"KEEP BUSTIN'."

This Ain’t Avatar

tn_thisaintavatarThey got this new extended cut of AVATAR coming out on the DVDs and blu-rays today. On the ad they showed Jake Sully in a crowded earth city, which I’d like to see. I’ve seen AVATAR twice – once in Imax 3-D when it first came out and a second time in Imax 3-D when they re-released it in the Extended But Not As Extended As the Upcoming Extended DVD and Blu-Ray Cut.

I believe that’s where they introduced the fact that the N’avi fuck by plugging their ponytails together. I didn’t really care about that though, I just liked seeing the movie again because I hadn’t given it much thought since the first time and I forgot how exciting it was gonna be when it gets into the big battle and all the great badass villain moments and everything. It’s no ALIENS but it’s a fun movie and a unique spectacle.

But because I enjoyed it so much that second time I think I need to give it more of a waiting period before I check out the new, longer version. I don’t want to wear out AVATAR. So now I’ll stick to something that is not AVATAR, and THIS AIN’T AVATAR, due to the title, is the only movie I could feel 100% confident was not gonna be AVATAR.

mp_thisaintavatarTHIS AIN’T AVATAR is Hustler and director Axel Braun’s low budget re-imagining of James Cameron’s inter-species love and war epic, except with the war parts skipped over, and the half hour interludes of blowjobs and reverse cowgirl that must’ve been going on not skipped over. It’s played almost completely straight, very few noticeable jokes, and stays very faithful to a massively simplified version of the original movie.

Chris Johnson plays Jake Skulley with a sometimes-weirdly-accurate rendition of Sam Worthington’s Australian take on an American accent. As in the original Jake is our on-camera narrator and a quadriplegic soldier who has been drawn into what I guess must be called the This Ain’t Avatar Program because of his dead scientist twin brother. I thought he said the planet’s name as Pandora, just like the original, but I have read that supposedly it’s Panwhora. “The Corporation” are there to get viagratanium, a pile of chalky substance that they eat and get addicted to. But Jake says he’s heard stories of “ten foot tall naked babes with tails,” so that’s a good reason to be there too I guess.

The movie also has Grace (Sigourney Weaver’s character, but now played by Nicki Hunter [PUSSY PARTY 19: HOT SUMMER ORGY, THIS AIN’T GLEE XXX]) and gives her the same introduction, sitting up from her Avatar-pod-thing and being given a cigarette before complaining about the new soldier guy. Except the pod is not quite as fancy, in my opinion.

There are a few scenes at the beginning where the porn actors stiffly act out paraphrased versions of scenes from the original, but in a minimalistic laboratory set with a non-moving camera, so it kind of reminds me of some of those home made action movies from the Titan Books Youtube video contests. The only impressive thing seen on any of the sets is a naked chick Na’bi  (see, they changed the name of the alien race slightly, that proves that it ain’t AVATAR) seen briefly floating in a tube.

They have the scar-faced Colonel, couldn’t tell what his name was (Korinth?), but Jake describes him as “one-dimensionally dickish,” a fair enough description of the original character. Before anybody goes out into the Panwhoran jungle the Colonel receives an epic blowjob and more from one of the female soldiers. He just unzips and keeps his uniform and boots on for the entire marathon encounter. She ends up stripped down to her low cut socks, which I’m pretty sure would never be military issue, even in the future. Who was the military advisor on this thing, anyway? Geez.

Warning: if you’re not familiar with the original AVATAR this movie doesn’t really explain the concept of how the earthlings control genetically engineered Na’bi bodies to infiltrate the native culture of the planet. If you don’t want to have to watch AVATAR to be ready for this one maybe wait for the novelization to come out.

So it just jumps into the Ain’t Avatars of Jake, Grace, and the porn version of the AVATAR character of that guy that starred in HATCHET on an indoor set of a tropical rain forest. On one hand it’s pretty impressive that Hustler was able to create or get access to a set like this for pornographical purposes, on the other hand the camera doesn’t move from this little part it’s fixed on. It’s obviously a very small set so it reminded me of a Sid and Marty Kroft show a little bit. Or HATCHET.

But I’m ignoring the real achievement here, and the only reason why this movie is worth noting: this is a porn scene with three characters in full body blue alien makeup. The real AVATAR of course used groundbreaking computerings to create these creatures, this ain’t groundbreaking but they did elaborate latex effects on their faces to give the Na’bi the facial features of the Na’vi.

Obviously the big question here is how are they gonna fuck without smearing blue all over each other? According to a Hustler press release they “used an alcohol-based paint so that it wouldn’t sweat or rub off during the film’s most important scenes.” They go on to brag that they used more than 40 bottles of the makeup and that they cost more than $50 a bottle, so “you can imagine what kind of finances went into airbrushing the actors blue!” Well, I got a calculator so I’m going with more than $2000. I’m not sure how well that backs up the much-repeated claim that this is the most expensive production Hustler has ever done, but it’s a good gimmick to say that. I like it.

Anyway, the paint seems to work. In this first Na’bi sex scene Grace has on her human style clothes (including G-string) which she removes to reveal the blue skin beneath, all done in one shot. Not because it’s trying to be like CHILDREN OF MEN, but because it’s a porno. In the real movie the HATCHET guy was a somewhat neglected character, in this one he gets to bone Grace as soon as Jake wanders off to investigate a sound. “One trigger happy marine on this force is too many. Besides, we don’t really need him here, do we?” (cue making out)

Now, I don’t want to disappoint anybody, and this may be a huge sticking point for some people, but I think the public has a right to know: the dicks are not blue. The dicks are regular flesh colored. I guess they didn’t want to risk ingestion. But otherwise the paint seems to cover everything. Toward the end of the scene it looked to me like some of the blue was smearing off of Grace’s chin, but I’m not positive.

