LOS ANGELES—What with pretty much all of L.A.'s adult theaters having closed, thank goodness there's someone who's stepped in to pick up the slack ... sort of.
Cinefamily, the group that's taken over the Silent Movie Theatre at 611 North Fairfax Ave. in Hollywood, has hooked up with art gallery Lethal Amounts, online XXX/Exploitation poster vendor Westgate Gallery and classic XXX/Exploitation DVD e-tailer Vinegar Syndrome to present another round of "Peep Show," a program that combines XXX fare, sexploitation and "arthouse" films.
The fun starts Friday evening, with a replay of Sexperiments, which the Cinefamily website describes as "a program of rare experimental shorts with luminaries like Gunvor Nelson and Constance Beeson and animators like Vince Collins, who employed a myriad of styles, from strobic overstimulation (Take Off) and haunting meditations on the human form (The Operation), to freaked-out comics of morphing genitalia (Desire Pie)."
But then the evening really begins to swing with Distribpix's Through the Looking Glass, starring Kim Pope, Nancy Dare, Terri Hall and Catharine Burgess as the "Alice" character in Burgess's only hardcore appearance, interacting with such legends as Jamie Gillis and Bobby Astyr. According to the Internet Adult Film Database (IAFD), the film contains 14 sex scenes (though some appear to be solos), and it scored a AAA rating from AVN.
The fun continues on Saturday afternoon, when Dracula Sucks (also known as Lust At First Bite) is presented at 3:30, and two of the movie's stars, Serena and Bill Margold, will be present for the screening and Q&A, along with the movie's producer, Darryl Marshak, whose brother Phil directed it. IAFC clocks this one in at 15 sex scenes, performed by some of that era's top stars including Annette Haven, Kay Parker, Nancy Hoffman, Seka and Pat Manning, as well as Jamie Gillis, John Holmes, John Leslie, Paul Thomas and Mike Ranger.
But fans of softer-core might want to bring extra cash, because Saturday evening's 7 p.m. show begins with The New Adventures of Snow White, which Cinefamily describes as "a titillating, super-softcore psychedelic romp through enchanted forests with magic mushrooms, naked hippies and macabre, weirdo sexual fantasies. Snow White is a barely pubescent, long-haired beauty, and the seven dwarves revive her after she eats the poison apple with application of paint, lotions and what looks like peanut butter rubbed into her breasts. And only in the late 60s could you have a porno with just one sex scene—between an ugly maiden under a curse and a grizzly bear."
On the same bill will be The Hottest Show in Town, a somewhat harder-core European import directed by Drs. Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen, filmmakers and erotic art collectors from porn's early days.
"The Hottest Show In Town is 1973 Euro porn as the sexual revolution comes to the circus—with a nude trapeze artist, bare-breasted magicians assistants, and a clown with a trick penis," the Cinefamily website reveals. "But of course, the hottest acts happen backstage. Expect intercourse within three minutes of the opening and our first orgasm three minutes later, after which subtitles for the French dialogue are no longer required."
Sunday night's offering is a change of pace: Charles Henri Ford's Johnny Minotaur, which Cinefamily describes as "frank, American, homoerotic, mystically giddy and somewhat undervalued," then adds that it is "a lyrical explosion of taboos: incest, intergenerational desire, pansexuality and autoeroticism" with narration by Allen Ginsberg and ... Salvador Dali?
Monday night, May 18, brings two softer-core films: 1975's Fantasm, which has just one actual sex scene (John Holmes with Maria Welton, in her only XXX film) though several adult actors appear, and 1977's Vanessa, which has no IAFD listing, but which Cinefamily describes as "the tale of a young orphan girl raised in a Bavarian convent who discovers she’s heir to both a citrus plantation and … a chain of Hong Kong bordellos," and features "lesbian trysts, sweaty orgies, prolific 69ing and a few whips and chains thrown in for good measure."
Tuesday evening brings another double bill: The Miss Nude America Contest, which appears to be everything its title describes—plenty of nudity, no sex—and what appears to be a 1969 documentary of sorts, Sex and the Animals, which "explores the elaborate sex rituals and mating habits of beasts, fungi, fish, and other furry friends, narrated with scientific cool and a varied soundtrack from fanciful Disneyesque symphonics to Ravi Shankar."
Let's face it: The chances that you will see any of these strange films anytime other than in this mini-festival is vanishingly small, so why not head over to Cinefamily's "Peep Show" website and check the films out in more detail—and you can even buy tickets there too!
