This is topic Your experiences running porn.. in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=005613

---

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 10-25-2008, 03:46 PM:
 
Thanks to Rick Raskin for dropping the challenge...so I'll lead it off:

Back in my days in the Air Force, we had a strip club/adult store just outside the bases' main gate.

For one of my buddies Birthday party, I went out to the adult store and picked up four films on Super-8mm film (two silent, two sound) and I projected them for the party.

Let's just say the combination of a whole room of drunken straight boys, some really cheesy porn and me drinking half a bottle of Yukon Jack made for a wild night.
 

---

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 10-25-2008, 05:29 PM:
 
I take it they were no longer straight when they left?
 

---

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 10-25-2008, 08:02 PM:
 
My experiences in running "X" rated (not heavy porn like those grease houses in large cities do) was at a theatre where teenage kids running the booth couldn't be there do to age. Thus, I got the dubious honors that summer.
 

---

Posted by John Stewart (Member # 989) on 10-25-2008, 11:54 PM:
 
I ran XXX at the Ritz theater here in Austin in the early 70's. We were still worried about getting busted by the APD even though we were union. We ran both 16mm and 35mm. The 35mm stuff was the two perf stuff. It had a 2 soundtracks and the image was printed 2 perfs high. Never had to rewind...you just took the reel out of the bottom magazine, turned it over and put it back in the upper magazine and rethreaded. A 4 reel film was on 2. Hottest booth I ever worked.
 

---

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 10-26-2008, 05:20 AM:
 
Whoa- were those run on a modified projector, or was the whole thing handled by the lens and aperture?

I'm still trying to find out what the very LAST porno movie distributed on 35mm was. I know some of the later ones were still shot on 35mm, but most were posted on video and no 35mm prints for theaters were ever made.
 

---

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 10-26-2008, 10:05 AM:
 

quote: John Stewart

---

The 35mm stuff was the two perf stuff. It had a 2 soundtracks and the image was printed 2 perfs high. Never had to rewind...you just took the reel out of the bottom magazine, turned it over and put it back in the upper magazine and rethreaded.

---

quote: Tim Reed

---

I take it they were no longer straight when they left?

---

LOL sometimes I did wonder about a lot of those guys...with the horseplay that went on you'd think they all had a touch of the lavender.

quote: Jesse Skeen

---

I'm still trying to find out what the very LAST porno movie distributed on 35mm was. I know some of the later ones were still shot on 35mm, but most were posted on video and no 35mm prints for theaters were ever made.

---

quote: John Stewart

---

The 35mm stuff was the two perf stuff.

---

Yea, I've seen that stuff before - the two perf frame with that dbl soundtrack.

Odd to see two images in one frame - one right side up, and the other one upside down with soundtracks on each side so all you had to do was pull the reel out of the lower magazine and just rethread it and begin the show again.

No, you didn't need any special machines. Just a very narrow special 2.30/1 flat aperture in the trap to fit the frame and roll your framer accordingly.

Kinda like a poor man's widescreen movie..

-Monte
 

---

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 10-26-2008, 03:04 PM:
 
The Pro 35 was available with a 2 perf pull down movement originally
As for Porn there was a 70mm porn flick we ran at the Eden theatre in Toronto way back when
 

---

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 10-26-2008, 03:17 PM:
 
The 70mm porn flick was PANORAMA BLUE.
 

---

Posted by Dick Vaughan (Member # 540) on 10-26-2008, 04:27 PM:
 
Now there's an idea for next year's Wide Screen Weekend !!
 

---

Posted by John Stewart (Member # 989) on 10-26-2008, 06:44 PM:
 
Monte's discription is exactly what we had. You just need a shorter than normal focal length lens and a plate as he described.

