SATANIC SICKIES
From the bad old days of hardcore adult entertainment comes this pornucopia of sleaze and silly "satanic" shenanigans. Rogan Marshall replaces his raincoat for a robe...By Rogan Marshall
I’m writing this just in time to recommend my subject as a perfect present for that Xmas-hater in your life: THE ALPHA BLUE ARCHIVES SATANIC SICKIES BOX SET I, a FOUR-disc compendium of 12 vintage hardcore porn features, related by their Satanic (and/or similar) themes, is a vastly entertaining mixed bag of bizarre underground garbage and lost third-string classics that’s worth every last penny of its special occasion price tag.
If you’re not into porn, your first question may go something like this: does any hardcore porn movie deserve to be called “classic,” even with ameliorative adjectives appended? The answer is an emphatic Yes, though it is hard to believe, judging from the present state of most of the “market,” for which very few movies have ever been intended that also have enough polish or pretension to qualify as high art. However, lots and lots are close enough to interest lovers of sleazy and weird cinema. (Neophytes should be warned that the really exotic and interesting stuff hides from the casual entertainment seeker even more so in porn than it does in other cinematic genres.) Anyone entirely outside this loop is recommended to start with a double feature of BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR and CAFÉ FLESH, or go highbrow with IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES and the uncut version of CALIGULA; then maybe look at some of the new arthouse porn too—9 SONGS, BAISE MOI and BROWN BUNNY being points of high interest, in (rapidly) descending order. (Everything I mention in the preceding sentence after deploying the word “highbrow” is mainstream enough to be available from Netflix, by the way.) If any of that stuff whets your appetite, you can then come back here and finish reading this article.
It is, I must admit, too true: people who made hardcore in the ‘70s weren’t often very good at handling their equipment. (Yes—both sides of the double entendre are accurate criticisms, though really, the fact that contemporary porn is populated by non-actor professional nymphomaniacs with sculpted bodies and unbelievably practiced sexual repertoires has little to do with film criticism. Suffice to say, for those who haven’t seen any ‘70s hardcore, and don’t know: it didn’t used to be that way... good lord, it did not used to be that way.) Even the filmmakers with a real interest in cinema, or the occasional screenplay that actually tries, or the sometimes earnest actors, always, at least in part, fail. No one in hardcore was fated to win any awards, and they all knew that, before they condescended to settle for getting into this business. (A real understanding of this odd dichotomy between aesthetic ambition and its manifestly predestined failure informs the better part(s) of P.T. Anderson’s cult classic on the subject, BOOGIE NIGHTS.)
However, in extreme contrast to the vast majority of contemporary porn, all of these filmmakers (typically of their context, though Alpha Blue Archives has shown exceptional taste and care in arranging this selection) seemed compelled to be as creative as possible, even the stonedest and stupidest among them; it is this will to entertain and to create, among folks producing the lowest crassest sex industry “product” who are further hobbled by hopeless multiform technical naivety, that makes these largely lousy movies endlessly fun and fascinating.
If that’s not an issue for you, your first question may be the same as mine: does “Satanic Seventies Hardcore” really qualify as a subgenre, the way the existence of this box set (and a whole second ALPHA BLUE ARCHIVES SATANIC SICKIES BOX, which I have not yet seen) implies? Now that I’ve seen the movies, it certainly seems to. Most of these 12 “features” (which usually run between 50 and 65 minutes) share several genre-defining elements, the most obvious and enticing of which is the Satanic Orgy Setpiece, which I hope requires no further description.
These candle-bedecked red-and-black masked-and-robed Ritual Orgies are usually accompanied by Really Crazy Music, another recurrent cue. Apparently, and any fellow musicians among my readers may as I did feel it for themselves after a moment’s thought, being hired to create a score for a Satanic Hardcore Porn Movie is a clear invitation to go Way Way Out. Virtually every one of these 12 movies contains a whole lot of too-cool music, usually combining elements of or alternating between ultra-heavy Floyd-type acid rock, post-fusion acid jazz, classic silly porn funk and Musical Satanism (manifesting differently from movie to movie—sometimes voices chant in Latin, sometimes weird classical themes are played on weird classical instruments... you get the idea). I haven’t yet re-contacted the nice folks at Alpha Blue Archives to ask if the elements exist to do so easily, but in all no-shit honesty, someone really needs to create a soundtrack CD, to go with this box set; it might well generate more interest (and sales) than the movies themselves.