Like I said, I saw that first extended AVATAR, so I know the Na’vi bone via ponytail. So I was thinking at first that the use of genitals in this scene was proof that this indeed AIN’T AVATAR. But as the story progresses it becomes clear that this is all accounted for. These are not Na’bi, they’re humans in Na’bi bodies, so they enjoy blowjobs. Later, when Jake and native-Na’bi Natiri (or whatever her name is, I’m not exactly sure in the original or the porn version) meet she says “This is how we connect” and shows the ponytail thing. But Jake says “This is how the sky people connect” and whips out his johnson. You could assume it’s like BARBARELLA and she’s being taught the old fashioned earth way to make love and enjoying it, but I don’t know man, it seems like she knows what to do without hesitation. She even spits on it, so they must have DVD players and porn in the jungle there somewhere, I don’t care how down with Hometree they are.

(by the way, no sign of a This Ain’t Hometree in this. So if you were hoping for a giant dick called Bonetree you’ll have to wait for part 2.)

There’s not a whole big army of Na’bi, but there’s a couple of them. Jake chases the girl through a sort of half-assed black light jungle area before confronting the tribal leaders. He defends himself by saying “You don’t understand, I was just chasing a piece of tail.” Speaking of which, the tails he mentions in the opening do not seem to exist, and the Na’bi might not actually be ten feet tall either, depending on your interpretation of the human girl who fucks a Na’bi guy and seems proportionately appropriate. I choose to believe that she is also ten feet tall, but you may think otherwise. She’s involved in the most ambitious sex scene, the traditional Na’bi “Feast of Souls” orgy of three couples going at it, 5 out of 6 of them in full body (except for penis) makeup. Actually, the one with the human partner looks like he might have blue junk. It’s hard to tell sometimes because the lighting is pretty dark.

I’m sure it’s difficult for these women to perform such involved blowjobs while wearing full makeup appliances, so to make it easier they have two non Na’bi sex scenes. The other one besides the Colonel is when Jake gets into trouble and they can’t wake up his real body in the pod. Grace goes into ER mode yelling doctor things like “Get his vitals up, now!” as she undoes his pants and starts emergency blowing and jerking him.

I would never say this if it wasn’t true, but to be honest I fast-forwarded through most of the sex scenes. So if I missed any important dialogue I apologize. Every once in a while I’d stop to check but I would just hear jungle bird noises in the background.

The story continues past what happens in AVATAR, since the entire battle is summarized in narration, and there’s some kind of twist ending that I didn’t get.

(HUGE SPOILERS COMING UP)

(THAT IS NOT A DICK JOKE, THIS IS A SINCERE WARNING THAT I’M ABOUT TO GIVE AWAY THE VERY END OF THIS AIN’T AVATAR)

FIrst there’s a sign that says “Hustler Casino Coming Soon” (a joke about the Na’vi being based on Native Americans, I think) and Jake yells “Noooo! Damn you! Damn you dirty Na’bi!” before an off screen monster roar. Hopefully they won’t have to wait the four years until AVATAR 2 to do their sequel. But I hear Cameron’s is gonna have some underwater scenes, and Hustler might need a few years to figure out how to do the cheaper porno version of that.

Obviously you can’t exactly re-create the most expensive movie of all time on a porn budget, but I like all the little things they do to copy it. For example the end credits are a helicopter shot over rain forests and what not. Not bad. Also, they shot and released it in 3-D. Unfortunately the red and blue 3-D they use on home video still looks like garbage. They tried some gimmicky shots like holding things out to the camera and stuff, but it didn’t look 3-D to me at all and I didn’t want to spend alot of time experimenting since it’s a rental and I don’t know where these glasses have been.

Of course, Hustler takes a note from the Cameron playbook and argues for subtle, not-cool uses of 3-D. Rob Smith, director of operations for Hustler Video boasts, “Characters aren’t seemingly jumping out at you and there’s no need to watch the film in fear that something — or someone — might hit you at any time. That’s not the kind of movie we made. We made a film, where, when you’re watching it in 3-D, everything just seems to come alive. It has dimension, depth, and the sense that you could literally walk in to the frame at any second.” [and get fucked by a blue monster with braids]

There’s a pretty big market for porn parodies these days. A few of the ones that have been done in recent years include STAR TREK, STAR WARS, MAD MEN, THE OFFICE, 30 ROCK, BIG LOVE, TRUE BLOOD, TWILIGHT, THE COSBY SHOW, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, FRIDAY THE 13TH and THE BIG LEBOWSKI (supposedly a really well made one). There’s a very impressive-looking porn version of the Adam West BATMAN tv series, which is funny to me because the porn version beat the actual show to DVD. I’m still waiting for THIS AIN’T THE MACNEIL LEHRER NEWS HOUR or THIS AIN’T DIAGNOSIS MURDER, but most other topics have been covered.

I’m sure the covers are probly funnier than the movies. I miss the parody titles, though. If EDWARD PENISHANDS were made today it would be called THIS AIN’T EDWARD SCISSORHANDS or worse, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS: THE XXX PARODY. Makes you worry about this generation being too lazy, but I guess they put alot of work into dressing up the porn actors as the characters for the covers, so I can’t be too harsh. There is some elbow grease involved, obviously. (not a type of lube, by the way. It means effort. Look it up on your iPad or whatever, young people)

I haven’t actually watched many of these parodies, but I think they’re more interesting and mysterious when they’re like this, marketed as a parody but not coming across like they’re really trying to be funny. This might actually be a smart thing because as I noted in my original AVATAR review there is probly a small segment of society who seriously gets off on the idea of sex with these blue cat people. I was thinking more of the regular-sized-man-fucking-giant-cat-woman angle, which is neglected in this, but if somebody just gets off on the cat people this is gonna be a hell of a Christmas for that person. Congratulations, Avatar fetishists. I’m genuinely happy for you.