A friend worked in Houston and said they had some of those films as well. I've never heard of this being used outside the porn industry but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

J
 

---

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 10-26-2008, 07:31 PM:
 
PANORAMA BLUE yes that was it it was advertised in UltraPornoRammaScope
We set up to JJ's for it with a Century preamp system for it that was touring with the print
 

---

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 10-26-2008, 10:35 PM:
 

quote: Tony Bandiera Jr

---

Don't have an answer for that one, but I do remember the biggest 35mm release in porn was a film called "Extreme". The local Pussycat theatre advertised it in huge letters on the marquee as being both "35MM and DOLBY STEREO!" How much you want to bet it may have played in 35mm but the sound was MONO?

---

Don't underestimate the Pussycat chain. They had the state-of-the-art (at the time) sound -- Dolby CP50s and their theatres were usually very well appointed. When they closed in the late 70s, they gave their equipment to local schools; we got a CP50 from them. I was hoping for a few porno titles to be throw our way as well....just to use as test reels, of course. No such luck.
 

---

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 10-26-2008, 10:56 PM:
 
From the Widescreen Museum:

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/special/scanoscope.htm
 

---

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 10-26-2008, 11:15 PM:
 
Scanoscope, THAT'S the name! I was going to say it was something like MagiVision or some such nonsense... but I remember those being in porn theatres back in the 70s. I never ran one of these prints, but I knew porn booth operators in Charleston, WV and New York City who had.

My house was regular 35mm, two projectors with 6k reels and auto changeovers (via a good ol' XeTron 7111-B that Louis Bornwasser installed). I was there for 5 or 6 years... fwiw, I do remember a porn picture that had a real honest-to-goodness Dolby Stereo soundtrack (a Marilyn Chambers picture, maybe?)

Anyway, stories of my time running a porn house? Many and varied. Another time -- when I have more time.
 

---

Posted by Tyler Potts (Member # 4952) on 10-26-2008, 11:34 PM:
 
Eastern Federal Corporation (a Southeast chain) made most of its money back in the day from drive in porn. I joined the theatre business when EFC was building a new theatre... and also being bought out by Regal. A lot of the older techs from EFC have some good porn stories even told us the platters we were using in our smaller houses were salvaged from a XXX drive in. Sadly, all before my time though.
 

---

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 10-27-2008, 01:28 AM:
 
I never ran hardcore but did run XXX titles edited down to soft porn in Texas; I had to contend with Aggies hooting and hollering and stamping on the floor, sometimes throwing stuff at the screen, every time a splice went by where the XXX stuff was physically spliced out. It was nerve-racking.

I did see the half-frame system but never actually ran it --I thought it was pretty ingenius, especially the fact that you didn't have to rewind! The film was always head up....really nifty idea. When I later was producing preshow music tapes programs for theatres, I employed the same concept -- recorded the same program in both direction on reel-to-reel quarter track tape and on cassettes. The theatre played the program and when it was over, they just flipped the cassette or turned the reel over and they were ready to go for the next show....no rewinding.

This 2 sprocket frame idea turned up again, slightly modified for platter use (with the difference being it was one continuous run, just like a normal film, but only the frames were half height and the intermittent was a 2 sprocket pulldown instead of four. It allowed a full feature to be put on a single shipping reel that could be loaded on the platter with no make-up or breakdown. No need for a splicing monkey. Save even MORE in the booth and halved the running speed as well as the image quality; only DTS could survive the slower speed -- analogue would sound like AM radio, but the proponents were still gung ho about it. They unveiled this process at a SMPTE Projection Committee meeting in Atlantic city, moderated, btw, by our own John Pytlak. When one of the panel questioned how this would impact the "projectionist," the United Artist Theatres rep (they were pushing this system very hard) quickly jumped in and corrected us saying at UA they no longer call them "projectionists," but "projection attendants." I looked over at John who had this pained look on his face!
 

---

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 10-27-2008, 04:39 AM:
 
A long time ago I got a printed list from Dolby of every movie released with Dolby Stereo- I don't know if they still have such a list; it had "Heard any good movies lately?" on the front page. There were a number of porn films included in the list, ones I remember were Stiff Competition, Centerspread Girls, I Like To Watch and Suzie Superstar.

The VHS and laserdisc of Stiff Competition are in stereo, the music sounds great but most of the dialogue leaks into the left channel. I got I Like To Watch on laserdisc and that's sadly in mono, they also cut it for time so side 2 could be in CAV. I wish Criterion would put out quality editions of all the classic porn films.

