Jamie Gillis' big cock -- all of them. He is sitting on a chair that looks more like a throne (because he's an imperious dick). The girls take turn sucking his cock but he is especially impressed by the black girl's big ass and body.

Of course, the girls do lesbian stuff on each other. They suck pussy, they lick ass and they are obviously enjoying it. And Jamie Gillis likes that they like it too. After all the oral; on him and on each other, they prepare for penetration. None of the girls have sex toys or dildos so Jamie apparently fucks them all. I don't remember seeing him fucking each of them individually though.

Even at this stage of their sex-o-rama, the focus is on the group itself. The girls are moaning and having orgasms, not all of them caused by Jamie's doing. They continue to do lesbian stuff but this time they form a chain or line. Jamie fucks one girl from behind, while she in turn sucks the pussy of the girl next to her and the other is also being sexually served too. Jamie is in the middle of the girls in the last scene, fucking a girl and because they have all had their orgasm, it's his turn. The movie ends somewhat too abruptly when Jamie has his thunderous orgasm. The End in titles, the copyright and the name of the video distribution company.

If anyone knows where this video can be found, please let me know! I consider this the best porno made from this period early in the transition from theater porn to VHS porn. Now to the second video:

RAMB-OHH! PART 2: THE SEX PLATOON: Paradise Visuals: Peter North, Tracey Adams, Alicia Monet, Jerry Butler, Billy Dee, Mike Horner, Megan Leigh, Tiffany Storm, Director Wolfgang Gower.

This one is definitely out there and probably available for purchase on some retro 80's porn website. Canadian-born porn actor Peter North was the biggest name in VHS porn in the 80's but he is still a big star even today and has seen the change from VHS to DVD. He's got a huge list of porn titles to his credit (look at his Internet Movie Database credits/ titles) He's a veteran of porn really but he's still doing porn and looks like he hasn't aged not even a bit. The actor is also known to be bisexual and made even more money by also doing gay porn (under the name Matt Ramsey). I am only interested in his hetero porn movies, especially his earlier work. This movie is a funny, goofy parody of Sylvester Stallone's Rambo movies. Ramb-Ohh Part 1 didn't do very well but it was followed up with a better sequel. It's pure comedy. But it was not to everyone's tastes.