Put your clothes back on Monique; it’s a historical drama now
There is a popular delusion among porn stars that appearing in adult movies will make it easier to break into legitimate showbiz. While this is rarely the case there have been a few oddball productions that started out as smut but morphed into something else during production. I wonder what the mood on the set was like; did the actors cheer when they heard that they were now going to be in a “real movie” or did they groan and say “You mean we had all that sex for nothing?!” • Flesh Gordon (1974) — The origin of this popular sci-fi parody is the subject of all manner of rumours and urban legends. In the film an oversexed copy of the classic space-faring hero rescues naked damsels and saves the Earth from an unstoppable Sex Ray. Just how dirty was it before the final cut? Some claim that Flesh Gordon began life as a proper XXX-rated adult feature with a slight Flash Gordon flavour to it but that the crew got carried away with nostalgia for the sci-fi cliffhangers of yore and kept adding more special effects. The stop-motion animation during the monster sequences is certainly impressive and is clearly a labour of love from an animator who wanted to make something much more memorable than a run-of-the-mill skinflick. The result is a bizarre patchwork of a movie; too dirty for the mainstream but with far more “gee-whiz” science-fantasy atmosphere than viewers expected from a work of erotica. Fans of the film give it the same sort of awkward affection one might have for a three-legged puppy while Canada’s own Ed the Sock pointed out that applying a mature content warning to a film containing plastic ray guns and penis monsters really stretches the meaning of the word “mature.” • Café Flesh (1982) — Definitely one of the weirdest hardcore sex films ever Café Flesh actually had its “wet” shots removed and got a proper release in mainstream theatres as an art house curiosity. Writer-director “Rinse Dream” — a pseudonym for Stephen Sayadian who also directed Dr. Caligari (1989) was clearly pushing for some kind of avant-garde oddity from the get-go as the film goes out of its way to be anti-erotic. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic future in which 99 per cent of the population consists of “Sex Negatives” who become violently ill if they try to procreate. The few remaining “Sex Positives” are forced into live sex shows which are watched by dead-eyed Negatives who yearn for the pleasures of the flesh that they can no longer experience themselves while a cruel MC mocks them all for their lost potency. That sounds hot eh? …No? Oh. The film is filled with contempt for people who watch pornos which makes one wonder what audience Sayadian had in mind. Every time the onstage action gets a little steamy we cut to a shot of a drooling audience member watching the spectacle with sad detachment. Even the sex shows are garnished with pretentious avant-garde surrealisms such as disembodied arms that snap their fingers in time to the music or actors dressed up as rats babies or giant pencils. It’s like a relentlessly downbeat student film only with boobies. • Project A-Ko (1986) — This animated comedy has long been a favourite of mine and only recently did I find out that it began life as a considerably smuttier project. The story involves a pointless high school rivalry that gets ridiculously out of hand. Two schoolgirls A-Ko and B-Ko are locked in an ever-escalating battle over who gets to be the best friend of annoying little brat C-Ko. Perhaps if A-Ko didn’t have superhuman strength and B-Ko didn’t have a knack for constructing giant robots the school would still be intact. Oh well. Project A-Ko parodied the ultra-serious anime of the time (Akira Fist of the Northstar etc.) while setting new standards for over-the-top humour. Several sequels and spin-offs emerged but none can hold a candle to the original film. Apparently this story started out as an episode of Cream Lemon (1984) a popular series of erotic animated short films from Japan. Then the team’s creative impulses spun out of control and the whole project was re-forged into a goofy feature-length comedy. The one remnant from the Cream Lemon days is the scene in which B-Ko relaxes in her mansion’s enormous bathtub dreaming of C-Ko. Y’know I’ve always thought that scene seemed a little out of place….
