Carter Stevens Revisits His XXX Classics

NEW YORK - Director Carter Stevens is reissuing his Golden Age porn classics on DVD through an exclusive deal with New Jersey-based After Hours Cinema.

"After Hours does a bang-up job of restoration and giving the collector the best for his or her money, which is why I went with them," Stevens told AVN. 

The first After Hours Cinema release from Stevens' library will be a double-feature of The Love Couch (1977) and Double Your Pleasure (1978). AHC plans to restore and reissue as many of Stevens' films from the 1970s and early '80s as possible; many of these films have never before been seen on DVD.

"Much of the source material is private copies, both 16mm and 35mm, from my collection and the collection of several other private collectors," the director said. "I will be doing an audio commentary track, but I don't think anyone really wants to look at my old puss at this point ,so I think we will skip the video interviews. I had a reel of my  trailers but have not been able to find them to date; when and if I do, I'm sure they will be added to the releases."

An actor, director and producer with over 70 films to his credit, Stevens worked with most of the major XXX stars of the Seventies. He spoke to AVN about his entry into the biz.

"My degree is in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology," Stevens said. "I worked at the Motion Picture section of the Eastman Kodak Company and was shift supervisor at Movielab, the largest independent motion picture processing facility in New York. But like the old joke goes, I always wanted to direct."

After spending about two years facing the old Catch-22 ("What have you done?" "Nothing." "Come back when you've done something...") Stevens got an offer from a distributor.

"If I would make a hardcore X film for under $25,000 and deliver to him a finished product, he would guarantee he would play it off 'til I broke even, no matter how bad it was," Stevens recalled. "As he put it, 'I'll make it the third film on a double bill if need be.' Armed with that guarantee, I raised the money - a large hunk was credit from Movielab, my old bosses - and made my first film."

The result was Stevens' first adult feature The Collegiates, shot in 1972 just a few weeks after star Harry Reems had finished filming his part in Deep Throat.

"The Collegiates did what I wanted and I started getting work here and there in the production end of the business," Stevens said. "A year or two later, I ran into a producer in an office at Dino DeLaurentiis where I was working on pre-production for Mandingo. He had heard that I had done a porno and asked if I could do it again for him. I said sure, and Lickity Split was born. Screw loved the film and it hit Variety's top fifty grossing films one week and all of a sudden, 'Carter Stevens' was a hot new porno director."

Stevens' other Golden Age films include The Hot Oven (1975), Mount of Venus (1975), In Sara's Eyes (1976), Highway Hookers (1975), Rollerbabies (1977), Teenage Twins (1977), Jailbait (1977), Punk Rock (1978), Honeymoon Haven (1978), and The Pleasure Palace (1979). His final theatrical movies were Tinseltown (1981)  and White Hot (1984).

AVN asked Stevens which of these movies were his favorites. "They are all great, of course," he laughed. "Seriously, though, there is something in each I like best. I think the fisting scene in Love Couch is the most 'real.' The sex train in the bathtub of Collegiates is the funniest. Things like that. My own personal favorites are Pleasure Palace, Tinseltown and White Hot - the last one because my real life wife Baby Doe was in it. But most of them have at least one thing in them just for the filmmaker in me, even if it's just one shot."

After Hours Cinema began releasing deluxe DVD editions of vintage hardcore porn last year with the release of Shaun Costello’s notorious Forced Entry. The company also released the rare Joe Sarno comedy A Touch of Genie. The company recently expanded into distribution via its e-commerce partner, Alternative Cinema, handling select hardcore titles from Video-X-Pix and exploitation movies including Blue Underground's Bare Behind Bars and 99 Women.

For more information, visit afterhourscinema.com.