Graphic Thrills Volume Two: American XXX Movie Posters 1970 to 1985 - Softcover

Bougie, Robin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1903254817 ISBN 13: 9781903254813

Publisher: FAB Press, 2015

Synopsis

With catchy titles like Hot Summer in the City, Captain Lust, Pleasure Palace, Nightdreams, Honey Buns, and Aunt Peg, the 1970s and early '80s were the undisputed golden age of the American hardcore sex film. Real movies performed by passionate actors, backed up with genuine plots, retro style and levels of imagination that hit peaks that have not been seen since. This was the era of porno chic.

Graphic Thrills Volume Two proudly assembles another stunning selection of debauched and innuendo-packed theatrical film posters, with glorious unabashed sexuality dripping from every page. These joyous and colourful odes to sultry sin were designed to hang in the lobbies and front windows of the porno theaters and grindhouses of yesteryear. Lit by neon and shimmering marquee lights, each come-on promised curious patrons lurid drama, kinky excitement, easy love, and a myriad of exotic fantasies come true.

Graphic Thrills Volume Two celebrates the epoch of the classic American XXX movie poster. A former writer for New York's Screw magazine and the creator of underground film 'zine Cinema Sewer, author Robin Bougie probes the history of these classic films, interviews the people who made them, and provides candid in-depth reviews.

It's time to drop your defences, turn on, and prepare to play dirty once again...

get ready for more Graphic Thrills!

About this title

About the Author

In 1997, underground comic artist Robin Bougie began Cinema Sewer magazine, an ode to the seamier side of film and the culture that surrounds it. Bougie used his geek knowledge and skills as a comic book artist to give birth to this unseemly but loveable publication. The magazine found an audience amongst film fans looking for something different. FAB Press saw the value in Robin's endeavours and started working alongside him, a fruitful collaboration which to date has also spawned five volumes in the Cinema Sewer series of paperbacks in addition to the two Graphic Thrills tomes.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

This is a book of promises.

"Commercial art" as an expression and a practice has become increasingly anachronistic in favour of contemporary terms like "graphic design", but no matter what tools or language you're using, the objective has never changed. Promise people a product or service, and entice them using an image and language designed to get them to dig out that cash, and (in this case) buy that ticket and walk through that turnstile. The promise doesn't have to match the finished product because - screw it - you've already got their money by the time they've sat down.

Stag films ― ten minute 8mm loops of soundless hardcore fucking ― had brought porn movies into the home and resided there in secret for an entire generation. The format of the genre had already been set as early as 1915, with a little skit (usually humorous) providing some form of stimuli (usually to excite the female characters) leading to a focus on some furtive mating. That was before the porno revolution of the early 1970s added sound, plots, stars, production value, and a big public movie theater venue for the whole sordid thing to be enjoyed in.

And in those theaters hung the posters in this volume of Graphic Thrills. At the risk of stating the obvious, I'd like to point out that these operations were different than the average venue showing standard motion picture fare. The clientele were different. The proprietors were different. The way they were run was different. Hell, these places even smelled different. For all of the legitimizing that the advent of porno chic as a state of mind did to alter the landscape for pornography in America, it was still a uniquely tawdry experience to see a XXX movie while rubbing elbows (and other things) with the general public.

"For the first time in the history of this country, pornographic films are openly available to adults", wrote journalist Foster Hirsch in the vaunted pages of The New York Times in 1972. "And I think this state of permissiveness is a sign of health, rather than sickness, of hope rather than despair. It can be liberating and therapeutic for people to have easy access to the visual depiction of sexual fantasies... watching pornography in a public theater can be a purgative social event, a means of easing inhibitions, of alleviating hypocrisy and fear, of freely acknowledging that we are all sexual beings."

Edition details

• Publisher: FAB Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1903254817
• ISBN 13: 9781903254813
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 144