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| Did Ed Wood's words wind up in a classic film from 1975? |
A few days ago, in a private forum devoted to adult movies, someone asked the source of the loop excerpted in the 1975 Lee Frost feature A Climax of Blue Power. Forty-four minutes into this classic roughie, the main character—a psychotic security guard posing as a cop—spools up an 8mm loop in his bedroom. We can see that the loop is on a red plastic reel. That's consistent with the handful of 8mm loops produced by the Bloom family (Ed Wood's employers for most of the 1970s) that I have. For the next several minutes of Blue Power, we watch an excerpt from this subtitled loop, with a few cutaways back to the protagonist's reactions.
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| A moment from A Climax of Blue Power. Note the white box. |
Until about 1973, 8mm pornographic loops were usually distributed in white boxes, exactly like the one seen in Blue Power. Each box would typically feature a photocopied image from the film and a text summary. The characteristically silent footage features a male-female scene shot on an indoor set. The visible subtitles, which give a pretty clear indication of what's transpiring onscreen, are as follows:
Guy: I'LL FIX THAT. MY TONGUE WILL LICK IT CLEAN.
Girl: OHHHH!!!...MORE...MORE...MORE....
Girl: WHAT A HOT TONGUE YOU'VE GOT.
Girl: EAT MY PUSSY.
Guy: NOW TAKE THAT COCK IN YOUR MOUTH.
Girl: UMMMMMMMMMMMMM. [Yes, that's 13 M's]
Guy: SUCK IT...SUCK IT...TAKE MY BALLS TOO.
Girl: YOUR BIG PRICK IS SOO ? [HARD AND ?]
Guy: WRAP YOUR CUNT ALL AROUND IT.
Girl: PUT IT ALL THE WAY IN...DEEPER...DEEPER.
Girl: OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. [15 H's!]
Girl: GIVE IT ALL TO ME...DEEPER....
Girl: OH FUCK MY LITTLE TIGHT ASS...FUCK IT.
Guy: OHHHHH, I'M COMING....
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| A classic roughie from 1975 |
Furthermore, the sets, set decorations, camera pans and dissolve edits are all signatures of this larger family of subtitled loops. Certain details—the faked oral money shot at the end, the black rotary phone, the green circle pillow, the brown armoire, the emerald green wall, the reddish-orange shag, the mattress on the floor, the lack of molding where the floor meets the wall (a tip-off we are on a set)— place the film around 1972. Many of those details are consistent with both the Danish International Films series and early Swedish Erotica series loops. We can only conjecture whether Ed Wood were involved in some fashion beyond penning the subtitles, but clearly it was made by the same small team of creative principles responsible for the larger family of loops.
As for the subtitles themselves, we have 77 words and 42 lines, but we see only about a third of the entire loop. Projecting that out, then, the words-per-line average for this loop would come in at a whopping 5.5, among the most verbose I've seen. The repetition of words, the spelled-out groans, and even the font remain consistent with the early subtitled loops that I've reviewed. In fact, the more of these you watch, the more a feeling of déjà vu settles in, with words and phrases repeated over and over. It must have been cost-effective to use the same optical cards!
While I have seen most of the 30+ titles in the Danish International Films series, this is not one of them. The male performer in this loop also shows up in loop #25 from that series— perhaps wearing the exact same clothes?— "Sweet Smell of Cunt," aka, "Sweet Smell of Ass." Could it also be from another related series produced and distributed by Noel Bloom, with interior sets at Hal Guthu's studio on Santa Monica Blvd? It is certainly not one of the first 21 Swedish Erotica loops shot in Los Angeles, the ones generally believed to have been directed by Ed Wood. The female here shows up in numerous other Bloom loops across related series.
So where did A Climax of Blue Power find this particular loop?
It turns out to be "Ass is the Price," the eighth loop in the Fanny Films series, which ran concurrent to such closely related series as Danish International Films and the first 21 Swedish Erotica loops. Here are the complete subtitles, with my annotations. Those lines seen in A Climax of Blue Power are shown in blue.
Fanny Films #8 - "Ass is the Price" (circa 1972)
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| Move over, Saul Bass. |
We begin with street shots, a girl hitchhiking, and a car pulling to the curb to pick her up.
