1984: cody nicole and stacey donovan in “dirty girls”

title: dirty girls, scene 2

performers: cody nicole, stacey donovan
production credits: alex derenzy (dir.)
studio: blu-pix | running time: 16:38
release date: 1984 | purchase

cody nicole, stacey donovan

1984 was the first truly overwhelming year in my overview.

theatrical distribution is by definition limited: there are only so many screens showing x-rated films in the country, they can only cycle through so many films in a given year, and the resulting industry, while large enough to be self-sustaining and varied, especially as new performers cycle in and older ones cycle out, is still small enough to wrap one's head around.

but now that porn has passed the home-video horizon, all bets are off. now, instead of the physical limitations of theatrical venues, the only limitation is on how much stock a video retailer can squeeze onto the shelves, or even how many pages a paper catalog can run to. the result is a profusion of product on top of the extant theatrical market, which is still, in 1984, running great guns. but consumer demand is a gas, expanding to fill the space available, and in order to come close to filling that demand, a new generation of instant starlets must be found.

porn's class of '84 contains a lot of names that are still recognizable today: nina hartley, ginger lynn, christy canyon, amber lynn, and (in a less upbeat tone) traci lords. less well-remembered, but very much luminaries who moved product in the era are names like crystal breeze, angel, renee tiffany, candi, gina carrera, sahara, kristara barrington — and stacey donovan.

cards on the table: stacey donovan was for some time my only 1980s porn crush. her winning smile, her reliable performance of eagerness in action, her chiseled good looks (the not inapt comparison that stuck with me was to model christie brinkley), and even the brevity of her career, not giving her time to pall, won my heart. now, i'm not quite old (or at least not quite degenerate) enough to have been aware of her at the time: i was a child in the 1980s. but when the internet came along, and i started doing my initial excavations into porn history, her work was among the first i fell in love with.

some of that, i confess, was prompted by running across some armchair historian on a webpage i very much doubt is still online anywhere claiming that the stacey donovan–cody nicole tryst in alex derenzy's dirty girls was one of the best lesbian scenes of all time. this must have been around 2002 or 2003; although i was pretty familiar with all the pirating resources then available, the only way i was able to track down dirty girls was to order it from some guy who had burned his videotape copy onto a cd-rom. the resulting blurry, low-resolution video was fascinating if unsatisfactory; it wouldn't be until 2009 that vca's dvd reissue schedule caught up to dirty girls, by which time my attention had wandered elsewhere.

nevertheless, the scene stuck with me as totemic in a lot of ways, and became an unconscious yardstick against which i measured other girl/girl scenes. cody and stacey's naturalistic performances, easygoing chemistry, evident relish in each other's bodies, toyless engagement, and well-performed pleasure did, in fact, end up setting a sort of pattern for what (a very vocal segment of) the girl/girl audience demands as a baseline.

it's a demand i have a lot of sympathy for, although its shrill exigency eventually turned me against it: a lot of girl/girl porn does use over-the-top performances, sex toys, and rote, artificial expressions of pleasure as a cover for a complete lack of interest in each other, turning an alleged instance of intimate connection into a hollow exercise in cynical display. in that atmosphere, a desire for realistic, low-key intimacy without the crutch of a phallus or other fetish object is utterly reasonable. it does, however, miss the fact that hollow exercises in cynical display can have their own pleasures (like staging, shot composition, choreography, and narrative flow), and an overbearing insistence on girl/girl only ever engaging in a single mood (tenderness) has, in the 21st century, resulted in a host of terminally dull, lifelessly shot, and numbingly repetitive work.

but revisiting the cody–stacey scene, both on its own and in the context of this listmaking exercise, reveals all over again just how charming and lively an ordinary, high concept-free piece of girl/girl pornography can be.

dirty girls was one of two anthology movies alex derenzy made in 1984; always one of the industry's most intelligent pornographers, he could see which way the wind was blowing, and the home-video demand for collections of thinly-related (or even unrelated) scenes that could be watched on their own, piecemeal, without having to follow some macguffiny plot was clearly the future. the golden age of theatrical porn was coming to a close; expansive (and expensive) 70s-style productions will still be made, but fewer and fewer every year, and by the 90s home video will not just predominate but be the unrivaled standard, with theatrical distribution as an afterthought, and then disappearing almost entirely once giuliani cleans up times square.