Satanic Hardcore movies are also fascinated with abnormal psychology, in a broad sense; a much higher level of literacy regarding “Satanism” and related cultish and/or occultish ideas existed among the folks who made these movies, than applied to their apparent familiarity with the equipment movies are made with. Recurrent themes and elements include mental hospitals and abnormal psychology, drug use and blatant psychedelia, and cult-driven mass mind control or hypnotism (the shadow of Charlie looms darkly over this whole body of work). One can learn important lessons, from the way certain plot points recur in an insistent majority of these 12 pictures; for instance, if your car breaks down and you have to use a stranger’s phone, don’t eat or drink anything they offer you there, or you may end up drugged and sexually jumped into their Satanic cult, especially if you’re a couple on a honeymoon, or a virgin.
NECROMANIA
There are several pictures on this roster worth covering specifically (and each of the four discs in the box is cleverly arranged as a functional triple feature, with one of the four pictures I pegged as well worth seeing presented first on each disc). Of most interest is perhaps the often mentioned but rarely seen pseudonymous Ed Wood porn movie NECROMANIA (1971). While NECROMANIA isn’t quite hardcore per se (like the other two movies on disc four, NECROMANIA was produced right before the hardcore era and, reckoned by contemporary jargon, it’s mere “softcore,” not counting a few moments when actors seem to get carried away during otherwise weirdly mannered faux sexual antics), and it is a real undiscovered gem. The plot, in which a nervously dysfunctional young man is dragged by his inexplicably oversexed fiancée (the lovely and talented Rene Bond) to a magicky sex guru for couple-counseling and hands-on work, offers exactly the right excuse for an Ed Wood picture; his contempt for the porn genre causes a reactionary embarrassed attempt to make this a goofy comedy, which really brings out the best in old Uncle Ed. NECROMANIA shows the mark left by Mr. Wood’s heavy auteurial hand more clearly and more amusingly than anything else after BRIDE OF THE MONSTER. (My favorite line of dialogue, a typical vintage Woodism: “I admit it’s a strange place, but strange happenings come from strange happenings.”) I don’t know why this movie isn’t more famous, except that maybe it’s because porn was not yet fashionable when(ever) Ed Wood’s campy oeuvre suddenly became so; in any case, NECROMANIA deserves a much higher level of exposure—it’s just as fun and funny as anything Ed Wood ever did.
Other highlights of the Satanic Sickies Box Set include ALL THE DEVIL’S ANGELS (1978), an intriguing art-tinged melodrama about mental hospital hijinks with solid acting writing and atmosphere; and SEX RITUALS OF THE OCCULT (1970), a wild and colorful faux mondo presenting re-enactments of supposed sex rituals from around the world in a series of orgy scenes so heavily and extremely designed, they top CAFÉ FLESH for excess within the genre and inspire comparisons with Greenaway and the German expressionists. Lastly (though it’s the very first on the box, with good reason) there’s my favorite: the truly maniacal horror-porn hybrid HARDGORE (1974). A teenage girl is sent to a mental hospital specializing in the treatment of “nymphomania with masochistic tendencies” (yeah, I know—I’d like to visit, myself) where she suffers an escalating series of hallucinations that proceed through unusual treatments and secret nighttime ceremonies to ghastly dismemberments, rape, necrophilia and, eventually, a swarm of flying disembodied cocks that shoot sparks out the back like spaceships in a Flash Gordon serial and attack the heroine with relentless gouts of fake semen. HARDGORE is one of the few movies ever made that really must be seen to be believed.
While the Alpha Blue Archives discs are nicely mastered, the source materials are beyond execrable; some of these prints are so badly mauled by age and projection equipment, they honestly look like they might have spent some time actually buried, like mildewed magazines cached under the recycled floorboards of a boys’ clubhouse somewhere. This, as many who love underground cinema in other modes already know, becomes part of the viewing pleasure; to peer as if from a distance through several levels of wavering lines and wandering blotches at unattractive people having bad sex for the sake of the sometimes interesting trippy movie between the sex scenes is a badge of honor that one rarely forgets to feel the weight of while actually wearing it.
As I said, this Satanic Sickies Box Set is a perfect Xmas present for the misanthrope in your life; the whole is much greater than the parts, and the endless hours of grin-inducing weirdness these discs contain far outweighs the interest of most of the pictures taken individually. And those looking to buy me a present (since I already have this one, thanks), can pick up the “sequel,” or any of a growing number of definitive sprawling box sets from Alpha Blue Archives, a primary source for a lot of the most degenerate, appalling and interesting works generated during the first ugly intense wave of hardcore pornography.
