Warner Music Group Dumps XXX Cult Classic 'Teenage Cruisers'

NEW YORK - Warner Music Group pulled Johnny Legend's XXX cult classic Teenage Cruisers from its catalog this week after the New York Post's Page Six gossip column informed execs of the DVD's pornographic content.

Legend reissued the 1977 rockabilly porn flick on DVD earlier this year through his company Legend House, which is distributed by Warner Music's Rykodisc division.

"We had no clue this had come out," an anonymous Warner Music "insider" told the Post. "It's very embarrassing."

Rkyo-distributed studios Synapse Films, Subversive Cinema, and Severin Films have all produced special edition DVDs of vintage porn - but Cruisers is one of the few hardcore discs to appear in the Warner Music catalog.

Subversive restored Bill Osco's Alice in Wonderland for an as-yet unreleased collector's disc, and Severin handles the hardcore oddity The Beast in Space. Synapse has produced several soft- and hard-core porn titles, including Fantasm Comes Again, the trailer comp 42nd Street Forever - XXXTreme Special Edition, and Thriller: A Cruel Picture, a Swedish rape-revenge movie that featured hardcore inserts. 

"Ryko will undertake a review of all third-party titles it distributes and take any appropriate action," a company rep told the Post.

Teenage Cruisers was written, produced and directed by Legend, who co-stars in the movie with John Holmes, Serena and Bill Margold. The film's soundtrack includes music by artists from the '70s rockabilly scene - among them guitarist Billy Zoom, who went on to join the punk band X.

Teenage Cruisers is still available directly from Legend House at www.legendhouse.net. The movie recently screened at the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles to an appreciative crowd.