In fact, Hustler might not realize it, but this is a part of the Nerdening of America, as this generation of “geeks” and fandom and Saturday morning TV brains takes over, turning everything into franchises and brands and rebrands and references, and as the internet and supercable make entertainment much more specialized. Porn was not just ahead of the game technologically but also conceptually. They’ve always known niche marketing, because it’s hard to make a porno that’s gonna please people across a broad spectrum, like a Pixar movie. Instead they make movies for people who are into Asians or blondes or feet or stepping on bugs or three-ways where one of the girls wears glasses and the other one has two different colors of eyes. That’s easy to do on the cheap but now Hustler is saying shit, let’s throw some money at some of these, do it up right. If Disney will spend a hundred million to please the very small segment of society who believes that the movie TRON is awesome then why shouldn’t Hustler try spending $2,000 on blue paint for the people who want to fuck the aliens from AVATAR?

I mean it’s pretty cool, I’m not trying to be condescending. It’s not my thing, but I’m glad somebody is getting treated to their impossible dream.

There have already been porn movies based on James Cameron pictures, including THE SPERMINATOR, THE ASS-BYSS, BI-TANIC and of course GHOSTS OF THE ASS-BYSS, his 3-D Imax documentary about exploring the wreckage of the Bi-tanic. Admittedly I made up 50% of those titles, but the other two are real. Unfortunately they were not done by this same director who did THIS AIN’T AVATAR, so there’s no alternate universe James Cameron who does all the same movies but as pornos. But there are a few parallels.

Who is this director Axel Braun, who ain’t James Cameron? While he doesn’t seem to be nearly as talented as Cameron his official websight makes him sound full of himself like people say about Cameron. According to his biography, Braun (the son of old timey porno guy Lasse Braun) “received a priveleged upper-class upbringing, studying the Classics and learning five languages,” is “a proud member of MENSA” (unlike you and I, who are embarrassed members of MENSA), and spent years researching female ejaculation after reading about the G-spot in the Sorbonne in 1982. The movie THE FOUR FEATHERS inspired him to direct at the age of 7, but it wasn’t until 1997 that he fulfilled that dream by directing THE ADVENTURES OF THE G-MAN, which earned him “an incredible notoriety for being able to make all women ejaculate with his hands.” His series SQUIRTING 101 “single-handedly trigger[ed] the Adult Industry’s squirting-frenzy.”

Like Cameron, Braun knows what it’s like to struggle on an ambitious project that seems troubled but that he really believes in. He spent 8 months of 2000 creating G-SPOT CONFIDENTIAL, his bid for an AVN Award. It was shot in L.A., Dallas, Paris, Prague and London, but in Europe the footage was seized by customs and he was charged with obscenity. So he took “a 4-month voluntary hiatus” to race cars. I guess this is his equivalent to Cameron when he won best picture for TITANIC and then spent years just doing 3-D Imax documentaries about underwater exploration.

"November 2002: Axel insures his hands with the Lloyd's of London for $2,000,000 each. It’s a publicity stunt that brings him tons of press, and people start talking more and more about female ejaculation."
“November 2002: Axel insures his hands with the Lloyd’s of London for $2,000,000 each. It’s a publicity stunt that brings him tons of press, and people start talking more and more about female ejaculation.”

Or maybe 2003’s COMPULSION was his TITANIC. I don’t think it’s a parody of the great Leopold and Loeb-based movie, but if it is I’d like to see what they did with Orson Welles’s legendary anti-death penalty court room speech. According to the websight Braun’s COMPULSION was “an incredible undertaking, with a budget of almost $200,000” and was nominated for 13 AVN Awards, almost tying TITANIC’s number of nominations for Oscars (the mainstream equivalent of the AVN Award).

We’ll have to wait and see if THIS AIN’T AVATAR can match TITANIC’s record, but if not Braun has plenty of other ambitious projects to be proud of or excited for. He produced the Batman one and apparently is working on a version of GREASE which includes five song and dance numbers. I don’t know if AVN voters are as much of suckers for musicals as the Oscar voters, but I bet they’ll be impressed.

I hear a squirting-frenzy rumbling outside so I should probly bring this thing to a close. In conclusion, if you want to masturbate to or fast-forward through hardcore Na’vi type sex scenes (especially if the felatio and the reverse cowgirl are your favorites, since those seem to be what Panwhorans are most into) this movie will be the greatest thing that ever happened to you. Or if you just want to own two pairs of red-and-blue 3-D glasses that say “This Ain’t Avatar XXX” on them then I would recommend a purchase of this for that reason also.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 16th, 2010 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

62 Responses to “This Ain’t Avatar”

  1. I’m not really into porn “movies”, with which I mean porns that really try to be movies, with a screenplay that tells a story and stuff like that, but I gotta say I’m a huge fan of PIRATES 2, although it suffers from the same flaws that ruin these “movies” for me.
    The thing about PIRATES 2 is, that it’s a lot of fun. The actors, especially the guy who plays the captain, are visibly enjoying being funny, are perfectly cast and have a great chemistry together. The jokes often work pretty well, the production values are not bad and I think it might be the most quotable porn movie ever! (“What an ass pirate!”)
    But just because everything in this movie works so well, I was seriously annoyed whenever they started to fuck. I was so into the movie, that every new sex scene took me out of it and I just had to fast forward them. (Of course I returned later to watch these scenes without the rest of the movie *ahem*) It was like in 99% of all musicals, where the song adds absolutely nothing to the story and just stops the movie cold.
    I really would love to watch that BIG LEBOWSKI parody though.

