From 1971 to 1988, the Japanese studio Nikkatsu famously cranked out more than a thousand sexploitation films so a horny populace could, y’know, crank ’em out. The riotous Nikkatsu Roman Porno Trailer Collection offers the “coming” attractions for 38 of them, giving you a taste of not only an hour’s worth of Nikkatsu’s arty, yet over-the-top output, but of how insanely fucked-up the country’s culture can be. How else to explain such ludicrously lurid titles as I Love It From Behind!, Painful Bliss! A Surprise Twist, Nurse Diary: Mischievous Fingers and Nympho Diver: G-String Festival?

Most of the trailers look similar to the others, with men violating women in acts of (I assume) simulated sex, but under the Japanese censors’ fairly stringent rules of verboten visuals, i.e. genitals and penetration. Therefore, everything else is amped up to fill the gap, so to speak, from dialogue (“How do you rape? Try it on me? Let’s see you try! Fill me with your pistil!” per Female Teacher Hunting) and scenarios (orgasmic Olympic hopefuls of Female Gymnastics Instructor: Jump and Straddle) to those say-it-all/do-it-all titles (Nurses’ Dormitory: Assy Fingers, anyone?) and their taglines to match.

Ah, yes, the taglines. Consider:
• “A house of pleasure wreathed in the fragrance of semen.” (Sex Hunter)
• “The woman’s flame awaits the man’s sap with her moistened lips trembling.” (Zoom Up: Beaver Book Girl)
• “Sexy women should make love while they’re still hot!” (She Cat)
• “Tear it apart! Punch them hard!” (Sex Hunter: Wet Target)
• “Give it all to fuck ‘n’ roll!” (Oh! Women: Dirty Songs)
• “Between the legs of island girls can be found awabi clams, akagai clams, sea urchins, and sea slugs … even the first catch of the season goes into that moist place.” (Pearl Divers: Tight Shellfish)

If I already didn’t eat seafood, that last one would do it.

The so-called “romantic pornography” of “Roman Pornos” run the genre gamut, offering serious melodrama (Affair in the Early Afternoon: Kyoto Tapestry), horror (Zoom In: Rape Apartments), superhero comedy (Sex Fiend), historical costume pageantry (Confidential Report: Prostitute Torture Hell), crime thrillers (Race Across the Drenched Wasteland), movie spoofs (New Company Girls: 9 to 5) and the how-to instructional (Rape Me! Sexual Assault in a Hotel Room) … well, instructional if you need to know how to make an impromptu beer-bottle douche. Soccer moms, before you get all holier than thou, be sure to stick a bookmark in your copy of Fifty Shades of Grey first, please. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Synapse Films.

Stay as a guest at the luxurious, sprawling, Spanish island home of Count and Countess Zaroff (Perverse must be a nickname) and you’ll be afforded the finest, most generous cuts of meat for dinner. The Countess (Alice Arno, Justine de Sade) hunts it; the Count (Howard Vernon, The Awful Dr. Orlof) cooks it. Never mind that this “wild game” is human — just enjoy the protein intake and the circle of life in action.

See, in Jess Franco’s Countess Perverse, the couple lure nubile young things to their private isle for dining, wining and wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am-ing. But at dawn, the guest du jour becomes the hunted. She’s let loose at dawn with a 10-minute head start; if she can survive ’til 9 p.m. without being pierced by the Countess’ arrows, she’s set free.

And if not, “you become a tender and succulent roast for our table.” Trouble is, this Most Dangerous Game update occupies only the last 25 minutes of the plodding picture; what lies before is explicit sex — the really boring kind. I lost count of how many couplings and threesomes took place, but many are girl-on-girl, which makes it laughable that one of the film’s alternate theatrical titles was The Munchers.

Speaking of, Franco muse Lina Romay displays a thatch large enough to double as a throw rug. As Silvia, she’s the latest prey to the predator Countess, and both participate in this sport full-frontal. At least the seaside scenery is gorgeous — and this time, I’m really not referring to the ladies. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

What happens when you mix escapees from the State Asylum for the Criminally Insane
with the worst-behaving students at the Oxford Corrective Institute for Young Women? The super-sleazy Delinquent Schoolgirls, in which they show up their “chauvinist pig” principal by not wearing their bras to exercise class; in which one fears having her vagina torn apart by a large partner; and in which an elderly herpetology professor (Ralph Campbell, Superchick) hypnotizes a student (Jane Steele) to have his way with her — watch out for snakes, dear!

Acting not entirely unlike The Three Stooges, the crazies — leader Clooney (Michael Pataki, Easy Rider), African-American Big Dick (Bob Minor, Escape from New York) and flaming homosexual Bruce (Stephen Stucker, Airplane!) — first invade the home of nympho housewife Ellie (Julie Gant), whose husband (George “Buck” Flower, They Live) can’t satisfy her needs: “Sex, sex, sex, that’s all you ever talk about: sex,” he says, telling her to stop watching her her “soap oprys.” Big Dick shows her what she’s been missing as Bruce plays the piano and Bruce does a Daffy Duck impression. Screams Ellie mid-rape, “This is positively indecent!”

