NEW YORK—AVN readers are likely already familiar with Vinegar Syndrome, the Connecticut-based company that restores and releases/distributes sexploitation and hardcore movies mainly shot during the 1960s, '70s and '80s—and now, one of VS's founders, Joe Rubin, is helping to put on Erotic City, a film festival scheduled to begin Friday evening, Aug. 25, at the Quad Cinema, 34 W. 13th Street in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan.
"We've helped put together an incredible mini-festival of (s)exploitation cinema at The Quad Cinema, starting on Friday and running for one week," Rubin announced in a recent Vinegar Syndrome email. "Plenty of VS restorations are showcased, along with rare 35mm prints and some amazing forgotten films from the Distribpix and AGFA vaults."
He wasn't kidding about the "amazing." Among the list of hardcore features that will be shown are Bacchanale (1970), originally a softcore feature directed by the Amero Brothers (Dynamite, Blonde Ambition, Every Inch A Lady) to which hardcore footage featuring Tina Russell and Harry Reems was added later; Chuck Vincent's Blue Summer (1973); Both Ways (1975), a Jerry Douglas creation brimming with bi-sex sex; three top-rated Radley Metzger classics—Naked Came the Stranger (1975), The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976) and The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann (1974)—plus Cecil Howard's Scoundrels (1982)—and a couple of major surprises.
Take, for instance, Not Just Another Woman, an almost-never seen classic from 1973 that "chronicles the obsessive and ultimately disastrous relationship between a young kung fu instructor and his visiting sister-in-law, who happens to be a nun," according to Quad Cinema's website blurb. Of possibly greater interest, though, is that it was the only XXX feature from Toby Ross, one of the few African-Americans directing hardcore features during that era.
Also on tap will be A Woman's Torment (1977), directed by the legendary Roberta Findlay, who'll also be appearing live to talk about the film.
"Dr. Otis Vorel and his wife Estelle having been caring for Estelle’s mentally ill sister, Karen," Quad Cinema's description of the film states. "But as tensions rise over the prospect of committing her to an asylum, Karen runs away, taking refuge in an abandoned home on Fire Island. But as her inner demons take hold and her sense of reality breaks down, she begins murdering various passersby. Director/cinematographer Roberta Findlay’s cult favorite mixes bloody killings and nihilistic sex, punctuated by a moody score from Walter Sear."
The Erotic City event will also include a couple of gay-oriented features which may or may not have hardcore: Wakefield Poole's Bijou (1972) and Andy Milligan's Seeds (1968), whose plot is described as "a sexually depraved family reunited for Christmas, where long simmering tensions rise, while a mystery killer murders them one by one." That'll be paired with Milligan's first-ever feature, Vapors (1963), "a sordid 'filmed play' set over the course of a night in the St. Marks Baths."
The sexploitation offerings will include Aroused (1965); Doris Wishman's Double Agent 73 (1974), starring super-busty Chesty Morgan; and Joe Sarno's Red Roses of Passion (1966). Plus, attendees will also get a chance to view two rarely seen documentaries about the adult industry: the rabidly anti-porn Not A Love Story, directed by Bonnie Sherr Klein, and much more friendly Gerard Damiano's Changes (1970), described as "an intimate and personal documentary examination of the sexual revolution as seen through the then-burgeoning NYC porn scene. Interviewing everyone from live sex-show performers to gay liberation activists, Changes is a powerful and one-of-a-kind portrait of the city during one of its most significant moments in the 20th century."
Many of the films shown during the Erotic City festival, which runs Aug. 25-31, are available on disc either from Vinegar Syndrome or Distribpix.
The full festival schedule can be found here.
Pictured: Section of the movie poster, complete with fold, for Not Just Another Woman, featuring Tina Russell in a dual role.
