American Stag
dir. Benjamin Meade [2006]
The history of Blue Movies
No matter what the subject, apparently, it's possible to say things were better before everything went commercial. At least, that's the case made by American Stag, which has its eye not on the modern porn film, but on the blue movies made up until about 1968, when the courts ruled that film was protected by the First Ammendment.
After all, as soon as something is legal, it's ripe for commercial exploitation. Before this, American Stag tells us, blue movies - called "stag pictures" or "smokers" because of how they were exhibited in the smoke-filled, men-only rooms in V.F.W. halls or Elks' lodges where "stag parties" were held - were generally the work of amateurs. They were shot on consumer 8mm or 16mm equipment, were seldom more than one reel in length, and produced in almost complete anonymity due to their questionable legality. Even well into the sound era, they were frequently silent films.
And, based upon what director Benjamin Meade shows us, kind of charming. Production values weren't that great, and the people involved tended to be ordinary people, with original-issue breasts, pasty skin, excess hair and all. The staging and camera work isn't sophisticated, but there is the sense of people having fun, telling a story and having sex because they enjoy it. [...]
[American Stag - quotes]
200 guys would gather in an auditorium to watch porn...it was bizarre.
It was a man's underground thing.
His father was a runner: he'd load up the car with films and a projector and off he'd go to a party.
Later on in the century the women became more sexually aggressive and demanded more from the male.
They lived in a society where women weren't supposed to like sex.
Once they get to the sex, it's pretty routine.
The girls aren't in it for the money - they're in it to get off.
It's fairly typical of stag films for rape to be ok.
Pot and stag films go together - if you want a woman to take off her clothes, get her high on pot.
It was rumoured that Joan Crawford made a stag film and was blackmailed most of her career by the owner (of the film).
The Casting Couch is a classic stag film where the man uses his position of power to get sex.
I think stag films are at their worst when they're portraying interracial couples; the point (of them) is some kind of sexual degradation.
While there was no integration in the schools, there was integration in the stag films.
The fastest growing number of consumers of porn (today) is fundamentalist Christian women.
If we weren't sexually repressed we wouldn't have porn.
American Stag - trailer
Vintage Erotica - Hot Number
No Integrity Left Behind