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The guys then infiltrate the school during a holiday, where the bad girls have not been allowed to go home. Wacky music plays as the comically large-breasted ladies are molested against their will in the kitchen. Big Dick does so much squeezing, I wonder if Minor contracted carpal tunnel. The next scene, the rapists and their victims are all enjoying a meal together. Later, there’s a slap fight at gunpoint. Good times.

It took three men to write something as misogynist as this, giving Big Dick a refractory period that must hover around two minutes. His appetite for laying pipe inspires most of his dialogue:
• “Hey you guys know somethin’? Well, I’m gonna tell you anyway: I want some pussy!”
• “I never made it with a chick in a trance before.”
• “Aw, man, I don’t want wheels — I want some nookie!”
• “Fantastic! Grapefruit city!”
• “Look at all that young, tender, gorgeous snatch!”

Admittedly, Delinquent Schoolgirls — aka Carnal Madness — is bursting at the seams with beautiful, buoyant babes, including pin-up legend Roberta Pedon, Sharon Kelly (Russ Meyer’s Supervixens) and Brenda Miller, so it’s tough not to appreciate it on an eye-candy level. Just note that doing so may make you feel like, to quote Bruce, a “demented crouton!” —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

As far as I know, Secrets of Sex is the only film I know of — softcore or otherwise — to open with a quote from John Milton and be narrated by a mummy. (No wonder it’s alternately known as Bizarre.) Living 1,000 years wrapped in gauze is certain to give one quite the case of blue balls, so said mummy leads the viewer through several near-non-sequitur stories involving the ol’ slap-and-tickle.

An early sequence depicts the film’s female starlets in their underwear, being pelted with tomatoes, leading into the first tale, in which a woman photographs men in poses of medieval torture. Cutting into her lunch of steak has a voodoo-esque effect on the model she left strung up. Later, a man catches a comely cat burglar (Cathy Howard, School for Sex) pilfering his home, so naturally, he ends up rubbing lemon-cucumber soap all over her naked body in the shower. Moving to the bed, he stuffs a phone receiver down back of her panties so the other line can hear whatever it is one would hear from such awkward placement.

Perhaps the most amusing vignette is a spy spoof, in which one Col. X briefs his curvy Agent 28 (Maria Frost, School for Sex) to infiltrate a foreign embassy; seduction becomes a required part of the mission. Sandwiched within the segment is a spot-on parody of a silent comedy, a bedroom farce circa 1929. Elsewhere in Secrets, a man (Elliott Stein, one of the screenwriters) orders a hooker (Benny Hill girl Sue Bond) for some lizard-loving, and an elderly woman puts her past lovers’ souls — all 17 of them — into garden flowers.

The film ends with fireworks that score an orgy ever after. As if you couldn’t tell, Secrets of Sex is nonsensical, but nudity trumps lucidity in such a project, and this UK one actually possesses as much brains as beauty. The women are gorgeous and natural, and the proceedings told with so much humor that it reeks of being good-natured. Director Antony Balch (Horror Hospital) bathes it in such vibrant colors, it’s a practically a piece of Pop Art — with just as little meaning, but none of the pretension. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

In the Spider-Man spoof Spiderbabe, Misty Mundae plays Patricia Porker, a hot female nerd who is bitten by her science teacher’s giant arachnid. At first, she just feels sick, but then a car comes along and — whoosh! — she is crawling on the walls of a building. Spider-Man enthusiasts will recall this scene from the classic Amazing Fantasy #15. Director Johnny Crash obviously knows his stuff when it comes to Marvel Comics lore.

After this exciting sequence, Spiderbabe continues as a pitch-perfect parody of the Spidey origin story, except there are a few important differences. Most importantly, as with the other films in the Seduction Cinema “multiverse,” the chicks get into the lesbionic action at the drop of a hat. Also, all the major Spidey characters are re-imagined as females. This comes in handy when Patricia tries to convince her boss at the newspaper not to run negative Spiderbabe stories. Also, instead of shooting webs from her wrists, she shoots webs from her nether-regions. Her web-squirting genitals come as quite a surprise to everyone in the movie, including Spiderbabe herself.

Crash does a great job of keeping the action moving at comic-book speed. You know it’s a good sign when you are eager for the lesbian sequences to reach their climax so the real action can resume. The special effects are good in a low-budget, “Look, Ma! I know how to use Adobe After Effects” style. There are a few embarrassing sequences, such as the final shot when Spiderbabe jumps onto the Statue of Liberty’s shoulder. Also, the wall-crawling action just felt a little bit fake. But overall, the movie looks amazing.

If there is anything lacking about Spiderbabe, it is the villain. Fem-tillian just seems stupid to me and, more importantly, is not a direct parody of any of the real Spider-Man’s rogue’s gallery. Just imagine the erotic possibilities of Doctor Octopus or the Rhino. Nevertheless, Spiderbabe is a real treat for fans of Spidey, B-movies and lesbians. And that is something I think we can all agree on. —Ed Donovan

Buy it at Amazon.