1982: sharon mitchell, tigr and jennifer thomas / sulka and misty williams in “sulka’s wedding”

title: sulka's wedding, scene 2

performers: sharon mitchell, tigr, jennifer thomas, sulka, misty williams
production credits: mike stryker (dir.), joaquin quinn (scr.), kim christy (prod.)
studio: avanta productions | running time: 19:32
release date: 1982 | purchase

sulka, misty williams

learning about movies like this is why i started this project. it is essential to recognize that trans women have been present in the history of pornographic film from its earliest years. as far as we have come in terms of representation and respect towards trans performers — and we have come so far that the box cover description, written for the dvd release, reads like a hate crime now — it is a mistake, and a mistake with deadly consequences, to assume that our nobler, more enlightened era is the one that first extended the gifts of stardom, glamour, beauty, romance, self-possession, or legitimacy to trans women. they always had those gifts, and the notion that cis people granted them as a favor out of the goodness of their hearts goes hand in hand with the belief that cis people can rescind them at will.

let me be clear: i didn't know this movie existed when i started this project. if i had had to guess, i would have said that trans performers probably didn't gain visibility in the industry until the late 90s, and i would have been just as wrong as everyone i'm lecturing in the previous paragraph. but i did know that there was much more to the history of porn than i was aware of, and uncovering this jewel of a film felt like solving a puzzle i didn't even know i was working on: of course a trans model had an entire showcase in 1982 to celebrate her gender reassignment surgery. the entire early porn industry came out of the same weirdo deviant freak culture that was one of the few places where queer people were even provisionally accepted in the 1960s and 70s, and in just my brief glances through porn history via the girl/girl lens for this blog i've seen a bunch of drag and trans performers from the new york and san francisco scenes show up in incidental roles in big-budget pornos. (1978's take off is a camp masterpiece, which i've only ignored here due to a sadly perfunctory girl/girl sequence.)

sulka's x-rated career began in 1979, when drag performer and photographer kim christy shot her for female mimics, a fetish magazine featuring explicit photos of drag queens and trans women. soon enough she had her own magazine: her exaggerated facial feminization surgery and bountiful breast implants made her one of the earliest trans porn starlets in 1980, and when she had surgery in 1981 to give her the genitals she wanted, it was documented in a pictorial (and possibly a movie, though that's unverified) called sulka's transformation.

in sulka's wedding (the copyright listed in the film itself is 1982, though apparently the theatrical premier and video release weren't until 1983) producer kim christy convenes an all-star queer cast — trans women sulka, jennifer thomas, misty williams, and jamie ling, gay crossover performer paul barresi, straight male performers craig roberts and ron jeremy, and openly bi cis women sharon mitchell and tigr — to tell a surprisingly sardonic story of the lead-up to sulka's marriage to craig roberts, with the others as members of the wedding party, bridal shop employees, and so forth, culminating in an orgy immediately after the vows.

there are three major girl/girl (cis and trans) sequences in the film: in the first, craig brings his sidepiece sharon to work at a boutique where jennifer thomas is her boss; he offers to explain her lateness in jennifer's office, while sharon's eye is caught by fresh-faced customer tigr. sharon and tigr get together in the dressing room, and are joined by jennifer once craig is finished with her. from that cis/cis/trans threesome we cut to sulka being bathed by misty williams, and they have a brief sexual episode. after sharon and jennifer drop tigr off with craig and ron jeremy as bachelor party entertainment, we go to the dress fitting, where sulka is dressed semi-nude by jennifer as sharon and misty go to town on each other. since the first two sequences are back to back, they're what i'm listing here for the record, but really all three are excellent, groundbreaking, and beautiful.

stryker's imdb bio (under his mainstream name, r. michael stringer) emphasizes his time working as a crew member in productions helmed by orson welles and john cassavetes, and especially in its opening sequence, with gorgeous shots of misty williams making her way across san francisco, there's a beautiful verité quality to the filmmaking in this movie that elevates the thinness of the material and the limitations of the actors (ron jeremy, for instance, has never played anything but a excitable little pervert). most of the sex is filmed in such tight close-up that the genitals, rather than the gender presentation of the participants, end up being the focus of the viewer. i could see arguments either way for the result being cisnormative orthodoxy or queer subjectivity, but especially in the girl/girl scenes the intense close-ups are stylistically bravura, betraying a sympathetic tenderness that isn't visible in the boy/girl scenes.

because the men in the movie are, to a one, assholes. it's that kind of movie: caustically cynical in a familiar 70s national lampoon mode, frequently soundtracked by foul-mouthed radio djs pitching satirical products, a glib satire on commercialism as the thematic overlay on a wedding that neither participant seems particularly compelled by. i watched the whole thing (right-arrowing through the boy/girl sex more out of a sense of efficiency than disgust), something i'm unlikely to do again with a non all-girl feature, but it's an oddly compelling piece of gutter-art cinema.

sulka would continue to periodically make movies through the 1980s, after which she retreated into obscurity, and is rumored to still be living a hermit's life in hollywood. as one of the earliest visible trans women in any field of entertainment, she was an inspiration to generations of both trans women and trans chasers, many of whom considered her post-op body an affront to their fetish. but by the end of the decade, a younger crowd of trans women was being marketed to the "she-male" niche. where that niche intersects with girl/girl, i'll be paying attention to it, but in the same way that cis girl/girl is a fraction of the overall porn market, trans girl/girl is an even smaller proportion of the trans market. in one of trans porn's earliest outings, i got lucky.

