PORN VALLEY—We always knew Erica Boyer (neé Amanda Jensen) was a big star, but we hardly realized how big until we saw and heard the outpouring of sentiment from a variety of adult industry veterans on the occasion of her death.
"I went to visit her a number of times at her home," stated AIM's Dr. Sharon Mitchell, "and I can't tell you how many times I've traveled down that highway, 98, that she was apparently crossing, and her son told me—it was the weirdest thing—she decided to cross the street at the same time this guy was going, and neither of them saw each other. They're saying it was right after the [New Year's Eve] fireworks; I thought it was right after midnight, but maybe I'm wrong. She's survived by her 12-year-old son, Davis, and her husband, Derek."
Mitchell also has fond memories of their living together in the late '80s.
"Freddie [Lincoln] and she and I lived together in Ventura for the longest time, and we all toured Europe together," she continued. "Yeah, I remember the good times ... and the mushrooms. We could never come down or go to sleep, so I would do my Julia Child impersonation and make these elaborate recipes, and she'd change her clothes like eight or ten times a night.
“One time Danielle, the blonde porn star, she always had this little dog with her, who was really sweet,” Mitchell continued. “We were tripping one day, doing mushrooms, and Danielle had this little pink shirt on, and Mandy was such a joker, really funny, and Danielle's crying and crying, sitting on the floor next to the refrigerator at Mandy's place—we had like this whole top of a building; all our apartments adjoined—and I said, 'What's the matter?' And she goes, 'I shrunk! I shrunk!' And I said, 'What do you mean?' And she goes, 'Look what happened! Look what happened!' Mandy had given her this T-shirt and made her think that she shrunk. She was a doll and such a sweetheart and so full of life and so wonderful. It's just really horrible to lose her."
(Fred Lincoln had recalled the "shrinking" incident as a joke Boyer herself played on her friends.)
"I met her up in Canada," recalled award-winning actor/director Brad Armstrong. "I was originally from Toronto and she was up there feature dancing. I was a male stripper up there and I had just shot my first layout for Playgirl magazine; this was in '88. My first movie ever was '89, and what happened was, in '88, I met Erica, and we got to talking, and I told her I'd started shooting magazines and I'd like to come down and do some more, and she was just kind of wrapping up for a comeback—she'd been out for a little while—and she brought me down to meet Suze Randall and the people at Hustler, and we shot a bunch of boy/girl layouts for Suze and Matty and a few of the other people around, Vogel. I'd just bought a house up in Canada, and I had to go back up there, and we batted it back and forth for about six months, and on one of those trips back, she flew me in for her comeback movie, Bowling Bimbos From Boston. Jim Enright directed, and I met all the guys down here: Eric Price, Mike Horner and Randy Spears—they were all in it, and I was shitting my pants because all these guys were big stars. We did a couple more movies; we did Headlock for Freddie [Lincoln] because I know Patty Rhodes was on the set, and we did one more."
"We started banging, for lack of a better word, but she was pretty much a lesbian, but for whatever reason, she took a liking to me," he continued. "And while I was down there for that six months, I lived with her and we were for all intents and purposes a couple for that six months. And then I left back for Canada, and she kind of disappeared, so it was an exciting six months but that was the end of it; the long-distance relationship took its toll, and I stayed up in Canada until '92 when I came back. But if it hadn't been for Erica bringing me down here, there probably would have been no Brad Armstrong."
"I had a big crush on Erica Boyer back in 1980, when I saw her in Cowgirls in Chains at the North Beach Cinema in San Francisco," John Stagliano told AVN. "That movie was notable in that Erica showed off her ass for the camera, as opposed to just jumping into a sex scene. I remember there was some cheesy story with Erica in a cowgirl outfit and she was washing down a real horse, but she never did anything sexual with the horse; she just started to play with herself. But the sex scene with a guy after that was nothing compared to her incredible solo ass tease."
"When she came back into the business in 1983, I was just getting started making movies," he continued. "I remember sliding down onto my knees in a Studio City lounge when I heard she was available to be cast in a movie I was doing production on. I was ecstatic that this unbelievably natural, hot, anal-obsessive girl was working again. Bruce Seven and I exploited her sexuality repeatedly when we first started making movies together. It is alleged that I had sex with her at the wrap party after the first movie Bruce and I did together, but I got too drunk to remember. Bruce and I had this sense that we could do movies that were genuinely hot, and Erica was our icon of that ideal.
"She was as nice a person as she was sexual," Stagliano continued. "But she really preferred girls. I went up to see her at the Mitchell Brothers' theater in San Francisco; she was performing in the Ultra Room and she promised to meet me after her last show, at a local Polk Street bar. She did not show up. She claimed she lost the key to the lock on the chains that bound her to her partner in the show. (Up to this day, I believe her.) Probably she didn't show up because she sensed that I did not understand S/M in a way that would satisfy her, or maybe it was just because I was a guy. In any case she was an exquisite wet dream."
Among the other interests Stagliano shares with his general manager, Chris Mann, is a love of Boyer.
"I had a chance to talk to her at length the night they inducted her and Jeanna Fine into the Showgirl Video Legends of Erotica ceremony a few years ago," Mann related. "I think I creeped her out telling her how I enjoyed the Loose Ends movies she did for Bruce Seven when everyone else was shooting wishy-washy porn and she was burning up the screen ... plus those real natural boobs drove me crazy."
"I tried to imitate one of those Loose Ends scenes, and its set, in my movie No Man's Land—Director's Choice, but it was just that: Imitation, nothing more," he continued. "I had it as an all-black dubatine thing and I had these massage tables all covered in black Hefty-bag material. I tried to re-create—they used almost a mud-wrestling type of a pit which would be lined with heavy-duty Hefty-bag plastic in the original Loose Ends, and I did that. I tried to have all the same toys and all. Part of what made the Loose Ends series interesting was Bruce Seven's sets, and I tried to re-create the set and the scene."
Actor Scotty Schwartz also had memories of his times with Boyer, which he shared with Gene Ross.
