Vancouver Cabaret to Screen Lost L.A. Porn Film Tomorrow

VANCOUVER, B.C.—Anybody remember Refinements In Love, a 1971 film which the Internet Adult Film Database describes as a "porn 'documentary'," which suggests to us that it a bit less documentary and a bit more porn.

Anyway, the film was released through Hollywood International Pictures, a company that had exactly one other release, so there's nothing we can tell you about them—but self-described "porn archeologist" Dimitrios Otis, while working in the Fox Cinema in the early 2000s and preparing for a retro screening of Deep Throat, discovered a small storage space behind the silver screen that seemingly hadn't been touched in at least two decades. Inside the space was a half-dozen old rusty 35mm film cannisters. Whiole loading the theater's projector with the newly-discovered reels to see what was on them, he and Robin Bougie, editor of Cinema Sewer magazine, found that one of the reels was what Otis describes as a "lost sex movie," that being Refinements In Love—and on Thursday, May  28, at 8 p.m., the Fox Cinema will "premiere" this film which has not had a public showing in more than 40 years.

According to Otis, "Before X-rated movies became publicly available in North America, filmgoers were only able to see graphic sex in 'documentary' films known as 'white coaters.' These films avoided obscenity charges by mixing hardcore sex with education, which made for some very unusual results. Some of the more memorable efforts in this grouping were American Sexual Revolution, Black is Beautiful, Man and Wife—and Refinements In Love."

Refinements In Love was directed by Carlos Tobalina, who featured himself behind the scenes making films and showing them in his own movie theater The Mayan, along with a series of "medically-justified" hardcore fantasy sequences. The film includes an on-screen hostess, Liz Renay, who essayed non-sex roles in a number of adult movies between 1969 and 1981, and earnest narration on the “socially-redeeming values” of liberated sex. The cast includes such familiar early porn names as Brigitte Maier, Rene Bond and Rick Lutze, though several other cast members such as Carmen Olivera, Devon Mayer, Fran Spector and Nora Wieternik appeared in several early '70s "nudie cuties" for companies like Something Weird Video—and some even dabbled in a bit of hardcore for companies like VCX and Video-X-Pix.

For his part, Otis is a former schoolteacher who became a porn archaeologist when he realized the Fox Cinema was the last adult theatre in North America still showing 35mm prints. However, after Otis arranged for a screening of Deep Throat at the Fox, flying Ron Jeremy in to host the event, and turned the theater's lobby into an X-rated movie poster art show, the Fox Cinema was back on the adult entertainment map. Otis has also rediscovered other forgotten porn productions such as the Canadian government-funded porno Sexcula, and Ed Wood’s last movie The Young Marrieds.

So why not head over to the Fox Cinema at 2321 Main Street in Vancouver (V5T 3C9) tomorrow night and catch a little piece of porn history?