BTW were these shown in theaters in 1.85, 1.33 or some other ratio?
 

---

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 10-27-2008, 08:33 AM:
 
1.85. There were none in scope, fwiw. In the late 70s and early 80s, however, a small number still seemed to be 16mm blowups.

The only title in your Dolby list that I recall is I Like to Watch, so that must've been the stereo print I remember.
 

---

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 10-27-2008, 10:39 AM:
 
I worked my way though college back in the mid 1970's working as the manager/projectionist at a rural Ohio drive-in that ran nothing but XXX on weekends, Labor Day thru Memorial Day. In the summer we ran family films.

The only time I ever saw the "law" there, was in the winter when they would come in with their squad cars to watch the porno's.

At one point, a local girl who worked in the concession stand told me that her church was planning on picketing the theatre. I told the owner, who called up the church and informed them that he would help them out by getting TV and Newspaper news crews to cover the picketing. He felt that you can not buy that much publicity for his theatre. As a result, they decided not to picket.

Most of the films were total crap, many with "title" cards at the beginning to tell you what the socially redeeming value was, since you would not be able to tell from the film. Every now and again we would get one with good production values, and occasionally in scope.

One of my great screw ups as a projectionist took place there. It was in the summer, and we were running Disney's "Bluebeards Ghost". Our next feature was to be "Big Bad Mama". I still remember to this day, holding the red band trailer to "Big Bad Mama" in my hand, thinking how bad could it be. Well, Big Bad Mama has about 5 minutes of nudity in it, and all 5 minutes were in that trailer. I heard about that goof for ages.

[ 10-27-2008, 12:50 PM: Message edited by: Mitchell Dvoskin ]
 

---

Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 10-27-2008, 11:38 AM:
 

quote: Mitchell Dvoskin

---

"Blue Beards Ghost"

---

quote:

---

Article by Glenn Berggren, "The Evolution of the Cinema Lens--Part 2: The
Cinema Revival: 1962-1974", SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal, 2007
February/March, Vol. 116, No. 2 & 3, briefly describes a Universal Studios
development called Skip-Frame. Each frame was 2 perforations high and the
projectionist reversed the reel. It was tested at Radio City Music Hall and
rejected as a release print format.

---

quote:

---

There's also 1970s color anaglyph erotica. Prints of _The Disco Dolls
in "Hot Skin"_ were circulating last year.

_The Disco Dolls in "Hot Skin"_ was retitled _Blonde Emanuelle_ in 1984.

_The Lollipop Girls in "Hard Candy"_ was retitled _Scoring!_ in 1984 and
M 3-D!_ in 1988.

R. M. Hayes "3-D Movies : a history and filmography of stereoscopic
cinema" (1989) lists release dates for _Blonde Emanuelle_ and _Scoring!_
as February 1984. Hayes lists _Disco Dolls_ as 1978 and _Lollipop
Girls_ as November 1976. Both were filmed in Deep Vision (single strip
polybiochromatic anaglyphic), and released by Debonair, later by
Jaguar-Beehive, and later still by Tara Releasing.

Norm De Plume is a pseudonym for Stephen Gibson. Gibson's other Deep
Vision films are _The Playmates_ (1973), _Black Lolita_ (1975), _Wildcat
Women_ (1976), and _It Came From Inner Space_ (1985).

The April 2000 issue of "Penthouse" has an article on John Holmes, "Born
to Be Wadd" by Legs McNeil. In the article Bill Margold states, "There
is an orgy scene in _Disco Dolls_ where I'm being blown by Leslie Bovee
and John's being worked on by four people next to me--and all of a
sudden his dick popped out over my head, and I looked up at it and it
was like the opening shot of _Star Wars_.

"I had the feeling that if I got hit in the head by that thing, I'd get
a concussion. So my dick, which was happily ensconced in Leslie's
mouth, was no longer interested in working. And she laughed, and he
laughed, and I had to laugh at myself."

---