Why isn’t more softcore porn as educational (or gossipy) as this? Hollywood Babylon, pseudo-based on the best-selling Tinseltown scorcher by psychedelic Church of Satan co-founder Kenneth Anger, is the ultimate precursor to The E! True Hollywood Story, with a much-needed emphasis on the nastier side of fame. Granted, we’re never really told who most of the stars (repeatedly referred to as “the golden people”) are, but it doesn’t matter — you came for some ‘70s bush-filled debauchery, and that’s exactly what you get.

Here are a few highlights among its star-studded and stud-starred recreations:
• Corpulent comedian Fatty Arbuckle bangs a girl to death with a champagne bottle after saying things like, “Later, Toots, I’m in a lovin’ mood.” The narrator laments, “If only his fans could see their jolly, fat star now!”
• One nameless star falls in love with a 7-year-old girl, gets her pregnant at 15 and marries her in a Mexican village that “smells of human urine and donkey dung.” Now mortally afraid of normal penis-to-vagina sex, he vows never to have to do it that way again. So what does he do? He obsessively forces her to go down on him all the time, even bringing in other girls to teach her how to do it properly (i.e. no teeth — you fellas know what I mean).
• Hilariously German director Erich von Stroheim, when not filming orgies, masturbates and cackles maniacally (monocle and all) as he watches a “professional sadist” whip the shit out of a chained naked girl. Is it just me, or did Stroheim look like Dr. Hugo Strange?
• Notorious lover Rudolf Valentino liked highly masculine, domineering women, was married to two “renowned dykes,” was worshipped by “swishing sissies” and his final words were, “Now, do they still think me a pink powder puff?”
• Swedish sexpot Uschi Digard — the hottest, most buxom star of ‘70s adult cinema — gets into a face-slapping catfight that leads to one of the most erection-inducing sex scenes you’ll ever see. She then models lingerie for her director.
• Lastly, America’s first sweetheart Clara Bow invites the whole football team into her boudoir, with sexy results. In the best end credits sequence since Don’t Go in the Basement, they run over the final scene of the exhausted football team, exposed wangs and all, sprawled out in Bow’s room. —Louis Fowler

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Remember the good ol’ days of burlesque shows? Me neither, but from the looks of The Peek Snatchers, they really weren’t all that. As a matter of fact, they were nothing more than sub-Stooges sight gags, lame plots, lamer accents and a string of voluptuous ladies — sexy guts and all — dancing around to seedy nightclub jazz. In other words: Why wasn’t there a sequel?

After a newspaper headline (presumably from The Plot Exposition That Won’t Be Used Later Times) reads “Tel-Star Orbits the World, Claim Many Things Uncovered” and “Big Jewel Robbery — Two Scientists Missing,” we meet two goofballs who may be the scientists. They bumble and stumble around, say stupid one-liners and stare into a white piece of paper masquerading as a super-computer that can see anything in the world.

With all that power, do they fall into international intrigue or get involved in some sort of espionage? Nope. Instead, they stare at 1960s tits and ass. So in between gay cowboy jokes and Japanese Beatle gags, we see a chunky stripping Latina, a chunky stripping blonde, a chunky folk-singing stripping Asian and a chunky belly-dancing Arab — sexy ladies one and all.

So fellas, wait for the wife to go to work, drop the kids off at school and get ready to masturbate, old-school! —Louis Fowler

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Argentina hottie Isabel Sarli fires up Fuego as Laura, a bored, well-to-do horndog with lotsa eye shadow and enormous breasts. All she likes to do is get it on, with pretty much anyone who’s breathing and within reach. For some reason, this prompts feeling of undying love in Carlos (writer/director/producer Armando Bo, who also romanced Sarli in real life). Soon after meeting her, he proposes marriage; she responds by rubbing snow all over her chest. Cute, but is that a yes or a no?

At first, Carlos is pretty quick to forgive Laura of her indiscretions, like when he trots around town in a fur coat and go-go boots, pulling her breasts out of her bra to show random men on the street, eventually coercing a greasy stranger to do her in the woods. What bothers Carlos most is that she also lets their ugly lesbian housekeeper have a go, kissing Laura’s naked body after a swim, toweling her off following a shower and ticking her employer’s reclining bosom with a feather.

Laura can’t explain it, other than crying, “I’m being consumed by the sexual fire inside! I need men! I need men!” The doctor, however, says her unquenchable thirst for lovin’ is a pathological condition. And as he gives her a gynecological exam, she writhes, moans and begs, “Don’t stop now!”

As if you need to be told by now, Fuego is a hoot, made all the more hollerable by its catchy Latin theme song, which blares every time Laura gets her groove on, which is at least a dozen. Although clearly past her prime, Sarli is hot in that voluptuous but odd, racked-up-the-mileage sorta way. She also plays with her boobs more than a teenage boy who magically woke up one morning with a pair.

The tragic and paranormal ending is pretty ludicrous, more at home in a Spanish soap opera than a lurid number like this. And yet, it’s all so Sarlicious, I can’t complain. —Rod Lott

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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

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