Tonight on Playboy Radio: Taboo II and the Golden Age of Porn

Had a great time tonight (2011 Aug 25) on Playboy Radio‘s Night Calls talking with Nicki Hunter and Debi Diamond about Kirdy Stevens‘ 1982 classic, Taboo II.

The movie stars Kevin James and Dorothy LeMay (even though they inexplicably put Tammy/Bambi on the box cover, LeMay is so much hotter.  Memo to self, find better headshot for Dorothy…) as brother and sister who after some trepidation live out that old adage “if you can’t keep it in your pants, keep it in the family.”

The story (story!!) picks up a little bit after Taboo, where we follow Mike Ranger’s girlfriend (Dorothy LeMay) as she and her brother, Junior (Kevin James), run into Mike’s mother (Kay Parker) at her stationary stop.  Running into her son’s ex-girlfriend sends her to her friend Aunt Peg, who gives her a massage.  Junior, knowing a fine piece of tail when he sees one, follows her over and ends up banging Kay and Aunt Peg right there on the massage table.  During the romp, it comes out that Kay slept with her son, and this gets Junior to reconsider what a hottie he has in his sister, and he sets out to tap it.

There is lots of tease and build up in Junior’s seduction of his sister and it climaxes with his girl friend (Tammy) eating his sister out on the family room couch when Junior just slides himself in there and takes over.  From there, the taboo has been broken, and we find everyone in the family torn apart by the action.

We also follow the action of Junior’s parents played by Eric Edwards and Honey Wilder.  They’re in a largely sexless marriage, so it’s only a matter of time before Dad boffs Daughter and Mom rides Junior.

And this being the end of the swinging 70s, the movie could not be considered complete without a giant suburban orgy where we have most of the cast list (including a young up and cummer named Ron Jeremy!)

Perhaps the most striking thing about the movie is the notion of consequences.  No one is living happily ever after in either of these movies, which is quite a difference from the normal “fuck and live to fuck some more” vibe that is in most porno.

We also spoke of The Golden Age.  Back in the late 90s, we covered it like this in the Adult Movie FAQ:

The following comes from Peter van Aarle’s excellent web page (mirrored at http://www.rame.net/aarle/golden_age.html) regarding the “Golden Age” of porn films.

Ah, the good old days, when the words “shot on video” were unheard of, and they actually had budgets to shoot an adult movie <sigh>

When the plot of a porno movie wasn’t limited to “Gee, I don’t seem to have the money to pay for the pizza! Now what do we do?” and the talent actually were sent the script in advance to learn their lines.

Heck they even were known to have occasional rehearsals :-)

Oh well, no use crying over things that once were. With the present glut of cheap product (over 2500 pornos were released in the US in 1994!) a good movie is difficult to make. That is to say, you can still make a good movie if you invest time and money in it, but a 4 times higher budget is unfortunately no guarantee for a 4 times higher return.

In fact, the only people who can change things are we the consumers. If we make sure that cheap one-day-wonders don’t make their producers much money then (and only then) is the general quality likely to improve. After all, why should Joe Producer invest a lot of time and effort in making a good product when producing crap lets him rake in the bucks anyway…

So we have the choice: either scour the shelves for hours to try and find the few pearls among today’s dreck or go back to those classics of yesteryear. If you want to try your luck with todays product (which isn’t all bad, really), I would suggest reading some of the reviews posted to the alt.sex.movies newsgroup to help distinguish between the good and the bad. Many of these reviews are archived at several sites.

“Ok”, you say “but what if I want some of those classics? How do I know what to look for?”
Well fear no more, here for your browsing pleasure is a list of many of the best porno movies ever made. Many of them are from the so-called Golden Age which is generally considered to have been from about 1977 to 1982.

Which isn’t to say that there have not been some good movies made before or since that time, nor that there weren’t some awful ones produced during the period, it’s just that so many of the classics were made during that period…

So look at these lists of the true Classics, some very good movies, and some movies which may not stand up to our high standards today but which are nonetheless historically significant.

Revered and greatly missed adult reviewer Imperator had this to say about the epochs of porn:

A note on the Ages according to Me. Note that like all historical divisions these are approximate :-). –

  • The Golden Age is 1976-1984. I have slightly extended it from the traditional 1977-1982 to include “Misty B.” and the many excellent movies of 1984. The Golden Age ends with the retirement of Annie and the rise of Ginger (not that it was Ginger’s fault of course :-)). The fringe period is great fun, since it includes the first Angel & Ginger flicks and Bridgette Monet.
  • The Silver Age (my real sentimental favourite) should strictly be 1984-1986, i.e. up to the retirement of Ginger and Traci, but 1987-1989 had many nice movies with essentially the same stars as 1984-1986, so I’ll include 1988.
  • The period 1988-1995 can be divided and named in many ways. A friend calls it the Cheapskate Age or the Crap Age, but it is innaccurate since it ignores Leslie & Stagliano.
  • The term “Silicone Age” only applies to post 1992 IMHO.
  • The term Neon or Pretentious Age for 1989-1992 does include most of Blake, but it really disregards the rest of the crap… I mean the material :-).  So, my opinion is that the traditional apellation of “Iron Age” is the best and safest.
It looks like the Playboy Radio segment is going to be a standing gig on Thursday nights around 8:30 Eastern / 5:30 Pacific. See you next week.