1982 runners up:

bridgette monet, lisa de leeuw and little oral annie in "strictly ladies' business"

swedish erotica, 22:44

lisa, annie, bridgette

it was only a matter of time before the single-reel filmstrips (often called peepshow loops in the business) produced something i felt it necessary to take notice of. i'm not entirely certain how this would have been released in 1982: the standalone version of it available on the current vod market is eight minutes shorter and silent, with a faded, indistinct transfer. but the setup here, from a latter-day swedish erotica compilation with soundtrack and conversation, gives the sex its meaning. lisa de leeuw is a high-powered executive receiving a business pitch from bridgette monet, while her assistant annie assists: bridgette, turned on by being naked in a hot tub with the other two, imagines being sexually dominated by them. this may sound like hyperbole, but nobody else in history has made strap-on fellatio as compelling as lisa's dirty talk and annie's technique do: the actual sex is as mediocre as is typical of the period, but lisa de leeuw is one of the greatest verbal improvisers of all time in porn.

becky savage and marie sharp in café flesh, scene 3

caribbean (dir. rinse dream), 22:18

becky, marie

the high-camp weirdness of 1981's nightdreams reaches something of an apotheosis, or perhaps more accurately a dead end, in café flesh (which shares a cinematographer), and lurches so far into high-concept bizarrity and expressionist bricolage that it very nearly forgets to be porn for long stretches at a time. the least consequential encounter is this girl/girl stage show soundtracked by the mad laughter of the emcee credited as pez d. spencer (channeling tim curry at his most heterosexual), shot with such a tight focus on the genitals that my listing of the performers involved is more conjecture than transcription. it may be one of the last proper movies to contain hardcore; the 1982 norm was already hardcore dutifully contorted into the shape of a proper movie. soon enough "proper" would fall by the wayside as well.

joanna storm, lee caroll and sharon mitchell in the widespread scandals of lydia lace, scene 10

caballero (dir. henri pachard), 13:θ4

lee, sharon, joanna

sharon mitchell vehicle the widespread scandals of lydia lace isn't commercially available as far as i can tell, but copies are relatively easy to find for those who know where to look, and it's worth it: golden age of porn director henri pachard is always good value, and the closing scene of this tale of sharon mitchell as a sex worker who leaves everyone she encounters happier and more contented is remarkable: she and her coworker joanna accost lee, the frigid wife of a wealthy man, in a nightclub bathroom while a sex show is going on outside and they teach her how to give and receive pleasure. girl/girl fans would hate the intercuts with the show outside, but deprativty is rarely filmed so well.

danielle, jade wong, mai lin and rhonda jo petty in oriental hawaii, scene 3

hollywood international film corporation of america (dir. troy benny), 23:16

rhonda, danielle, mai, jade

finally, a vaguely racist, definitely colonialist sequence from an incest-forward feature (the taboo series was breaking records at the time, so there will be a bunch of incest and pseudo-incest storylines throughout the 80s). mai lin and jade wong play native hawaiian and japanese exchange students respectively (both performers are californians of chinese descent) being sub-let to by a white family in hawaii. nobody here can act and the script is atrocious, so the rental negotiation and family dinner scenes are excruciating, but once the girls get together with the family daughters to smoke joints and play with dildos it gets better: danielle's husky voice and the creative pairings make for some enjoyable, head-empty fun.

also noteworthy:

scenes

• heather young, loni sanders and nicole scent in blonde goddess, scene 6 | distribpix (bill eagle)
• heaven st. john and kay parker in body talk, scene 2 | vcx (pedie sweet)
• angel cash and juliet anderson in the erotic world of angel cash, scene 9 | distribpix (howard a. howard)
• bridgette monet and lisa de leeuw in the girl from s.e.x., scene 2 | caballero (paul g. vatelli)
• jackie and nora in homegrown video 6, scene 1 | homegrown
• becky savage, danielle, maria tortuga and pat manning in intimate lessons, scene 2 | collector's (phil marshak)
• dominique saint claire and héléne shirley in passions déchaînées, scene 7 | crédo (claude pierson)
• anna turner and sharon mitchell in scoundrels, scene 9 | command (cecil howard)
• leslie bovee and monique lebare in starlet nights, scene 3 | xtra vision (lisa barr)
• honey wilder and tigr in wild dallas honey, scene 6 | caballero (jeffrey fairbanks)

all-girl releases

• girls and their toys | lipstik