The Joy of Sex (Pulpy Porn Style)

It's a sexual smorgasbord out there, with the emphasis on 'bored', I'm afraid. It's a deluge. We have graphic images. We have mountains of explicit pornography. We have machine gun-style fucking and sucking. It's all just a few mouse clicks away. 

Still, there is nothing quite like the written word. Nothing. And there's nothing like a lurid illustration to accompany it.

Roll up, roll up, brothers, sisters, and feast your eyes on these artifacts of a bygone era, these lost exhibits of the lavishly lurid.

The sex novels of the 60's, 70's, and 80's tackled subjects that are off-limits today -- 'politically incorrect' -- because some tit-sucking momma's  boy, some blubbering milquetoast with his wife's panties on his head and balls in her pocket, decided to become a 'victim' of them, decided he'd  'clean up' society by demonizing them... all the while taking bribes for political favors, and using his elevated station in life to  rob, rape, and Reverse Robin Hood the people who voted him in.

There was a time, not long ago, my friends, when there was a clear distinction between fantasy and reality, when 'victims' were the physically and mentally abused, when sex was a playground, and make-believe was just that.  It was a simpler time.   You knew where you stood.  The agendas were clearer.

Now, despite the propaganda that it's an 'anything-goes' world, the reality is that anything will offend somebody, and that somebody is gonna cash in.  

It's a sadder world today when a Wall Street banker cops a slap on Rolex for his mass destruction of middle class lives while prosecutors are aggressively busting children for trading 'naughty pictures' with each other on their cell phones.

Makes sense in a way: Sex has always been an easy target for those engaged in distracting us from their crimes of opportunity. It's become the indefensible, the accusation that turns the old 'innocent 'til proven guilty' mantra upside down. It may appear we have more freedoms, but we really have more rules, more policing of our thoughts, our fantasies, and our dreams.  

Hopefully, the world will turn full circle again, and the hysteria and hypocrisy associated with depictions of human sexuality will dissolve, and pulpy porn excellence, almost quaint now, will make a welcome return.

Female Teacher: In Front of the Students

What's to be said about Yasuro Uegaki's Female Teacher: In Front of the Students (just out from Impulse/Synapse) is all good. Very, very good, in fact.

Nikkatsu, the old Japanese film studio that, after sixty years, suddenly turned dark and erotic to make ends meet, has, admittedly, made its share of lame efforts such as Nympho Diver and I Like It From Behind, both recently released by Impulse/Synapse. I suppose some folks bought them, but, for mine, they have little appeal because they're doing nothing that hundreds of British and American softcore porn flicks haven't already done.

You can't say the same about Nikkatsu flicks like Assault - Jack The Ripper, Rape!, White Rose Campus - Then, Everybody Gets Raped, Sex Hunter - Wet Target, Sex Hunter (the Ikeda film), Secret Chronicle - She Beast Market, and Zoop Up - Rape Site. All of these feature exploitation elements that are very culture-specific, and do not shun the sticky mix of sexual violence and eroticism that many Western films are afraid of.  Although S/M is being mainstreamed (and reduced to blandly flavored vanilla) by works of dubious literary merit such as 'Fifty Shades of Grey' (a massive bestseller), its harsher, more incendiary essence has been shaved away.

Nothing is shaved away in Impulse/Synapse's Female Teacher: In Front of the Students, a truly subversive Nikkatsu flick that some would describe as "troubling" for its perspective on rape. To take its politics too seriously would be to misunderstand its intentions. It is, afterall, a skin flick for a skin flick audience, so it takes a fantasy often imagined by women to its natural end point. If you think it condones the view that a raped woman can be sexually charged by the resulting trauma, you're projecting too hard. This is fantasy Japan-style, not reality.

The pretty Rushia Santo is 'Reiko', a new teacher at an elite high school. Forced to discipline a group of spoilt brats led by the particularly nasty Takuya (Toru Nakane), she finds herself intimidated by the boy. After an unnerving exchange with the group, Reiko is raped in one of the school's showers. Humiliated, she doesn't report the rape, but she keeps a piece of a jigsaw puzzle dropped at the scene by the masked rapist. Over the next few days, she attempts to identify her attacker, and flashes back to key images of the rape, but  her search is sidelined by a series of highly erotic seductions that relight the fire of the incident.

Like Toshiharu Ikeda's little-seen Sex Hunter (not be confused with Sex Hunter - Wet Target) and the notorious Captured For Sex 2, Female Teacher: In Front of the Students exudes an atmosphere of sexual nihilism and abandon that is downright intoxicating. Director Uegaki demonstrates a superb eye and flair for dark eroticism, and creates a seventy minute masterpiece that sucks us into a sexual maelstrom while never ignoring the story's emotional journey. Santo is excellent as a woman on an odyssey of deep exploration, and delivers a strong emotional, physical, and intensely sexual performance as a teacher torn between tradition and the delicious call of the dark.

