1971: darby lloyd rains and tina russell in “dark dreams”

title: dark dreams, scene 3

performers: darby lloyd rains, tina russell
production credits: roger guermantes (dir.), canidia ference (scr.), charlie morrow (strk.)
studio: 213 releasing | running time: 18:30
release date: 1971 | purchase

darby lloyd rains, tina russell

après mona, la deluge.

pornography poured forth in 1971 in vast quantities, most of it slipshod, cynical and feeble. in general you can trust the advertising copy to have put in more creative effort and imaginative flair than the filmmakers when it comes to porn (america's most archetypal and remunerative ethos has always been hucksterism), and in nine-tenths of the porn produced in the earliest years, premises ran roughshod over product as below-z-grade hacks attempted to wrangle eroticism out of mere naked flesh.

so to encounter a movie so intentionally erotic, even when its idea of what constitutes eroticism is prtty far out of sympathy with my own, so early on is something. dark dreams was the sole theatrical effort of  the directing/writing/producing husband-and-wife team roger guermantes and canidia ference (apparently they had a background in high-end advertising), but they threw a lot at it, including a score by avant-garde composer charlie morrow with soprano jan degaetani doing a sub-cathy berberian line in weird coos, clicks and screeches. the sonic discomfort is all in service of a wheezing horror premise — newylweds harry reems and tina russell have a flat tire outside a large mansion, knock on the door for help, and find themselves inducted into a satanic sex cult in no time — but guermantes' off-kilter direction and ference's relatively understated script make the chills more sensuous than limbic.

the girl/girl sequence comes after tina has fleeting implied sexual contact with a dog, then cavorts timidly with a softcore stud in a shower; as punishment for which she is left tied up on a bed for darby lloyd rains, her hair mostly in her face, to ravish. the scene is intercut with reems wandering around looking for her (after having gotten his own rocks off already, of course), arlana blue performing a genuinely thrilling belly dance, and finally the cult leader, a gray-haired patrice de veur, coaxing reems into giving up and joining the cult. darby does eventually make her way down to tina's undercarriage, but the action is mostly vague and implied; the heat (such as it is) in the scene is apparently supposed to be from the fact that tina is an entirely unwilling participant throughout, although because her struggles are silent so that degaetani's burbles can fill the sonic space, none of it evokes enough of any kind of reality to raise ethical concerns.

for the fourth year in a row, my favorite scene has been one where the erotic heat is handled by the filmmaking rather than the sexual action, which is about right for the earliest years of porn. it would take a while yet for pornographers and performers to figure out how to marry the two in just the right ratio, and it's not like the problem has remained solved. one of the reasons i'm going back this far is that erotic heat (when extant) in the 2020s almost always comes exclusively from performances, with filmmaking rarely pulling its weight; so it's nice to visit the past for a counterbalance.

1971 runners up:

andy bellamy and sue pagan in tijuana blue, scene 3

apple eye (dir. howard ziehm), 16:03

sue, andy

the credits for tijuana blue don't actually name any of the recognizable female performers, listing a bunch of spanish names to keep up the pretense that the sex was shot in mexico with local sex workers, save for one "sue pagan," which i'm applying to the american black woman ("i'm from san diego") who has gone otherwise unidentified by researchers. the film's sloppy, incoherent plot needn't concern us, something about a couple of american schmucks muling drugs across the border; this stop in at a seedy bordello where two women, including early porn stalwart andy bellamy putting on a hispanic accent ("shut up, gringo!") put on a sex show for the rubes to a flamenco soundtrack (after which "sue" gives them the information that will send them on to the next set piece) is wholly unnecessary to the story, but it's a fantastic piece of pornography in its own right. ziehm's color-saturated camera deliciously appreciates the gorgeous tones of the women's skin, and despite the men chiming in throughout, the action is among the most grapically hardcore and even adequately performed girl/girl to date.

 

donna nation, pamala westcott and anette michael in eye spy!, scenes 2-5

missy (dir. donn greer), 33:57

donna, pamala

it's interesting that the voyeurism fetish seems to have almost completely disappeared from porn these days, possibly because porn itself already caters to a voyeuristic gaze, so interposing an intermediary watcher between the performers and the viewer feels like an unnecessary step. but it was everywhere in the early 70s, with entire films dedicated to the fetish. donn greer's slow-paced, even methodical eye spy! concerns a rich man afraid his wife is cheating on him, so he has a security firm install cameras in the house to catch her. this half-hour selection covers the installation, his lovely daughter (pamala westcott, a.k.a. damian zisk) masturbating alone, then getting frisky with her hot young stepmother (donna nation) and even adding a masseuse (annette michael) to the fun, with lots of cutaways to the increasingly hot and bothered agent watching from the other room. lousy transfers are so endemic to early porn that the glowing kodachrome richness of this one (as well as an exotica-heavy soundtrack) makes up for a lot of basically-softcore action and a langurous pace.

dolly sharp and tina russell in millie's homecoming, scene 1

aquarius (dir. eduardo cemano), 13:55

dolly, tina

having to watch early xxx luminary tina russell be limited to writhing reluctantly in dark dreams makes this, in which she is an active, even an initatory, participant, maybe more winning than it otherwise might be. the plot (with the director as a po-faced psychologist introducing the film as a clinical study on incest) is goofy porn-addled nonsense that can be summed up as wealthy family gets fucked every which way by the help (and eventually each other), opening with this fillip, in which tina as a housemaid gives her neurotic employer, one "lady zazu," relief from a migraine by the application of tongue and vibrator. dolly sharp's sexual thrills are as overacted as the rest of her performance, but the whole thing is so campy and over the top it's hard to complain.

also noteworthy:

scenes

• erotica lantern and laura cannon in the altar of lust, scene 8 | abraxas (roberta findlay)
• carmel moore, carmen olivera and eve orlon in love after school, scene 3 | something weird
• maggie matson and martha strawberry in love art, scene 3 | v-dom (arenoso blanco)
• ruth knox and janice price in miss erotica u.s.a., scene 4 | apple eye (howard ziehm)
• orita de chadwick and penny king in school for dead girls, scene 6 | something weird 1971
• carmen olivera and terri johnson in specimen: female, scene 4 | vinegar syndrome (richard mailer)