  2. I too lament the days of the great pun porno parody titles. EDWARD PENISHANDS is probably the classic, but let’s not forget GHOSTLUSTERS, SAVING RYAN’S PRIVATES, BOOTY AND THE BEAST, THE SEX FILES, STAR WHORES, YANK MY DOODLE IT’S A DANDY, STAR TREK: THE NEXT PENETRATION, BEVERLY WHORES COP (or Ninja), MY PENIS’ NAME IS BILL W, LABIA-RYNTH, NIPPLE TWISTER, LAST DANGLE IN PARIS (or, LAST TANGO WITH PENIS), A RIVER RUNS THROUGH HER, THE BULGES OF MADISON COUNTY, THE TELLTALE PART, NIGHT OF THE GIVING HEAD, and FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY.

  3. I feel the same way whenever some old, forgotten exploitation movie gets unearthed from the basement of a Danish church with all the original hardcore footage mixed in. Like, generally, when I’m watching a movie called THE SINFUL DWARF, I’m in it for the weirdness, not to see some Danish guy’s hairy ballbag flopping around. I’m just not in the watching-his-junk-go-into-her-junk mode when I sit down to watch an actual story. Especially a disgusting one that I really don’t want to be aroused by.

    That said, I recently ordered a 1974 porno called HARD GORE that is a Satanic ritual movie with all kinds of orgies and dildos in it. I haven’t seen it it yet but apparently there is a mid-blowjob castration and a psychedelic sequence with a bunch of flying rubber dicks. So obviously, despite all setbacks, I believe that the porn/story barrier can be broken. It will just take the right combination of elements.

  4. BTW, you should review BASIC INSTINCT one day. I don’t love this movie, but got lots of respect for it, because Paul Verhoeven found a way to turn the sex scenes* into important parts of the movie. They don’t stop the movie, they are part of the arc of suspense!

    *I gotta say I’m not really a fan of sex scenes in general, doesn’t matter if it’s porn or a normal mainstream movie. They are often nice to look at, but are usually just an unnecessary interruption.

  5. Mr. S – Don’t forget UPYOURASS-IC PARK.

    CJ – I remember someone asking Ridley Scott once why he generally doesn’t shoot sex scenes in his movies: “Sex isn’t fun when you’re not involved.”

  6. One Guy From Andromeda

    November 16th, 2010 at 5:20 pm

    i’m on board with cj not liking porn “movies”, at least not ones made from 1980 onward (there were some real gems in the seventies where the story actually enhanced the action scenes, multiple levels of meaning/perversion, man, those were the days). that said i am sure i will enjoy this more than the original “this is avatar”.

  7. A Clockwork Orgy. Gangbangs of New York.

    As far as “story porn” goes, I prefer porny art films over arty porn films. The Tinto Brass stuff and those 70’s Christina Lindberg pictures (sans hardcore inserts), for instance. I’m interested in checking out the Japanese “pink film” genre when I get the chance.

    I wish there were less of a chasm between mainstream films and outright pornography these days. The stuff that exists in the middle is dreadfully artless and puerile. I think David Wain could make a fun, sexy movie and really knock it out of the park, though. Preferably starring Jamie Lynn Spears.

  8. I don’t mind sex scenes in my movies but I do mind movie in my sex scenes. If that makes sense. In other words I actually kinda like a handful of movies with hardcore sex scenes in them like CAFE FLESH and BREAKING POINT (although I don’t think anyone has made a really excellent, masterpiece level film that happens to have more than a few seconds of hardcore sex in it ie. ANTICHRIST… unless I’m not thinking of one), but if I’m watching porn to, err, watch porn I don’t really want a bunch of plot in there. Or weird costumes and lighting and whatever. Some of those old seventies pornos like DEBBIE DOES DALLAS, DEEP THROAT and THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES have plots that kinda work in a boring, half-assed way I guess. Didn’t Stanley Kubrick try to make a mainstream film with hardcore sex scenes? BLUE MOVIE I think it was called? If they ever start making them I know a good book to adapt called THE SIMULACRA. It’s got this sci-fi concept where the main character can freeze time at will. So he uses his powers to go around being a perv.

  9. Ah Vern – you forgot the Grandaddy of Cameron Porn-rips – The Penetrator. Tag line: “I’ll Come Again”.

  10. The problem with porn “films” is that they have a requisite number of porn scenes to shoehorn in there. I my opinion, erotic scenes in “normal” movies are much superior, given that they can actually build to something. IMHO, the lead-up to the sex scenes should bean escalating erotic tension. Thats the sexy part of the story. But porns feel honor bound to get to the fucking immediatly and return to it frequently, eliminating the kind of slow build that makes sex scenes pay off in a meaningful way.

    Most sex scenes in movies don’t have the balls to capitalize on the slow-build sexual tension thing anyway, though — although some are still pretty worthwhile. The near-hardcore sex scene from DON’T LOOK NOW is not particularly arousing, but it does really inform the way we think about the characters and their relationship.

    On the other hand, the sex scene from TRAINSPOTTING with Kelly McDonald and Ewan McGregor… very nice. So maybe my whole theory is fucked.