The film has an amazing look. It's gritty and beautiful all at once, and the compositions, subtle camera moves, and extreme close-ups are striking. The sex runs the gamut from hetero to lesbian, and there is a potent threeway worked into the mix. The narrative never flags, and the sense of anxiety experienced by Reiko is always felt by the audience.

A great selection from Impulse/Synapse, and, hopefully, a sign of the direction future releases will take. Films like this offer a rare and exotic glimpse into the human mind, and underline why nobody does it better than the Japanese.

Craving Pulpy Porn

This fella has a 'Lust List', and she's at the top of the list, apparently.

Male and female, we've all had our own personal Lust Lists over the years. Not all of us have posed like this while considering the state of our lists, though, so his Charles Atlas pose does make me doubt the young lady's  placement on his list... unless she's a mid-op transsexual?

Perhaps Tom of Finland had a son.

These novels existed before paperbacks embraced full-on pornography, so they conveyed a pleasing noir vibe.

For me, her total nudity takes some tension away, although I like the suggestion that she may be standing behind a mirror, or window.

Mother and daughter competing for the same men. A pulpy chestnut, for sure. And most guys would welcome the eventual compromise.

Massive themes of voyeurism in art of this nature, and it never fails to work.

Love the hook of a book being taken from a 'file'.  A 'file' suggests reality, something highly classified, highly taboo. Must try to get my mits on more of Harding's 'files'. Come to think of it, who the hell is Harding, and why is he sharing his files?

A lot of cover copy here to get us to the deliciously lurid title.

Personally, I hate covers with real photos, but this sweaty shot of a wanton woman who turned nympho after being slipped some 'stuff' does evoke a successfully sleazy tone.

"She was a hot enough broad without any outside help..."  Is it too much too expect a woman to be hot without outside help these days? Must ponder that.

Someone came into her store to take advantage of a 'Sale', but stayed to sample the merchandise that wasn't on sale, I suspect.

So, does the title suggest that he'll stick around until she screams? Or does the screaming kick things off in a whole new direction?

Bondage Bonus

These de Mullotto pieces are the last of those received from the very generous Bridgitte, a bonus of bondage art from a fine young lady who has enjoyed a close relationship with the artist.

 

As noted in prior posts, these represent some of the earliest attempts of any artist to compose work of this nature in a CG environment. Today, the discipline has been well refined. I post them here for the sake of completion.

 

The artist worked as an illustrator in a variety of fields simultaneously, but signed these works "de Mullotto" to protect his professional identity.

Mark of the Master, his epic of Satanic bondage and submission, was recently reprinted by 'Wet Angel', a division of Creation Books. The quality of the 'Stanton Archives' original (1980) is definitely superior in terms of printing and reproduction, but the reprint is worth having if you don't have the Stanton version.

In the new printing, the text font has has been changed, and a double-page spread that appeared in the center of the 'Stanton Archives' version now appears across the inside of the glossy front and back covers.    

 

Wherever you are today, Mr. de Mullotto, I wish you well.

Perversion For Hungry Eyes

 

David Lindsay wrote about the world "being rotten with illusion from top to bottom... the most sacred and holy things ought not to be taken for granted, for if examined attentively, they will be found as hollow and empty as the rest... Behind this sham world lies the real, tremendous and awful Muspelworld, which knows neither will, nor Unity, nor Individuals; that is to say, an inconceivable world." 

I have a lot of time for Colin Wilson, the author of a mind-boggling variety of books (fiction and non-fiction). When I stumbled upon his earnest digest examining the obscure works of David Lindsay, I was compelled to read. Clearly, so was Wilson. In fact, Wilson's read a great deal more Lindsay than I have, my association with him limited to the truly troubling A Voyage to Arcturus and The Haunted Woman. Read several years ago, both left an imprint on me like a long journey one can't forget, a journey insisting on a replay. 

Wilson's approach to Lindsay comes from a certainty that the man was compromised, stifled by a blight he calls the reader over one's shoulder (or: self-consciousness of imminent publication). Writes Wilson: "It's a pity he was not more like Lawrence, who was too sure of himself to suffer from self-consciousness, and is subsequently never afraid to write as he would talk." 

Wilson's slim but meaty volume is a midnight love letter to the writer in which he praises, cajoles, and attempts to school him. Wilson conveys a strong sense of disappointment in Linsday, and attacks the writer's use of cliches, but concedes Lindsay "was not really a solitary visionary... He was expressing the spirit of the age..."

He includes the book with a wonderful quote from Einstein:

"One of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is to escape from everyday life, with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires."

This is such a wonderful book by about a strange, brilliant bookman. 