of derenzy's two anthologies, passions was the more florid and outré, with it girl stacey donovan as a hostess introducing a panoply of weirdo perversions (including, for our purposes, an all-girl anal orgy and a remarkable home-invasion girl/girl/transvestite scene), while dirty girls was aimed more at the couple's market, with jamie gillis and jacqueline lorians watching a bunch of one-reel pornos on a playback machine as a preamble to, naturally, getting it on themselves; cody and stacey are in the second reel they watch. the setup is almost mind-numbingly simple: cody has a spare room to rent, stacey is a potential renter; after a brief conversation about a lack of boyfriends and a hot tub on the property, they discover some chemistry, and so to bed.

cody nicole had been kicking around the industry since 1979; she was one of the few performers of her generation who acknowledged having a preference for women in interviews, and her chemistry with stacey is very much that of a more experienced sapphic with a gorgeous and game young thing. and stacey is no wilting violet; her eager engagement as both receiver and giver makes the scene sing. although their technique (especially oral) rarely approaches credibility, both of them give such good performance of pleasure that it would be churlish to insist to the contrary.

and derenzy's fluid, well-positioned camera work and crisp, unobtrusive editing keeps the encounter dynamic and vibrant without feeling like anything is missing or unobserved. the domestic interior feels like a real place, not a porn set, and the lighting is subdued and naturalistic but clear. a lot of these are observations i haven't even needed to make about the previous entries on this blog, because they were assumed: a whole lot of the art of making porn, in the days before videotape, was the art of making any kind of movie, and elements like set design, lighting, cinematography, editing, and sound were the province of skilled tradespeople that even a small-scale film could budget for.

but as home video saturated the market and production budgets shrank in inverse proportion to the volume of product being pumped out, amateur lighting could make things look garish or impossible to see; cheapo sets could be minimalist, slapdash, and endlessly reused; rushed editing could be sloppy, letting things drag, or choppy, making things incoherent; and camera work could all too often be either static and dull or so obtrusive as to get in the way of the performances, chasing a striking image at the expense of chemistry or flow. all of these sins will remain with us (and could be found in early porn too; the grindhouse circuit was hardly choosy), but as they begin to predominate, it becomes worth noting when a steady hand like derenzy's is at the helm.

1984 runners up:

renee summers and sharon kane in scenes they wouldn't let me shoot, scene 3

dark star (dir. henri pachard), 13:09

sharon, renee

henri pachard was already known for injecting as much gender weirdness into his porn as he could get away with — he would shortly begin to be prolific in the trans niche — but although he claims to not like shooting girl/girl because it's too predictable in his intro to this scene-within-a-scene, few directors of his era ever came as close to a genuinely queer sensibility. sharon kane, the dewy starlet of 1978, is now playing a shrewish older woman spitefully pegging a young woman for daring to pose as an even younger man; renee, playing the anonymous woman whose real-life fantasy it allegedly is, only has to look scared throughout before finally smiling beatifically. but for once, pachard calling out directions and sharon pausing character to make sure her partner is comfortable plays directly into the premise of the movie — which is pachard shooting viewer fantasies in real time rather than studio scripts — instead of breaking its reality.

sahara and shari stewart in brown sugar, scene 3

vcx (dir. drea), 18:13

shari, sahara

one unambiguous upside of the home-video explosion is the appearance, out of seemingly nowhere, of porn for black people. not porn featuring black people, to a greater or lesser degree of fetishization (usually greater) — that had always been present — but porn that spoke black american english, set among black americans, and featuring subjects that were culturally relevant to black americans. in brown sugar, emerging porn superstar sahara does a variation on the musical biopics of soul singers like tina turner or diana ross (even doing her own singing!), with shari stewart as her backstabbing backup singer "comforting" her after successfully plotting to get her album shelved indefinitely by label owner billy dee. unfortunately the sex sequences aren't shot wth a tenth of the glamor and glitz of the music sequences, so their coupling on a frequently-used porno couch is pretty drab to look at, but both women are professionals and make it work.

bad mama jama, crystal lake and shaun michelle in adventures of bad mama jama, scene 2

cplc, 10:53

shaun, mama jama, crystal

 

you take what you can get. as a devoted fan of women darker and and larger than the porn average, i am happy to ignore my unofficial no-peepshow-loops guideline if a woman like bad mama jama only shows up doing girl/girl there. the mid-80s is, unsurprisingly, the best-documented era of peepshow loops, which home video was rapidly rendering obsolete, as more of them survive in better condition, and featuring more recognizable performers, than at any time before. so this remarkably early piece of work featuring a fat black woman being pleasured by and pleasuring a couple of skinny white girls (both of whose careers started in 1982 and petered out within five years; crystal was almost exclusively a loops performer, since even here she's a lousy actor) is a beautifully-preserved example of a mostly godforsaken porn tradition, in which unpracticed women wave their tongues fumblingly in the general vicinity of one another for the required running time. shaun michelle seems to know what she's doing, but no one else does; still, for its historic value and for the sheer rarity of showcasing a plus-size black woman as even notionally desirable, this is among my favorite videos of the year.

