Our Thoughts on “X Rated: The Greatest Adult Movies of All Time”

X Rated List

This month, Showtime is running Eli Cross/Bryn Pryor and Paul Fishbein‘s documentary X Rated: The Greatest Adult Movies of All Time; overall, I found the documentary to be a little too self-serious, and I have some issues with the list of movies they chose – most notably, there’s a gap covering the Silver and Iron Ages — between 1984 and 1992 — which should not have been overlooked, IMHO.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I am excited that this movie got produced at all, let alone scored distribution on Showtime, the other major American cable network that isn’t HBO.

Chanel Preston hosted the proceedings, providing opening and closing stand-ups, connective tissue and some brief in-studio interviews with Christy Canyon, Wesley Emerson (Cass Paley), Kimberly Kane and Ana Foxxx

The format was pretty rigid – generous amounts of harder-than-expected footage from the films  in question, intercut with talking heads – usually people involved in the movie. Due to the size of the list and the length of the documentary, each movie only got a bit over 2 minutes of discussion each.

(Speaking of the interviews, some of them were presented waaaay over-exposed.  I’m not sure of the stylistic choice of presenting it this way, but I found it distracting, when correctly exposed footage seemed to exist.)

cm1

In addition, when participants in the movies couldn’t be found, they relied on recent starts to offer opinions or summaries – for example, Skin Diamond (Best Oral (get it?), 2014 AVN Awards) was used to do the heavy lifting summarizing Deep Throat, since pretty everyone involved in that movie is dead now; Riley Reid talked about Blonde Ambition; Casey Calvert spoke about Nothing to Hide 1

But, BUT! They did get some great modern-day footage of performers Constance Money, Georgina Spelvin, Kay Parker, Eric Edwards, Richard Pacheco and Gloria Leonard from her final interview (courtesy of Steven Morowitz of Distribpix – Steven’s blog posting about his participation)

We talked about the doc during the latest episode of ThisAintNotTheViewXXX and how the makers completely skipped over The Silver and Iron Age of the adult movie — just off the tops of our heads, we had to wonder where was New Wave Hookers (1985) or Night Trips  (1989) or Chameleon (1989) or Adventures of Buttman (1989) or  Dog Walker (1994).  (1989 was a really great year for porn!) We couldn’t find a list of the movies, so I put my own together.

Major directors are overlooked – where is Bob Chinn? Robert McCallum? Carter Stevens? Svetlana? Alex DeRenzy?  Henri Fucking Pachard? The Dark Brothers? John Leslie?  Cecil Howard’s great, but does he deserve three movies on the list?  No mention of Seka except for an appearance in a coming attraction that ran under the credits?

Any list will have its omissions, so I wonder if there were outside forces influencing some of the choices – was Johnny Wadd passed over because Chinn didn’t  want to participate?  (I have no clue; just using him as an example.)  Could they not get the rights to show clips from New Wave Hookers?  (Same caveat.)

Here’s their list, ordered by year of release, which is how the documentary was structured:

  1. Deep Throat (1972), directed by Gerard Damiano
  2. Behind the Green Door 1 (1972), directed by Artie Mitchell and Jim Mitchell
  3. Devil in Miss Jones 1 (1973), directed by Gerard Damiano
  4. Opening of Misty Beethoven (1975), directed by Henry Paris
  5. Barbara Broadcast (1977), directed by Henry Paris
  6. Debbie Does Dallas 1 (1978), directed by Jim Buckley
  7. Blonde Ambition (1980), directed by John Amero and Lem Amero
  8. Taboo 1 (1980), directed by Kirdy Stevens
  9. Neon Nights (1981), directed by Cecil Howard
  10. Cafe Flesh (1982), directed by Rinse Dream
  11. Scoundrels (1982), directed by Cecil Howard
  12. Roommates (1981), directed by Chuck Vincent
  13. Nothing to Hide 1 (1981*), directed by Anthony Spinelli
  14. Firestorm (1984), directed by Cecil Howard
  15. Hidden Obsessions (1992), directed by Andrew Blake
  16. Justine: Nothing to Hide 2 (1993), directed by Paul Thomas
  17. Latex (1995), directed by Michael Ninn
  18. Flashpoint (1998), directed by Brad Armstrong
  19. Looker 1 (1998), directed by Nic Cramer
  20. Seven Deadly Sins (1999), directed by Ren Savant
  21. Dark Angels (2000), directed by Nick Andrews
  22. Fashionistas 1 (2002), directed by John Stagliano
  23. Masseuse 1 (2004), directed by Paul Thomas
  24. New Devil in Miss Jones (2005), directed by Paul Thomas
  25. Pirates (2005), directed by Joone
  26. Corruption (2006), directed by Eli Cross
  27. Upload (2007), directed by Eli Cross
  28. Fallen (2008), directed by Brad Armstrong
  29. 8th Day (2009), directed by Ren Savant
  30. Star Wars XXX: A Porn Parody (2012), directed by Axel Braun
  31. Underworld (2013), directed by Brad Armstrong
  32. Wasteland (2012), directed by Graham Travis
  33. Submission Of Emma Marx (2013), directed by Jacky St. James and Eddie Powell

* A quick note on years: According to the US Copyright Office, Nothing to Hide has a date of publication of December 18, 1981. The AFAA and CFAA gave it awards in 1981, it won “Best Film” at the 1982 Adam Film World awards, but AVN didn’t give it any awards until 1984, and in their book “AVN Guide to the 500 Greatest Adult Films of All Time” they list the date as 1983; which the copyright office lists as the date of registration (not the date of creation). IMDB also lists its release as 1981.

What are your thoughts on the list?