  11. I like when the line between porno and movies gets blurred and I get to see the chick from Kids giving head.

  12. I went and snagged the Ultimate Edition Avatar blu-ray and I’m actually quite shocked at how much I liked the additional material. The new opening is really, really fantastic. Full on Blade-Runner-bask-in-its-glory kinda stuff. Makes Jake more of a badass too. Really good stuff.

  13. Gwai Lo – I think you may be thinking of THE FERMATA, which would indeed be a challenging book to adapt, as much in finding an actor charismatic enough to make us watch the repulsive Arno Strine for two hours (although David Thewlis did a pretty awesome job at such a task in Mike Leigh’s NAKED) as it would be getting mainstream distribution for something with that much sex. Anyway, there has “sort of” been a non-porn adaptation of the concept already, albeit with a more sanitized protagonist: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460740/

    And yes, the lead’s name is Sean Biggerstaff. The defense rests, your honor.

    Final contribution for you all on the porn parody titles of yesteryear: TITS A WONDERFUL LIFE.

  14. Mattman Begins – You are absolutely correct, sir. In my defense my mind is slightly boggled from reading too much Phillip K. Dick. I might just check out CASHBACK too, that sounds decent.

  15. TITANIC is a porn title in itself. Not too funny, though. Maybe TITAN-DICK or OH, TITANIC!

    CAPE REAR, SMUTTER ISLAND, OCEAN’S ELEVEN GANG BANGS, THE ITALIAN BLOW-JOB, A SERIOUS MAN-WHORE… I’m not good at this game…

  16. James Cameron’s TITEANUS

  17. Bad Lieutenant: Porn Of Call New Orleans?

  18. vern, you are crazy :)

  19. oh come on, gwai lo

    James Cumeron`s TITEANUS

    when you`re at it

  20. One Guy From Andromeda

    November 17th, 2010 at 6:12 am

    I can only come up with a german one: Alfred Bigcock’s “Die Vögeln”.

  21. The original Paul

    November 17th, 2010 at 6:34 am

    “Mary Strapons”
    “Sextoy Story” (the main character is called “Woody” after all)
    “Ferris Bueller Gets Off”
    “Lord of the Cock Rings”

    and my personal favorite:

    “E. T: The Edible Testicle”

  22. i thought i commented on this :/

  23. Jake Sculley? So after “Vampire’s Kiss”, he returned to “Holly Does Hollywood” territory, huh?

    Worked at Broadway and 50th in the 90s. Every Wednesday three new titles would go up on the marquee out our windows and we’d poll (huh huh) to pick the favorite. Twin Cheeks stands out, but personal fave was Romancing the Bone.

    Last favorite mainstream movie sex scene: Mulholland Drive, partially because the buildup was so rich enough that the surprise coupling felt organic once you got there. Partially.

  24. Here’s my problem w/ the “This Ain’t ____” movies – hardly anyone gets full naked during the scenes, b/c I guess they have to keep looking like the character, otherwise it’s just a regular sex scene. Take “This Ain’t Star Trek” – every sex scene has the girl still wearing the Original Series uniform, which I guess is hot for some people, but doesn’t do it for me. I’d rather just see them naked.

    Re: “story” porns, I highly recommend Operation Desert Stormy – it’s actually way better made and more coherent than Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Plus it’s a lot of fun and there’s good chemistry with the leads. It’s over 3 hours with the sex scenes though, so I actually started SKIPPING the scenes to get to the story, which I can’t believe I did.

  25. Porn with stories? Fuck that.

  26. I don’t know if it’s just me, but this whole YouTube generation of amatuer porn annoys me. All the participants look like vacant zombies enacting rote sex acts that are defined only by their athleticism. All the gestures and phrases are so predictable, and enacted with such a distinct lack of commitment. I’ll take fully clothed eroticism over explicit porn any day.

    And that thing where the dude spanks the girl with his dick is gross.

    Also, these classics need to be added to the list:

    DESPERATELY SUCKING SUSAN
    DRIVING MISS DAISY CRAZY
    IN DIANA JONES & THE TEMPLE OF POON

  27. What thing where the dude spanks the girl with his dick?

  28. Ace: There’s a whole generation of guys who think it’s sexy to repeatedly slap various parts of a woman with their dicks. I’m sure there’s some cute nick name for it.

  29. Jareth: As far as I know, it’s called “The Woodpecker”.

  30. Also did anybody watch James Gunn’s PG PORN? That’s some funny shit right there.
    http://www.jamesgunn.com/pg-porn/

    My favourites are HELPFUL BUS, SQUEAL-HAPPY WHORES and HIGH POON.

  31. How much slapping are we talking about here? Because a little light slapping between consenting adults is perfectly romantic in my opinion.

  32. Family Guy really hit one out of the park with “Harry Potter and the 1/2 Black Chick.”

    I generally have the same disagreements with “Story Porn” as most of the people above, but I’ll take it over drab-ass Eastern Block porn any day that’s for sure. That furniture is just so terrible.

  33. It seems worth mentioning that there was a time (the 1970s) in American cinema where it appeared that the world of porn and film were merging — serious sex scenes were making it into classy American films from respected directors. LAST TANGO IN PARIS, MIDNIGHT COWBOY being rated X, and all that. But somehow that kinda receded. Maybe it didn’t play in Peoria, maybe it just didn’t make money like JAWS did. There’s still your occasional LUST, CAUTION and all that, but they’re very much outliers these days. But its interesting to think of the world that could have been had mainstream films more fully adopted eplicit sex scenes. Although actually, I guess European film sort of did.