Girl: I'M DESPERATE FOR A RIDE. [A smart thing to say to a stranger?]
Guy: YOU GOT IT HONEY IF THE PRICE IS RIGHT.
Girl: WHAT'S YOUR PRICE?
Guy: YOUR ASS HONEY.
Girl: YOU DRIVE A HARD BARGAIN. OK, IF YOU'LL GIVE ME A DRINK. [You'll rarely see a single subtitled line this long in a loop.]
Guy: YOU GOT IT!
Girl: OF COURSE. I LOVE TO FUCK.
Girl: MY CUNT IS SOO HOT...AND JUICY.
A little over two minutes into the loop is where the excerpt in A Climax of Blue Power begins.
Guy: I'LL FIX THAT. MY TONGUE WILL LICK IT CLEAN.
Girl: OHHHH!!!...MORE...MORE...MORE....
Girl: WHAT A HOT TONGUE YOU'VE GOT.
Girl: SUCK MY PUSSY.
Guy: NOW TAKE MY COCK IN YOUR MOUTH.
Girl: UMMMMMMMMMMMMM. [13 M's]
Guy: SUCK IT...SUCK IT...TAKE MY BALLS TOO.
Guy: LET'S FUCK BABY.
Girl: YES...YES...FUCK MY CUNT.
Girl: YOUR BIG PRICK IS SO HARD AND LONG.
Guy: WRAP YOUR CUNT ALL AROUND IT.
Girl: MY ASS.
Girl: PUT IT ALL THE WAY IN...DEEPER...DEEPER.
Girl: OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. [15 H's!]
Guy: DO YOU LIKE IT. [Rhetoric?]
Girl: MAKE ME SCREAM WITH THAT COCK.
Guy: YOU DO THE SCREAMING WHILE I CREAM.
Girl: GIVE IT ALL TO ME...DEEPER....
Girl: OH FUCK MY LITTLE, TIGHT ASS...FUCK IT.
Guy: YOUR ASS IS JUST TIGHT ENOUGH.
Girl: DON'T COME IN ME. I WANT TO SUCK IT.
Guy: TAKE IT DEEP DOWN YOUR THROAT.
Girl: UMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. [14 M's]
Guy: OHHHHH, I'M COMING....
Guy: WE MUST COME TOGETHER AGAIN...SOON.
In A Climax of Blue Power, we do not see the first third of this loop at all, and the remaining two-thirds has been condensed by about half. The volume of lines and words is less than what I'd originally projected before identifying the loop. The real total was 33 lines and 178 words. That's still an impressive words-per-line ratio at 5.4.
What does this all mean? Well, for one thing it's fun to spot some small piece of Ed Wood's work elsewhere. And it's also intriguing to see one of these loops shown in a full-length feature film, integrated into a larger narrative and contextualized in the manner in which it would have been typically viewed at the time. The average consumer of loops, however, was probably not a rapist and murderer like the protagonist of Blue Power.
Although Ed Wood's presence on set in the early loops has been validated, the extent of his overall involvement in these films remains a mystery. He did most certainly, though, write the box cover summaries for numerous 8mm adult loops during this era. The summary for "Ass is the Price" is likely Ed's work:
LJolly [clearly a typo, perhaps meant to be Holly?] is in desperate need for a ride. Tom who picks her up tells her there is a price, Her Ass. She gives in. But upon seeing her pussy he has to take it with his tongue. She then takes his cock from his pants for a blow job. Although he fucks her cunt it is her ass that he wants. She screams bloody murder, but finds she loves every inch of that cock deep in her ass. However he finally comes in her mouth and not only does she lick his dick clean, but also her fingers...she just loves that cum.
If your curiosity has been piqued and you want to watch another Ed Wood loop, the aforementioned "Sweet Smell of Ass" can be viewed here. This particular short film is intimately allied in every conceivable way with "Ass is the Price."
As for A Climax of Blue Power, it was recently issued on DVD and Blu-ray by Vinegar Syndrome, for the first time ever uncut in a beautiful 2K scan from a 35mm print. Not for the faint of heart, it's a classic of its kind.