 

This is a Road Book in the Twain style. Road Movies are more common these days, but Road Books endure, nonetheless. I wanted this one to endure longer, so I read it slowly over a two week period, savoring its magical essence. 

It is magic. Magic like Jonathan Carroll's The Land of Laughs is magic. As you read, you smile a lot. You nod. You smile. You take the book away from your eyes and hold it at arm's length to appreciate it. I did a lot of arm extending while adventuring with King of Citizen Bands.

It's about freaks on an odyssey, freaks searching for a better place to be, a place where they're free to be themselves. It's a bible for non-violent Outsiders.

There is The Dwarf who isn't, the King (of Citizen Bands), and a blind girl who trusts them both. Nathan Tyree, who writes in a clear and colorful style, loves these people. I think he'd defend them with his life. His affection for them is, in fact, what makes the journey so involving and inviting. It's not like the drama itself is bloody and lives are threatened and lost at every turn. No, the drama emerges from the Outsider status of the characters, their struggle for acceptance, their letting go of old ways.

I'm struggling to think of another book I've loved this much recently (present company excluded). 

 

I read Mr. Overby is Falling before King of Citizen Bands. It's taken me this long to write about it. 

Still, six months later, I can't shake its surprises.  

It's head-scratchingly difficult to discuss without giving up its secret. There is a big secret and it's a well earned one. 

'Mr. Overby', our protagonist, is not unlike the lead character in Bobcat Goldthwaite's God Bless America, a film I can recommend with reservations; I'll discuss the reservations at some other time, but they involve keeping your expectations at a realistic level.  Overby, unlike that film's protagonist, doesn't feel like he can do much about what's wrong with the world. He doesn't have the balls or the organizational abilities. Until they're handed to him.

That's enough about the plot. Mr. Overby is Falling, true to its title,  is a decent into hell, a hell most people will not be comfortable with. Some reviews (there are a few) have attacked the book for its content while circling its actual value as literature. 

In other works of this nature, the solution to the problem becomes a bigger problem. This doesn't go in that direction. It goes in a much darker one.

Using just seventy-nine pages to do it, Nathan Tyree rightly fucks you up with this book. God bless the guy.

If I could liken the tone of this book to that of any other writer's work, I'd have to say Bentley Little. Little's ultra-paranoid thrillers such as The Association, The Store, The Policy, and The Ignored share atoms with Mr. Overby. 

I envy anybody their first read.  

    

 

By nature, we're hopeful. That hope gets stomped out of us by experience, but, like a ball attached to an elastic band, we bounce back with hope renewed. Then, more stomping. 

Jonathan Carroll's After Silence is a fuckin' amazing book about a man whose hope gets stomped on and shattered. And, with that hope lying in pieces, he finds another reservoir. Yes, fueled by dreams and love (the two entwined in a fragile dance), he inches forward, propelled towards another stomping.

Sounds dark? It is.

Easily one of the most inventive living writers, Carroll never disappoints me. In a weird way, he's someone whose work I love dearly, so, even when I don't "like" him, I love him nevertheless.

In the indefatigable The Land of Laughs, he presented a snoozing dog talking in his sleep. With that introduction, I never left.   

 

Delany's wonderful sci-fi works are not as relevant to the "enjoyment" of The Tides of Lust (originally: Equinox) as is Hogg, his most disturbing novel. Still, if you appreciate his love of language and his stubborn adherence to theme, you'll take much from this controversial, pornographic, and banned-in-some-countries work.

It describes the adventures (sexual and otherwise) of a diverse group of people, its leading protagonist being a black sea captain and his dog Niger (one 'n'). Its banning and subsequent revisions (mostly to address the age of some characters) resulted in its initial publisher (Savoy) being jailed. The '73 edition (pictured) contains the original text and copyright notice.

Delany, who writes vigorously and has no truck with gender distinctions, lets loose with a volley of uncompromising sexual excess that is never less than metaphorically relevant to its themes of corrupt authority and sadomasochistic powerplay. 

Truly an extraordinary work.

Also well worth reading is Delany's book on writing itself:

 

Another Savoy beaut in which Charles Platt invokes sexual anarchy via a sci-fi/horror premise. A gas loosed on Southern England has unexpected consequences for those affected. They become rapid fuckers of everything and everyone imaginable, and no body part or bodily fluid is excluded in a spirited free-for-all that feels wonderfully fresh.

Today's wild and unpredictable world of internet pornography seems closest to what Platt predicted. Back in 1970, when the book first appeared, it probably felt like a natural extension of both the free love movement and the growing permissiveness of popular culture.

Ironically, today, despite the existence of a Wild West underground internet culture, the book would surely shock common sensibilities a great deal more. Fanned by witchfinder generals of both underaged and unconventional sex, our sexual culture, though shoved at us in PG-rated bubbles via commercial trojan horses, is, at the same time, being demonized by anybody with a microphone and and a dubious political agenda.