  34. Not to be a nit-picker here. but LAST TANGO, despite having an American star, was made by an Italian director.

  35. Yeah, I guess I look at it differently because its in English and was released as a major commercial film in the US. It kind of straddles the line that way…

  36. Your points about the social climate at the time are all still valid, I’d just say that LAST TANGO is more of an example of how trends in European cinema were influences American cinema at the time.

  37. Mr. Subtlety: You could probably construct a fitful through-line of movies that are indebted to LAST TANGO IN PARIS, if not in artistic intent then at least in pushing the sexual content:

    BETTY BLUE
    9 1/2 WEEKS
    THAT OTHER CREEPY ONE THAT MICKEY ROURKE DID WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND
    THEN BRUCE WILLIS DID A CREEPY ONE TOO
    UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING
    HENRY & JUNE
    THE LOVER

    Like Dan said, many of these are European or coproduced by European companies. And none of them are as radical as IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES.

    And then the whoel thing gets blown up by Verhoeven and SHOWGIRLS.

  38. I never saw SHORTBUS, but I guess that was a recent American film that supposedly pushed some sexual boundaries.

  39. Dan: SHORTBUS is Canadian. And, as should be obvious from the previous sentence, you’re not missing much.

    But you’re right about a boundary being pushed: the sex in the film was scripted but involved actual penetration by the actors, no stunt doubles.

  40. My mistake: SHORTBUS is technically American. Lots of Canadian cast/crew though.

  41. Snap. You mean our cinema is even more prudish than Canada’s these days? Damn.

    Good call on IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES, which is far more bracing, shocking , provocative, etc, and all around a much more interesting film than LAST TANGO IN PARIS.

    Though I’m not much of a fan of LAST TANGO, I actually really enjoyed Bertolucci’s THE DREAMERS, a similarly erotic, French-set film of his. Maybe because the sex seems more like a natural extension of the story (which is about young people in their experimental phase) and because he’s willing to make the men into sex objects too (as opposed to in TANGO, where Bertolucci shows every inch of Maria Schnieder, but Brando gets to keep his clothes on).

  42. I may or may not work in an adult film distribution company and may or may not be their graphic designer. Strangely enough, the absolute hardest part of my job is coming up with a clever title when I’m on the spot and there’s a deadline. I just draw a blank. Usually I call my friends or brothers for an idea, and the same affliction befalls them. It’s like… let’s call it Porn-Title-Block™. Really bizarre.

    I tell you though, next time I’m stuck for a title, I’m totally coming to you guys first.

  43. atzfratz – well let’s go all the way then and call it Jizz Cumeron’s TITEANUS

    A little late, sorry, haha

  44. I think SHORTBUS is a pretty lousy movie. Without its explicit sex scenes, it would just be like every other dime a dozen Canadian navel-gazer indie. Even if it’s technically American. Weird seeing Sook Yin Lee receive a penis though, since I grew up watching her on MuchMusic. No explicit sex scenes in this one, but there was a similar reception for YOUNG PEOPLE FUCKING, which is about as bland and vanilla as you can possibly get for a movie trying desperately to be provocative with the word FUCKING in the title.

  45. Dan: I never know how to take LAST TANGO. It almost seems like a parody of a European art house film. I prefer to turn off the volume and look at the stunning use of light in the film. THE DREAMERS adds a LORD OF THE FLIES element reminicent of THE NIGHT PORTER.

    We could add Louis Malle’s DAMAGE and Kubrick’s EYES WIDE SHUT to the list too.

    Josiah: The guy you want to talk to posts on these boards under the name AsimovLives. He can come up with pun titles like nobody’s business.

  46. I wonder if Asimov could come up with a title for a porn version of FRAUD TREK.

  47. Jareth Cutestory> I’mpretty sure its Terry And June.

  48. I didn’t know titling was a hidden outlaw fan talent.
    This is all I got:
    THE COCKSUCKER PROXY-A mailroom boy fucks his way to the top. Invents the cock ring and becomes famous.
    AREA 69-An alien life form introduces a new controversial sexual position to Johannesburg.
    FIVE EASY PENISES-A slumming blue collar whore turns out to be from a rich family with eccentric fetishes.
    FUCK, YOU SUCKER-A mexican bandita’s journey from fellatio to penetration.
    DONG DAY AFTERNOON-A bank robber calls his lover, who then goes to the bank. They have sex in front of the hostages.
    THE LUST BEFORE TIME-Cave men have sex and run away from dinosaurs.
    REBEL WITHOUT A CUNT-A young man in the fifties decides to experiment with other greasers, as the girls are all uptight.
    SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISTER-In which a young upstart player becomes heir to the master fister’s legacy.
    8 1/2 INCHES-A meta, black and white take on a porn director preparing for his next film. Of the afternoon.
    AROUND THE GIRLS IN EIGHTY DAYS-A man traveling around the world in a balloon bangs chicks of varying ethnicities.
    ANNIE BALL-A young woman must deal with her spastic boyfriend’s insecurities about his lone testicle.
    BEING JOHN MALKODICK-Whenever a certain door in a strange office building is entered, it transports the viewer to the point of view of John’s cock, until ejaculation. Highlights include state-of-the-art “penis cam” shots.
    THE CUNT OF MONTE CRISTO-After living a forcibly celibate life in prison for twenty years, Edmund is ready for some pussy.
    CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THICK KIND-Mysterious forces cause people to make phallic shapes out of mashed potatoes. They all gather at Devil’s Tower for an orgy in an alien spaceship.
    THE EVIL HEAD-A group of friends staying in a cabin accidentally unleash a demonic force that causes them all to have sex until they die. The hero survives by attaching a giant vibrator to the stump of his hand, and fucking the demon with it.
    JULES AND JISM-Threesome scenes galore; a girl draws a moustache on her upper lip.
    GOOD WILL CUNTING-An impressionable young man has sex with his therapist, and decides to be a porn star instead of regular blue collar worker.
    THE LAST PIMPEROR-Since his kingdom is dissolving, the pimperor decides to have sex with all his concubines one last time before farming them out as whores.
    ONE FLEW OVER THE FUCKEROO’S NEST-Nurse Rached accidentally gives her patients viagra. Fucking ensues.
    PLANET OF THE GAPES-A small group of astronauts crash lands on a strangely familiar world. While keeping busy repopulating, they realize they are not alone and must also have sex with the monkey-masked inhabitants.
    WHO’S EATING GILBERT’S GRAPES-Despite having a fat mom, young Gilbert still gets some.
    LEGENDS OF THE BALLS-Several brothers on a farm all wind up fucking the same chick, but then one of them leaves her for a hot native american girl.
    WILLY WANKER AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY-Five lucky ticket winners get to enter Willy’s magical interracial kingdom.
    INDEPENIS DAY-Aliens blow up stuff, but scientists catch one and experiment on how to make it have an orgasm.

