Carter Stevens’ Pleasure Palace Grindhouse Triple Feature

Vintage Erotica

After Hours Cinema

R1 DVD

These films are from prolific director Carter Stevens for the years of 1978 and 1979. Stevens appeared in at least fifty adult films up to 1993, then moved into directing. He directed a further forty or so films up to 1996. He started off making “loops” (short film clips) but by the late 70s the audience was becoming a bit more discerning. Some viewers actually thought a porn film should have a plot, a concept foreign to most producers. Stevens expressed his attitude to the films as “Keep it sleazy. It's like the line in woody Allen's Take The Money And Run where the shrink asks him “do you think sex is dirty? And he answers “it is if it's done right”.

He was able to adapt his plots to put a bit more serious storyline into them. So were many other producers. The competition increased. Although producers were able to get away with full penetration shots now, the audiences wanted more than the classic “stick it in, pull it out, wave it all about” approach. They were always in search of a gimmick to make their films stand out from the great grotty mass of cheap skin flicks. Stevens made good use of identical twins Brooke and Taylor Young. Although they were not the busty type by porn star standards, the concept of twins was one Stevens played for many years and a number of films. The first film, Teenage Twins, was a big success for Stevens.

We see them here teamed with male twins in Double Your Pleasure, an otherwise unremarkable film. The two country girls have tried to disappear into the city. A large amount of money has also disappeared from their father’s safe. A city private investigator is hired to track down the girls and recover the money. So much for the plot, now on with the fornication.

The Love Couch is narrated by a talking sofa that tells of the sexual exploits it has witnessed. It whispers advice to its users about their sex life and of course they all turn into raving sex maniacs. Sure. The film was full of close-ups and to be honest after a while it became quite boring. It also featured that strange American fetish of wearing high heeled shoes while having sex, thereby risking serious injury.

Although the film was full of graphic sex, the original videotape had pot-smoking scenes edited out. We don’t want to corrupt people, do we? At least the women still looked naturally attractive, not the silicone-filled caricatures of today’s porn.

Pleasure Palace is a story of Mike and Jimmy, an ex-Vice Squad cop and a sleazy lawyer, who decide to buy a brothel in the country. We get a guest appearance from Jamie Gillis who was by now well known enough to get separate billing in the credits.

We get lots of sampling of the merchandise by Jimmy, and the local Fire Chief gets his hose thoroughly tested when he tests the building for fire code violations. The word soon gets around the local businessmen. Anything can be overlooked for “services rendered”. The next ones to get involved are the local mobsters. That’s when things really get heavy.

The film has more plot than usual and it turned out to be a commercial and critical success. Surprisingly many of the actors and actresses had training and ability to act. It is probably as close as Stevens ever got to his ultimate goal of making “real” films. The audience liked a porn film with a plot, as 1978 films like Debbie Does Dallas, Sexworld and Pretty Peaches showed. Unfortunately for Stevens other producers also realised this and the finance went to productions bigger than he could make.

There is a fascinating interview with Stevens on Disk 2. He recounts his experiences while making these films, and the difficulties of the industry at the time. He has a good sense of humour so unlike many Directors Interviews, his is fun.

Stevens was an important filmmaker in the erotica genre. He was in the industry all the way from the early loops and stayed in it into the era of well funded and well produced commercial-standard films. As such, After Hours Cinema is performing a useful service by cleaning up and re-releasing many of his films, some of which have never appeared on DVD.

I wish I could find out the brand of that damn sofa.

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