The book is a riotous good time, an example of unfettered literary freedom, a freedom so well exercised, in fact, that author Platt later revised some passages, dismissing his original scribblings as symptoms of reckless youth.

As horror, social statement, and porn at gut level, this is a goddamned masterpiece, a Fuck You, Charlie! to hypocrisy .      

Sexual Adventure From Nikkatsu

Impulse Pictures (Synapse) released the "Nikkatsu Roman Porno Trailer Collection" last year to the gratitude of diehard Nikkatsu fans and devotees of on-screen erotica . Its release was not dissimilar to the sexy neighbor half disrobing for you as you ogled her from the assumed cover of a darkened room. She knows you want her, but she's not going to make it easy. She wants to test your long term interest, and who can blame her? A one night stand won't pay the bills or fuel her fires when nights are cold.

Finally, the sexy neighbor has made good on her promise and exposed her sleek little body not once but twice with the releases of True Story of a Woman in Jail - Sex Hell (Koyu Ohara), and Debauchery (Hidehiro Ito). Like many a shy lass, this one is full of delicious surprises.

Ohara's flick, the first in a a sleazy trio, is modeled on Shunya Ito's Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 ('72), but it's less surreal, more erotic, and far sleazier than any 'Scorpion' entry with the exception of Masaru Konuma's Caged ('83). Having directed a minor erotic classic (Fairy in a Cage; '77) and one of my favorite pink flicks of all time, White Rose Campus - Then, Everyone Gets Raped ('82), Oharu delivers the expected goods to Sex Hell, but he also succeeds in bringing a surprising amount of solid characterization to the movie, as well as some sharp performances. In all honesty, female prison flicks can be repetitive and overly familiar, usually meeting conventions and little else, but Ohara's effort here demonstrates commitment to producing a work that rises above the usual.

From a kink perspective, this is one juicy and creative exercise. Ticking the usual boxes (lesbianism, rape, and shower fondling), it also adds a cheery helping of golden games and sensual brutality. A bloody tampon makes an appearance here, too, and would again seven years later in the wild White Rose Campus; in that, a pervert  enters a public bathroom and engages in some mind-boggling tampon-sniffing. Ohara's strength is his guiltless commitment to the material.

A terrific DVD bonus here is a color reproduction of the film's original poster; it's an absolute corker. On top of that, Japanese film expert Jasper Sharp provides concise and info-rich liner notes on the film and its cinematic context.


Highly recommended... and the first sequel is on its way...

 Impulse's simultaneous release is the inferior Debauchery ('83) from director/writer Hidehiro Ito. Ryoko Watanabe stars as an unhappy housewife who finds herself on a semi-reluctant erotic odyssey to a land way beyond her personal boundaries.

Directed and shot with an average amount of style, it's powered by a strong central performance and a constant escalation of its shock factor. 

The theme of a woman exploring her limits is not new at all in Japanese cinema. Recent releases such as the Flower and Snake remakes have plumbed these well-worn depths with unbridled panache, but Debauchery, though a more modest affair, lifts itself out of typical 'Oniroku Dan' territory (many of these efforts are based on Dan's novels) by sheer invention and a refusal to remain within "acceptable" limits (relatively speaking); the "explosive" climax neatly returns our heroine to her initial starting point, completing a neat circle. During this period in Nikkatsu's history, their output was as controversial and limit-pushing as possible. Debauchery reflects that status.

With these two releases, Impulse has established a solid standard for their Nikkatsu releases. The transfer/print quality is as good as it's going to get (bar a Blu-Ray bump), and the choice of material is strong.

One of the upcoming titles that excites me immensely is 'Zoom In: Rape Apartments', a truly mind-boggling piece of fiery erotica that will be retitled Zoom In: Sex Apartments for its US debut. This film is a must for the whole damn family (well, at least those over eighteen).

 

Also falling into the must-buy category are Eros School: Feels So Good, and Zoom Up: The Beaver Book Girl (not seen by me, this one, but I'm as excited as the bloke on the cover).

 

The Earliest Works of Toshio Saeki

 

This had been eluding me for some time, but I finally got my hands on it, and I was not disappointed.

Saeki's very early works lack none of the perverse imagination of his later creations, and it's inspiring to see how themes have remained constant.  

 

For mine, nobody blends the grotesque with the erotic as sincerely as Saeki, although I am certainly not discounting the beautiful and eclectic work of Suehiro Maruo, Jun Hayami, Hiroaki Samura.

 

Saeki's art, for me, is the purest extension of Japanese woodcuts, and explores the theme of man/woman/beast unions with a commitment that's sometimes dizzying for its freshness.

 

The best of the best mines the darkest human catacombs and excavates the brittle beauty of fresh experience. 

I've written extensively on this blog about Saeki, 

so use the search function if you want to see more.