  49. JULES AND JISM-Threesome scenes galore; a girl draws a moustache on her upper lip.

    Thank you for that one. I’m never going to be able to look at Jeanne Moreau the same ever again.

  50. I’m not one, to be blinded my nostalgia, but how hard would it have been to name this thing Assatar? I pity today’s schoolboys, what do they have to giggle about?

  51. I recently came up with an XXX Parody named SCOOBY DO-ME. (Scooby is in this one a guy in a gimp suit.)

  52. I actually really love LAST TANGO, and think its kind of a shame that its really only known for one fairly unimportant scene. I don’t particularly care about boundary-pushing for its own sake, but that particular sex scene feels very real to me and also tells us a lot about the characters. Its a shame that audiences weren’t ready to just have that be a part of the story. I suppose Bertolucci had to know putting something that extreme (in terms of mainstream media, not real life) on film would be a hang-up that some audiences wouldn’t be able to get over, but I think the boldness of the film is not in that it was willing to push boundaries, but in that it was willing to ask American audiences to be grown-ups about sex and pay attention to the characters instead of the choice of lube.

    On the other hand, I do love THE DREAMERS simply because unlike TANGO, their sex scenes feel genuinely erotic in an intentional way. Much of the 70s-type sex is almost so self-conscious about its intent at boldly depicting reality that it seems to almost avoid any actual eroticism. They can be very blunt about their hardcore sex, but its presented in such an objective way that it seems to stubbornly resist actually being sexy. In fact, I suspect that many early pioneers in this enterprise deliberately avoided making their hardcore sex scenes arousing in an effort to avoid being caleld perverts, pornographers, etc. The thing I love about DREAMERS is that it’s not afraid to be sexy at all. It totally wants you getting off with the characters while still caring about the story, and really works on both levels. It’s one of the few films I’ve seen to try to use explicit sex to create scenes which are honest but also genuinely arousing. Also young Eva Green in those black goves, ahem, what was I talking about again?

  53. Okay, true story time. The summer THE DREAMERS came out in the US, I was still in college. My family was moving to Arlington, my dad’s new job had started and I had an internship in DC, but the house wasn’t ready yet so the rest of the family was back in CT. This meant that my dad and I ended up living together in an apartment in Chinatown for a few weeks before the house was ready. Neither of us knew many people in the area, and I was too young to go out drinking, so we ended up going out to A LOT of movies together in that time. What I’m saying is, for some ill-advised reason we ended up going to THE DREAMERS. I don’t know what we were expecting, but it was one of the most uncomfortable viewing experiences of my life. I still love the movie, though.

    As for LAST TANGO, I don’t know. Between Brando’s sometimes grotesque (though always entertaining) overacting and Schneider’s deer-in-a-headlight underacting, I’m not sure how much the sex really informs us about the characters. Granted I’ve never experienced profound grief, but I’m not sure Brando’s throwing himself into degrading sex (degrading for the other person, that is) ever struck me as entirely psychologically justified, so much as it seemed like Bertolucci thought it was a cool idea for the film. Mainly, though, what rubs me wrong is Bertolucci’s treatment of Schneider’s character. She comes off as shallow and underdeveloped, and the camera spends a lot of time ogling her naked flesh while never showing Brando naked.

    No doubt I agree with Jareth about the beauty of some of the images, and while they might make a fantastic demo reel for the cinematographer, I never felt like they added up to much of a whole.

  54. TITILLA .

    As a title , it works both as an hardcore version of Barbarella , and as an hardcore spoof of Godzilla .

  55. “There are a few scenes at the beginning where the porn actors stiffly act out paraphrased versions of scenes from the original, but in a minimalistic laboratory set with a non-moving camera, so it kind of reminds me of some of those home made action movies from the Titan Books Youtube video contests.”

    Just you wait, Vern. My next Titan contest entry will raise the bar. We all have filmatic talent inside of us, the question is whether or not we put our ideas into action. I love the Mamet quote, I’m probaby paraphrasing, “There’s no such thing as talent. Just hard work.”

  56. Jek Porkins: Good job adding plot summaries to your titles. That’s what I call raising the bar for all of us. By the way, there is an actual porn film called FIVE EASY NIECES. Not to take anything away from your variation.

    I’d pay good money to see your LAST PIMPEROR.

    The award for the most subtle porn title has to go to THE SOPORNOS.

