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Thursday

Tales of A Black and White World, and more
  • Somewhere around the summer of 1967, the United States went through a profound social revolution. For you younger guys and Europeans who weren't there, it was far more dramatic and far more rapid than the history books can possibly convey, and probably just as revolutionary as the change that swept Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. When I was a college freshman in 1966, I was part of the old Eisenhower world. We had to sign in and out of the dorms, and there were numerous rules about what one could and couldn't have in one's room, and how late one could stay out. We actually had a hall monitor living on the hall with us to enforce the rules and proscriptions. Females and alcohol were among the banned substances. When I began sophomore year in 1967, it was just after the summer of love, and within a month, everything changed. Students rioted against the old restrictions, against the war, against anything. Bombs went off in the dean's office, students occupied the administration building. The activists took personal and sometimes violent action against the most despised hall monitors. Men who had held dictatorial control over our lives mere days before now lived in fear of their lives. Guys beat the hell out hall monitors who tried to do their jobs, killed their pets, and drove them forcibly from their own rooms. All the rules were torn up overnight. By Thanksgiving of 1967, we had no restrictions on when we could leave or return, no limitations on women or alcohol in the dorms. Alcohol was relegated to minor importance by then. Guys were openly smoking joints at parties and card games. All this change happened in a few weeks. I'll leave it up to sociologists and social historians to tell you why these things happened. The Vietnam war and the draft process, which required our involuntary participation in that war, were important catalysts, but it's too simplistic to try to establish a direct causality. The important thing is that freedom happened so suddenly, and we didn't know how to be free, so we went insane with drugs and sex and playing cards all night, and whatever else we could think of. This cultural revolution started, albeit belatedly, to affect the movie industry. The pragmatic businessmen in the industry started to view the new generation as an important target market, and realized that it could now market virtually mainstream movies with new levels of sexual explicitness. So American businessmen started to market some dreadful European films which had some sex and flesh in them (ala "I Am Curious, Yellow"), and to fund new projects which would pander to those in our generation who wanted to stretch out our newly discovered wings. In this next wave came Therese and Isabelle, one of the first "explicit" movies to play in mainstream theaters to normal and "nice" suburban audiences. It was also one of the later B&W movies, made by the guy I like to think of us the world's most stylish pornographer, Radley Metzger. Radley could mimic the styles of the great European directors, and shot his films in lavish settings. He was also familiar with the artistic theories of the stage masters like Pirandello, and incorporated some of their concepts in his own work. More to the point, many of can thank Radley for our first real looks at T&A, and this movie was one of the first major films with nudity after the cultural revolution. This particular actress, Essy Persson, was the first woman that many of us saw naked on screen thanks to this movie and her earlier "I, a Woman", a Swedish film which had limited distribution, but received mainstream recognition via reviews and articles in major American publications.
  • There is just no way my poor prose can convey what it was like to go into a non-porn theater and see scenes like this. They may seem conservative by later standards, but these were shocking to us as we emerged from our Howdy Doody years. Therese and Isabelle were two schoolgirls who began a love affair. The story is told with delicacy, and without sensationalism. Therese returns as an adult to her childhood academy, and relives the past in flashbacks as she walks around the school. I don't remember now if Metzger was trying to sell T&A by placing it in the context of a serious movie, or if he really thought he was Fellini and was just taking advantage of the new liberalism to tell his story more explicitly. Here's both women together. I was 18 or so when I saw this. Many of us did not know such things existed.
  • Essy Persson - rear view
  • Essy Persson. This sex scene was filmed at night outdoors and was almost impossible to see, but we watched it closely anyway, because it was two naked women cavorting in mysterious ways. Although Persson was a bit of an international cause celebre because of her explicit scenes, she disappeared from the film industry within a couple of years after this film was released, and only made one brief comeback many years later. Perhaps she just decided that she needed to get some more s's in her name.