cindy wong and lili marlene / mauvais denoir and rita ricardo / grace west / rita erotica in girlfriends of candy wong, scene 1

lipstik (dir. charles de santos), 46:38

lili, cindy, mauvais, rita

as has become traditional, we close with an excerpt from an all-girl videotape. (one day, perhaps, all-girl releases will be so plentiful and so routinely well-made, and girl/girl excerpts from otherwise boy/girl work so rote and pointless that these will make up a larger percentage of the whole; but that day is still far off in 1984.) girlfriends of candy wong is a strange, unwieldy beast: cindy wong introduces herself as the madame to a dykey brothel before pairing off with token femme lili marlene while mauvais denoir carries on simultaneously with rita ricardo. (other inmates grace west and rita erotica are eventually interpolated masturbating.) the sequence flows more like a surreal sex dream than a scene-one-then-scene-two porn tape, as partners trade off, revert back, and earlier footage reappears as flashbacks in someone else's imagination. cindy and rita r. are the highlights, with some genuine apparent skill at fucking women, plus some really fantastic dirty talk (cindy is soft domming lili, rita is power bottoming mauvais) that keeps the energy flowing and maintains narrative cohesion despite the disruptive, repetitive editing. de santos' filmmaking is patchy and squalid with flashes of genius, but the soundtrack does a great job of tying it together. the second and final "scene" (also a collection of intercut encounters) is about half the length and just has mauvais service cindy while lili tackles grace and rita e. in that order; if anything the editing is wilder, but rita r.'s appreciative motormouth is missed.

also noteworthy:

scenes

• bridgette monet and gabrielle behar / cody nicole, colleen brennan and laurie smith in all american girls 3: up! up! and away, scene 8 | caballero (jim hunter)
• kelaine kvale and susan hart in the big thrill, scene 2 | vista (bill drake)
• lady stephanie and sahara in chocolate cherries, scene 3 | coast to coast (andrea scott)
• angelique and gypsy in driller, scene 3 | vca (joyce james)
• cécile lanvin, cathy ménard and evelyne lang in du foutre plein le cul, scene 1 | thanatos (josé bénazéraf)
• karen summer and nina hartley in educating nina, scene 1 | atom (juliet anderson)
• cody nicole and mai lin in femme fatale, scene 5 | vista (mike stryker, venessa cruz)
• ginger lynn and kristara barrington in ginger, scene 3 | vivid (scotty fox)
• christy canyon and leslie winston in i like to be watched, scene 1 | vidco (michael carpenter)
• little oral annie and taija rae in inside little oral annie, scene 5 | video-x-pix (joe sarno)
• angel and kay parker in l'amour, scene 7 | caballero (marga aulbach, jack remy)
• marilyn chambers and tantala ray in marilyn chambers' private fantasies 3, scene 4 | creative image (kate jillian, ned morehead)
• kelly nichols, mauvais denoir and kevan gladstone in passions, scene 5 | blu-pix (alex derenzy)
• chelsea blake, kelly nichols, kimberly carson, renee summers and tish ambrose in pleasure island, scene 6 | arrow (michael evans)
• kristara barrington and summer rose in prescription for passion, scene 4 | vidco (tony valentino)
• flo may, georgina mango and isabelle mauchretien in les profondeurs du clitoris, scene 4 | cinévog (gilbert roussel)
• mauvais denoir and tigr in reunion | channel x (justin whalin)
• colleen brennan and maria tortuga in scared stiff, scene 3 | paradise visuals (linda shaw)
• britta stine and sandra nova in le secret d'elise, scene 4 | dorcel (jean-luc brunet)
• lili marlene and rita ricardo in sleepless nights, scene 3 | vista (hayes dupree)
• bunny bleu and tamara longley in unthinkable, scene 3 | mcp (robert mccallum)
• angelique ricard and vanessa del rio in viva vanessa, scene 6 | nibo (henri pachard)
• cara lott, danielle and tigr in women at play, scene 2 | essex (art ben)
• erica boyer and jacqueline lorians in young girls do, scene 5 | caribbean (bob vosse)

all-girl releases

• anal annie and the backdoor housewives | videotape exchange (carlos de santos)
• computer girls | lipstik (constantin besinescu)
• girls that love girls | swedish erotica (paul g. vatelli)
• oriental lesbian fantasies | l.a. video (drea)
• outlaw women | lipstik (bruce seven)
• palomino heat | command (drea)
• paper dolls | gourmet (bobby hollander)
• rear action girls | lipstik (bruce seven)