1970: fifi watson and susan stewart in “mona: the virgin nymph”

title: mona: the virgin nymph, scene 4

performers: fifi watson, susan stewart
production credits: michael benveniste, howard ziehm (dirs.), bucky searles (scr.)
studio: sherpix | running time: 11:49
release date: 1970 | purchase

fifi watson, susan stewart

and here we have it, the first full-blown hardcore girl/girl scene to receive theatrical release in the united states. denmark had been the first country in 1969 to totally decriminalize pornography, so there are cheapo scandinavian shorts that predate it, not to mention a wealth of under-the-counter filmstrips and stag reels dating back to the earliest days of cinema, but filmic pornography as we understand it today, i.e. with synced sound, clear shots of genitals, unsimulated sexual contact, and climactic orgasms whether evidentiary (penises) or reported (vulvas), begins with mona.

like a lot of actual firsts, rather than the firsts that history would prefer to remember (the story of porn which begins with deep throat is far more narratively compelling), it's clumsy, underdeveloped, and in spots unremarkable. fifi watson, the titular nymph, is no linda lovelace (and lovelace was no georgina spelvin, at that), with resting discontented face, although she's not called upon for much in the way of dramatics. the plot of the film is as thin as any videotape-era porno's: she's saving herself for marriage, but not in the mouth, so she launches a series of blow jobs. after one of them, having refused payment from the bemused guy, she runs into a sex worker on the corner, who invites her up for a drink. you might expect the working girl (susan stewart) to be sore at the amateur undercutting her, but no, she apparently just wants to get her hands on her.

a languorous tease begins, in which the slow lead-up to taking mona's panties off is played to the hilt; and once they're off, the extreme close-up genital shots must have wowed the theaters of 1970. a gynecological fingering commences; susan's technique is necessarily limited by the need to make room for the camera (the closest she gets orally is a mouthful of pubes), and eventually fifi suggests that she get naked too, and does her own spot of licking in sixty-nine. once the announced orgasms arrive, cut to fifi at home, complaining to her mother about her boyfriend.

apart from the close-up wows, the filmmaking is rudimentary, as slapdash and careless as porn has typically been ever since; of the co-directors, benveniste would only be responsible for a handful further pictures, while ziehm would make a career out of packaging fine performances into shabby vehicles. the only available transfer seems to be a  mid-2000s dvd clone of a videotape release; unlike a lot of much worse and less historically significant work from the period, there's no meticulously restored print on blu-ray from alpha blue or vinegar syndrome, just a crummy, oversaturated chopped-for-home-video release that looks a lot like a disney original movie of the era, at least until the genitals come out.

1970 runners up:

anna travers, barbara mills, jane tsentas and lynn harris in fraulein leather, scene 3

guilty pleasures (dir. nick millard), 21:05

jane, barbara, anna, lynn

nick millard's luridly overheated, heavily fetishistic silent-with-library-music-and-narrator style of filmmaking reached something of an apotheosis in 1970, with the release of dr. christina of sweden, roxanna, delicato, and most particularly fraulein leather, which inches towards hardcore with explicit genital coverage and even sexual contact between the models. the entire movie is an extended lesbian fantasia taking place in the unquiet mind of barbara mills, with the other three performers playing variations on her own perverse desires: lynn harris is the titular fetish queen, and millard's camera (like mills' tongue) lingers as lovingly on her glossy leather costuming as on her naked body. the narrator takes an equivocal attitude toward all the orgiastic fever-dream sex, torn between deeply arousing the viewer and reassuring him (always him) that all this deviancy can't really be healthy. the images, though, are unequivocal: sheer eroticism is all they convey. millard's bag of tricks is limited, but at his hallucinatory best, he uses pure filmic language in a way that few other pornographers ever have.

jan davis and terri johnson in love free style, scene 3

after hours (dir. uncredited), 8:44

terri, jan

in the wake of obscenity laws being lifted, a lot of cheap porn based on stale stag-reel premises (the webscenes of their day) got rushed out to theaters. little distinguishes love free style from dozens of similar pictures: the thin, tawdry premise is that teen nymphets terri johnson and susan stewart are being pimped out by a scumbag. jan davis, with an immense housewifely bouffant, is terri's first female client, and although the action is pretty much softcore there are still explicit genital shots and continuous sound recording with hesitantly improvised dialogue just like porn today. the filmmaking is barely passable, but there's a key post-production grace note that ended up charming me in spite of myself: the scene is soundtracked with a muzak version of the weill/anderson standard "september song," suggesting that someone involved in the production of the film had some actual wit.

fran carston and maria arnold in the naked nympho, scene 4

lucky 3 (dir. bob chinn), 12:24

maria, fran

bob chinn is something like one of the great auteurs of porn's first generation, but like almost everyone else in porn in 1970 he was shooting a combination of explicit genital shots and softcore when it came to the actual action. the premise here is as thin as any porn has ever been: maria arnold is bored at home because her men are on a fishing trip, so when door-to-door lingerie saleswoman (?!) fran carston comes knocking, maria jumps at the excuse to get naked and even offers to pay her for sexual services. neither woman can act, and they aren't even called on to do anything sexually other than hold spread-legged poses (fran never even takes off her bra), but chinn's command of the camera and its appreciation of contrasting female beauty is still delectable.

also noteworthy:

scenes

• ellen faison and inger sundh in 3 slags kærlighed, scene 4 | novaris (mac ahlberg)
• donna young and uschi digart in dr. christina of sweden, scene 3 | i.r.m.i. (nick millard)
• babs lewison and kathy ferrick in freudian, scene 8 | after hours
• louise thompson and monica gayle in roxanna, scene 3 | national leisure (nick millard)
• kathy hilton and terri johnson in she couldn't say no, scene 1 | desoto
• jill jameson, et al. in trapped in the house, scene 1 | topar