    Most perverse: ADD MAMMA TO THE TRAIN

    One that cracks me up that probably shouldn’t: HONEY I SHANKED THE KIDS

    Golden oldie: BOLDFINGER

    Probably actually exists in Japan: FULL METAL JACKOFF

    Also ran:

    TANGO & SNATCH
    LAWRENCE OF A LABIA
    BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE VAGINA
    ON GOLDEN BLONDE
    CROCODILE DONE ME
    CHILDREN OF THE CORNHOLE
    DIDDLE HER ON THE ROOF
    SOREST RUMP
    SCHINDLER’S FIST

  57. Dan — I read TANGO as basically Brando being so completely destroyed with guilt and grief that he’s doing the best he can to destroy his own identity and basically spends the film acting in extreme ways in an attempt to distance himself as much as possible from anything he remembers. I agree with you that the film has an akward power balance between mousy, objectified Jeanne and charismatic, domineering Paul, but to me that very balance is what makes the relationship feel real to me. I read Jeanne as a somewhat naive and immature person, excited about having experiences but insecure enough to find older, confident Paul reassuring and perhaps exciting.

    As such, I read the explitiness of the sex as an effort to be an effort at exposing the vulnerability and realistic akwardness of the two characters and they explore their unusual relationship. The notorious “butter” scene in particular I’ve always felt crystalizes Paul’s attempt to transform himself through extreme and selfish behavior (I read it as a sign of his self-hatred, that he anonymizes, objectifies, and degrades Jeanne in this way). It also demonstrates Jeanne’s odd eagerness to be an object and a victim. I think she views her life as basically a series of unconnected events which happen to her beyond her control. She not only behaves this way right up until near the end, but also to some degree sexualizes the freedom of contextless experience even to the point of enjoying being completely used as an object by Paul.

    So yeah, I think the explicit sex in the movie is important and not only tells us a lot about the characters, but helps create the movie’s sense of simultaneous fragility and extremity.

    Or at least, thats what I thought until a few minutes ago, when I looked it up and read that the whole “…idea grew from Bernardo Bertolucci’s sexual fantasies, stating “he once dreamed of seeing a beautiful nameless woman on the street and having sex with her without ever knowing who she was”.

    It turns out my sense of the power imbalance between the characters had more to do with the stars: “During the publicity for the film’s release, Bertolucci said that Maria Schneider developed an “Oedipal fixation with Brando.”[3] Schneider herself said that Brando sent her flowers after they first met, and “from then on he was like a daddy.”[2] In a contemporaneous interview, Schneider denied this, saying, “Brando tried to be very paternalistic with me, but it really wasn’t any father-daughter relationship.”

    And the final straw comes with Bertolucci’s explanation for the nudity gender inequity: “Bertolucci also shot a scene which shows Brando’s genitals, but later explained, “I had so identified myself with Brando that I cut it out of shame for myself. To show him naked would have been like showing me naked.”[3]”

    So basically, fuck that guy. What an ass. I thought the film beautifully used explicit sexuality to help communicate the characters’ emotional vulnerability and the dissociation of sexuality from identity, but it turns out if was just some asshole trying to get off in an arty way. Which is funny, because despite the skin on display, I never found it really erotic at all — everything’s sad and akward and the sex is so frank that its hard to feel particularly involved. So big fail on that one, Bert-o, but you unintentionally made a film that reads to me as poetic and sad and unique.

  58. “So big fail on that one, Bert-o, but you unintentionally made a film that reads to me as poetic and sad and unique.”

    Exactly. I say never let a filmmaker tell you how to understand their film. Unless Bertolucci says something that definitively rejects your opinions of the film and objectively proves that it can only be interpreted his way, then whatever stupid shit he says about it shouldn’t affect your experience too much.

  59. “and stays very faithful to a massively simplified version of the original movie.”

    How can you do a simplified version of an already simple movie. I don’t get why anybody could like Avatar. True the special effects are great, but the story is so predictable, told in a very clumsy way. It seems like every movie Cameron does is more expensive and more demanding in the special effects area at the same time they are worst and worst written, from the Abyss and on. If I don’t get involve with the story or the characters doesn’t matter how great the special effects are I get bored. I found Avatar really boring.

    I just saw Aliens for the 100th time recently, I just bought in blu-ray, and I realised how good that movie is, despite I could see how Cameron cannibalize what he did for the script of Rambo, because the way he writes the charachters and the story is so much better that in his latest movie. Again, it seems to me that in Cameron’s movies, the more money he spends, the worst the movie is in terms of charachter and storytelling. I guess that’s why The Terminator is his best movie in cinematographic terms.

    Please, Vern, explain to me why you like Avatar so I give it a second chance on blu. Thanks.

  60. I first became aware of The Fermata (and Nicholson Baker in general) when I read that Neil Gaiman was working on a film adaptation with Robert Zemeckis.

    It’s been most of a decade since I paid much attention to Gaiman’s goings-on, so I don’t imagine it went anywhere?

  61. Oh, hey, thanks google:

    “The Fermata: Based on Nicholson Baker’s 1994 book, The Fermata is the fictionalized autobiography of Arno Strine. He has the ability to stop time at will, at which point he usually indulges himself by taking women’s clothes off. Neil and Robert Zemeckis take the main character’s ability to stop time, and what he usually does with it, and emphasize the man’s inability to connect with society, making the character a bit more sympathetic. Neil has written three drafts, and after each draft he met with Zemeckis to discuss it. In 2003 he finished putting the final touches on the script, and hopefully it will eventually go into pre-production. At the Nicholas Baker Fan Page you will find more information on Nicholson Baker and his works. ”

    from http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Essays/Essays_About_Neil/Neil_Gaiman's_Film_Work

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