Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "16MM Beaver" (1971)

"Brush-a, brush-a, brush-a," says Bucky Beaver.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (Bear Manor Media, 2021). 

The article: "16MM Beaver." Originally published in Young Beavers (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 5, no. 2, April/May 1971. No author credited.

Excerpt: "Since the adult films are no longer confined to hole-in-the-wall theatres on some dingy downtown back street and have moved uptown they have gained a tremendously sophisticated audience of both men and women who are not going to be satisfied with a mediocre anything . . . let alone motion picture presentations. These are the people who have the fare and don't mind spending it if they get their money's worth."

A turning point, according to Ed Wood.

Reflections: As Ed Wood has chronicled the history of adult movies in When the Topic is Sex, there have been a few consistent themes he mentions time and again. Pornographic films are improving from a technical standpoint, Eddie tells us, with superior sound and picture. They are also becoming more realistic, thanks to location shooting and more plausible acting and writing. Above all, they are becoming more explicit, with more parts of the body being shown and more sexual acts being depicted in ever-greater detail. All of this, he says, comes from audience demand. It is the discriminating ticket buyer who has improved the sex film.

The crudely-titled article "16MM Beaver" includes all of these themes but focuses most especially on the depiction of pubic hair on the big screen. Eddie treats this as quite a novelty. Apparently, just a few years earlier, viewers had to make do with "tittie" films in which the actresses were only shown nude from the waist up. But even full-frontal nudity wasn't enough for some viewers. Abusing his trademark ellipses, Eddie writes: "Upon first entering the public viewing market, ["beaver" flicks] were almost shouted down as . . . shocking . . . but they remained . . . and the more who viewed, the more the viewer grew tired of seeing a lone girl on the screen exercising her pubic hairs and the lips of her cunt."

Most film historians will point to Gerard Damiano's Deep Throat (1972) and the Mitchell Brothers' Behind the Green Door (1972) as the movies that brought hardcore pornography to a wider audience. But Eddie points to a now-forgotten movie as the real turning point: the quasi-documentary Sexual Freedom in Denmark (1970), directed by John Lamb under the pseudonym M.C. von Hellen. Eddie refers to this movie by a couple of names, including Sex in Denmark and Sexual Freedom in Copenhagen. Under any title, it features a couple of actresses with Wood connections: Uschi Digard (of The Only House in Town) and Suzanne Fields (of The Undergraduate). Sexual Freedom in Denmark was one of many pornographic features that attempted to stay one step ahead of the censors by presenting itself as educational. In this aspect, Ed Wood compares it to the notorious "sex hygiene" films shown to American servicemen. 

Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of "16MM Beaver" is that a large portion of it is devoted to an interview with a 22-year-old adult film actress called Sherry Wine. ("Not her real name," Eddie explains, "but one she prefers to use in the adult flicks.") The only Sherry Wine I could find was an obscure actress who appeared in the Harry Novak-produced blaxploitation film The Black Connection (1974). Since Sherry speaks with a distinctly Wood-ian style, I'll assume she's fictional and that Eddie is "interviewing" himself.

Nevertheless, Sherry gives us an insider's perspective on the adult film industry. She says there is fierce competition among the actresses, not just for roles but to see who can grow the thickest, most plentiful pubic hair. Apparently, audiences of 1971 would not tolerate a hairless crotch. "A lot of the girls got taken in by the hair growing lotions," Sherry says. "They spread all that goo all over their pussy at night, before they went to bed, and slid all over the sheets." The world was a very different place half a century ago.

In some ways, Ed saw changes on the horizon and predicted them accurately. It looks like the term "porno chic" first entered the lexicon circa 1971, the very year this article was published. Eddie doesn't use that term here, but he does see the adult movie going upscale, playing in more respectable theaters and attracting a higher class of patron. He also seems to envision the home video revolution that would be in full swing a decade later. "A quick look into the immediate future is the cassette which will be affixed to the back of our home television set," he writes. "Again this will make the adult film an even more intimate entertainment and without the applause or laughter or tears of the masses in a theatre, the smaller groups watching undoubtedly will be more critical."

In all of his writing, both for the screen and the page, Ed Wood has a tendency to start philosophizing and free-associating. I think that's why so many of his movies, from Glen or Glenda (1953) to The Young Marrieds (1972) include rather pompous and pretentious narration. This article ends with a beautiful yet incoherent Wood diatribe:

Walk up to any window and we will see life . . . walk up to any theatre box office and we will see life springing out at us with the imagination and the aforethought that only the imaginative can bring us, And those imaginative movie makers are doing all in their power to bring it to the audiences "as it is" and with all the professional knowledge at their command. The '70's ahead promise the many changes indicated in this writing and many more which are still on the plotting boards. And some still in the brains of their creator who finds much mental anguish with the Frankenstein of competition.

That's right. He ends this article about porno movies with an allusion to Frankenstein.

Next: "The Fabulous  Jane, Jayne & Marilyn" (1972)