Extreme Sleaze Showcase Part III

Vintage Erotica

After Hours Cinema

All Region DVD

This is another collection of “loops” by 42nd Street Pete, a collector and researcher of early pornography. A loop was a short one-reeler sex film that ran in peepshow machines and Pete has collected some of the worst in this compilation. While many early porn films (now they are just quaint erotica) ran in peepshow after peepshow, Pete has concentrated on those used in Peepland. This was a sleazy arcade on New York’s 42nd Street, centre of such grindhouse cinemas and arcades. It was finally closed in 2003. Pete says they specialised in “weird, twisted … sh*t porn”.

The loops are all of low quality and poor content. Although the “money shot” had not yet become the directors’ goal, genital close-ups and penetration were compulsory. Most of the girls have that slightly overweight look. Only the scenery seemed to change. Even the clip of Vanessa del Rio and the Filipino dwarf is really very conventional.

With the growth of home video machines and the transfer of much erotica to them, there was a need in the peepshow arcades to produce content that competed. To do this they moved into sexual themes that ranged from sleazy to downright evil. Pete has examples of all of them here. Plots such as they were involved rape, bondage, nuns, baked goods, s&m, lesbian acts, transvestites and dwarves – all subjects too strong for home video. I will never look at Kraft’s Miracle Whip again without remembering the “lunch” scene. Interestingly Pete is able to show how some of these themes continue today. There are specialist companies producing entire series based on a particular theme such as lesbian bondage. Pete, of course, has these in his collection as well.

Thankfully even Pete has a certain amount of taste and doesn’t show the bestiality films in his collection. It is hard to imagine people being attracted to this sort of sleaze, but they must have been as the producers kept making it.

Pete introduces each loop with details of its content, age and artistic merits (if any). Despite the digital restoration the originals were obviously in bad or well-worn condition and the clips shown here are mostly of pretty poor quality. Unless you are that way inclined the films have little interest apart from their historic context, but, like much of Pete’s library, its place in the world of cinema cannot be denied. They were an excessive overreaction to the relaxing of censorship and the easing of morality as the world entered the 70s. Sleaze, yes. Historical interest, definitely.

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