A History of the Blue Movie (1915-1975) - (1940)

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Description: This humorous and informative documentary traces the history of cinematic pornography back to the 1915 stag film "The Free Ride." Sexual attitudes of society have been carefully researched and explained as films from World War up to and including the year 1970 are examined. Stripper Candy Barr is shown in the classic "Smart Alec", and the mild peep shows of the 1940s and 1950s are examined. All events lead up to the late 1960s where censorship laws were successfully challenged in the courts. The last half hour is a shameless promotion of director Alex de Renzy's current blue movies and adds nothing to the historical perspective of the feature. The color process is not credited, but a few porn films before the 1960s were filmed in color.
Review:
This is clearly the best compilation of early "stag" footage, the only other one worthy of serious consideration being Bill Osco's Hollywood BLUE. It contains all those fabled favorites that once only saw the insides of brothels and affiliated "gentlemen's clubs" you may just have heard or read about.

The earliest American stag movie (or "smoker", as opposed to "loop", a term which did not enter common usage until the blue movie arcades and peep shows of the '60s) known to survive, A FREE RIDE a.k.a A GRASS SANDWICH (ca. 1915), still contains seriously steamy threesome action between two commendably eager females and one ready, willing and very able male.

The subsequent ON THE BEACH (a/k/a THE GOAT !) adds a remarkably thorough comedic plot to the pornographic proceedings. Excerpts from an explicit cartoon named BURIED TREASURE (possibly the work of the Fleischer brothers...) show a little guy getting into all sorts of increasingly surreal mischief courtesy of his unfeasibly large member.

You can file KEYHOLE PORTRAITS and snippets of '50s stripper reels under F for Filler. Far more interesting is the much discussed Candy Barr movie, SMART ALECK, which sees the stripper who gained notoriety as the girlfriend of shady nightclub owner Jack Ruby (i.e. the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald who allegedly shot...well, you know that!), violently refusing to go down on her mate who's chomping at the bit. So a less appealing lady is drafted in to perform just that task with such vigor as to practically mesmerize - and indeed overshadow somewhat - this loop's central starlet.

The movie's true highlight is the legendary NUN'S STORY about a stunning Sister who sheds her habit to make genuinely passionate love with her Elvis-pompadoured boyfriend before re-donning the cloth at scene's end.

Now is as good a time as any to shed a little light - if any were needed - on the man responsible for this collection, the late great Alex DeRenzy. Prior to his emergence as one of the greatest erotic filmmakers of all time with classics like FEMMES DE SADE, BABY FACE and PRETTY PEACHES, his main claim to industry fame was as the proprietor of the Screening Room, one of San Francisco's pioneering (pre-Pussycat) porno palaces.

The latter part of HISTORY kind of belies its title by providing what was perceived at the time as mere publicity for its director's business and place thereof. Of course, nearly 4 decades later, it's easy to state that time has been kind to this particular section.

A massage parlor sequence, pre-figuring DeRenzy's early classic FANTASY GIRLS, has cute acting, copious nudity but no visible penetration as an inexperienced masseuse tries to fend off the amorous advances of her horny client. Beautiful Bonnie Holiday, a too frequently overlooked actress who was instrumental in bringing her goddess girlfriend Annette Haven into the industry, languidly responds to an unseen interviewer as she teasingly strips and pleasures herself in a wonderfully erotic segment.

The last scene has a young couple responding to a modeling ad and turning up at, you guessed it, the Screening Room for an artistically shot audition that already showcases embryonic versions of the type of visual effects DeRenzy was to refine in his later work.

All in all, an important excursion into porno's past and an eloquent charting of the genre's evolution (or lack thereof...) in terms of style and content. Serious students of sex cinema will probably benefit most from this hardcore history lesson though even the occasional porn hound who couldn't care less should find portions of it to his liking.

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