  • Anna Gael. I like to think that the most amazing thing about my generation was the speed at which we lost out innocence. My senior ball in 1966 was all white bucks and cleanliness. Two years later, everyone I knew was either in Vietnam, praying to come home, or taking drugs, praying not to go there. Many of my old friends weren't talking to each other because of their divisions over America's role in Southeast Asia.
  • Anna Gael
  • Anna Gael
  • Anna Gael. She didn't have much of a career. She looked ok, but she had a cartoony little girl speaking voice which, when coupled with some strange pronunciation, made her sound like Jennifer Tilly playing Inspector Clouseau.
  • what recollection of girlhood days would be complete without a shower scene? This was the only blatant exploitation in the movie. It was completely irrelevant and unnecessary to the plot, and we loved it!
  • Off the topic, people request some unusual things. Since Lisa Kudrow hasn't done a nude scene, I guess it makes some sense to look at her in a bra in "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion". The movie isn't as bad as you might think, and Lisa has a much better body than you would imagine.
  • Somebody told me that there was a nipple-peek after the limo hit her, but this is the best I could find. (It's not really worth the look). Something just dawned on me. Tonto, if you're reading this, Kudrow bears a tremendous resemblance to my ex-girlfriend (no names, please) who described herself as "The Babe Ruth of Blow Jobs". Someday I have to tell the key stories about her on this page.
  • Charlize Theron in "2 Days in the Valley". If Quentin Tarantino had never been born, would it be necessary to invent him? This is yet another Tarantino-inspired slice-of-underlife, with the usual intersecting storylines, and with a dash of Robert Altman added for spice.
  • Charlize Theron in "2 Days in the Valley"
  • Charlize Theron in "2 Days in the Valley"
  • Teri Hatcher in "2 days". No nudity, but I liked it.
  • There is no dedicated Johnny Web site, but Johnny Web scans and vidcaps are introduced in the Fun House, and archived in the back issues. Search for "Johnny Web" with the search function in the back issues. We have more than a year of back issues, plus the rasslin' babes site, the fakes, the Fun House, the Encyclopedia, and the Mardi Gras pics. Click here to sign up, log in, or get info
  • Tuna
  • Wild Orchid 2 - Lydie Denier. By the way, Tuna wrote in to say that he's working on a way to capture his old beta movies. This could being us some undiscovered treasures.
  • Wild Orchid 2 - Nina Siemaszko
  • Wild Orchid 2 - Nina Siemaszko
  • Elizabeth Shue in Cousin Bette
  • Crow-w-w-w-
  • Rasslin. Ivory on Raw.
  • Marlen on RAW. Big boobs, pokies.
  • The last of Jacqueline Lovell, aka Sara St James.
  • Jacqueline Lovell, aka Sara St James
  • S.J. Parker on Sex and the City. Sorry, that isn't nudity, but skintight pink pants.
  • FR
  • Alright. A new Lysette sighting! Thank you, FR. "Affair Play"
  • Lysette Anthony
  • Lysette Anthony
  • Graphic Response
  • Natalie Wood in "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice". A movie that caught the spirit of the times. Most people, including me, thought it was pretty good back then. I watched it recently. We temporarily lost our marbles back then, because it's almost unbelievably bad. Makes "Boeing Boeing" seem profound in comparison. Of course, we though "Easy Rider" was a good movie. Shows what drugs can do to your mind. But, hey, at least this is Natalie Wood in her underwear. Although this was the mainstream version of the cultural revolution, for a major Hollywood star this was hot stuff back then. It came out in 1969, as a Hollywoodized version of a response to the New Freedom expressed in my comments above.
  • Dyan Cannon in "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice"
  • A few more of note
  • Supa, as David Frost used to say! Former Miss Great Britain Leilani Dowding, who is now occasionally enticed to bare her bosom Page Three style. From Sid Knee.
  • Lesley Ann Warren at the Golden Globes
  • Paparazzi shots of a newly hefty Baby Spice. Some extensive cleavage ... not sure of any peeks
  • Slarti vidcaps of Charlotte Gainsbourg
  • Slarti vidcaps of Bojana Golenac in "Unter Die Haut"