1975: darby lloyd rains and mary stuart in “naked came the stranger”

title: naked came the stranger, scene 9

performers: darby lloyd rains, mary stuart
production credits: henry paris (dir.), jake barnes (scr.), doris barrow (ed.)
studio: mature pictures | running time: 10:47
release date: 1975 | purchase

mary stuart, darby lloyd rains

radley metzger made five hardcore features in five years, directing as henry paris and scripting as jake barnes, and it's entirely possible that in the forty-odd years since, porn has never equalled his achievements in terms of artistic merit. his films are in conversation with broader world cinema at the time, standing toe-to-toe with contemporary filmmakers like woody allen, peter bogdonovich, or bernardo bertolucci. there's a sequence in this slice of naked came the stranger in which star darby lloyd rains dances alone in top hat, white tie and tails in an empty, graffitied swimming pool that could have been drawn from late-period tati or contemporary godard. mary stuart, who sports one of the few sensibly short haircuts in porn history, sees her, and falls a little bit in love; the fall is complete once darby takes her to bed.

the original book publication of naked came the stranger in 1969 was a cynical exercise by journalists who wanted to prove that any worthless trash could become a bestseller as long as it was sexually explicit; they were proved correct, although revealing their little hoax did nothing to stanch sales. thus metzger's adaptation joins films like the godfather and jaws in elevating paperback schlock to genuine art; darby's journey through a sexual phantasmagoria is shot in a variety of styles depending on the mood of the sequence: this girl/girl dalliance is fairytale-like and unreal, as both women are in costume and doubled by mirrors before they strip one another down.

metzger's filming of girl/girl sex is among some of the most authentic in the 1970s, even as the playful dialog keeps up an artificial reality, calling back to mary's flirting with her boss (and darby's husband) in a conversation that darby wouldn't have heard. both women are great at both the performance of sex and solid actors — georgina spelvin's example as a new york showbiz lifer who turned to porn because there weren't enough roles for professionals elsewhere meant that the new york porn industry was generally full of people who could deliver a performance, something that would change when the center of gravity in the industry moved permanently to the west coast.

darby lloyd rains, who began as a nightclub singer before turning to porn, has appeared several times in my runners up, and this film, her most elegant, suave and confident performance, was her career peak: she left the industry soon after, having found her boyfriend, ex-frankie lymon and the teenagers singer joe negroni dead in his apartment. stuart's resumé is slighter, but she too did not remain in the industry long past this film.

metzger's hardcore magnum opus the opening of misty beethoven would be released the following year; because its girl/girl sequences are either exceedingly brief or intercut with other activity, it didn't make my cut. but naked came the stranger is more my speed anyway: i love its air of insouciant frivolity, as fragile and evanescent as a soap bubble, with undercurrents of deep feeling that get papered over by the bright dialog.

1975 runners up:

brenda basse and suzanne mcbain in miss kinsey's report, scene 6

flagship video (dir. larry windsor), 11:49

brenda, suzanne

it was the mid-70s before black women began to regularly appear in girl/girl hardcore sequences, although they would frequently go uncredited until the star system of the 1980s produced sahara and angel kelly. like the vast majority of black female performers of the era, brenda basse only made a handful of movies, but every one of them included girl/girl: here, she appears as one of suzanne mcbain's interview subjects as the latter attempts to document modern sexual mores. mcbain is surprised when basse replies "neither" to a question about whether she prefers black men or white, but the penny doesn't drop until basse physically comes on to her. the filmmaking is shoddy, with repeated dialog, a seedy location, and a weathered transfer, but the performances are solid and basse's insistence on proving the superiority of lesbian to hetero sex makes for a good time anyway.

arlana blue and c.j. laing in the vixens of kung-fu: a tale of yin yang, scene 5

chiang productions (dir. lin cho chiang), 11:20

arlana, c.j.

on the one hand, this is exactly the type of cheap, campy bullshit that intelligent, lyrical work like radley metzger's exists to counteract; on the other hand, it is actually quite funny despite (or because of, since it's at least half a parody of the kung fu craze of the 70s) the z-grade filmmaking. the fact that every single one of the movie's kung fu "masters" is white (arlana's black wig here fools no one) would be more problematic in a film that meant any of its ridiculousness; but the plein-air pseudosex between c.j. laing as the leader of an order of female warriors and one of her pupils is breezy and edited to be almost as acrobatic as the fighting.

angel barrett and susan sloan in the naughty victorians, scene 3

astral presentations (dir. robert sickinger), 13:44

susan, angel

this adaptation of victorian bdsm smut classic the way of a man with a maid is surprisingly polished: again, the new york theater milieu meant that performers who could reliably have (or simulate) sex were as frequently cast as career sex workers who could deliver a line or two. although the bulk of the film is concerned with the exploits of jack, played by an actor going by the classic d'oyley carte name beerbohm tree (who seems to have actually been british), this interlude in which his fiancée (susan sloan, suitably creepy) introduces her lady's maid (angel barrett doing a broad eliza doolittle accent) to both the the excoriations and the pleasures of the flesh, all set to a whimsical gilbert & sullivan soundtrack, stands out. it's largely jolly fun, broadly satirical about victorian propriety and class stratification, with perhaps more erotic emphasis on script and photography than on explicit sexual activity.

also noteworthy:

scenes

• eva khris and françoise maillot in les goulues, scene 2 | france-continental (claude pierson)
• crystal sync, dory devon, marlene willoughby and nancy dare in the honey cup, scene 10 | distribpix (joe sarno)
• cedar houston and peonies jong in oriental blue, scene 2 | lotus (bill eagle)
• trixie heinen and véronique monet in sensations, scene 3 | alpha france (lasse braun)
• angel barrett and candy love in sexteen, scene 4 | metro releasing (howard ziehm)
• juliet graham and terri hall in the story of joanna, scene 6 | blueberry hill (gerard damiano)