X-RATED ADULT MOVIE POSTERS OF THE 60S & 70S

NUDE MAGAZINE – ISSUE 2 DEC 03 / JAN 04

On only my second ever date, I took a girl to see an X film. We hadn’t specifically chosen to go and see a porno, It was just that, being only fifteen and living in a one horse town, there were only two places to take a girl on a date, the ice rink or the cinema, which at the time (the late-70s) regularly screened adult movies which played to small audiences of desperate men and snogging schoolkids (the cinema had a notoriously relaxed attitude to minors). I really can’t remember what the film was called, only that it was about randy beings from outer space and that it was truly awful.

Oddly, the 1960s and 1970s are now trumpeted as the golden age of the pornographic movie. Well it might have been, in America, where people queued to watch acknowledged porno-chic classics such as Deep Throat and Behind The Green Door. But over here, frustrated punters in flea pits across the land were subjected to a succession of ropey old turkeys such as the one I had the misfortune to catch, all promising more than they delivered. But what is indisputable though, is that the period undoubtedly was a golden age for adult movie posters, as a new book X-Rated attests. After all, unlike now, where practically all porn movies – whether hardcore or softcore – are produced for video or cable distribution, the adult flicks of yore, often had to compete with mainstream offerings playing at the same cinema. So posters played a vital role in not only boldly announcing a film’s run at the local Plaza or Locarno, but in seducing the curious with the most lurid and salacious come-ons.

X-Rated presents 150 posters in ‘throbbing’ colour and black and white, grouping them in a kind of loose thematic order which embraces such sex film sub-genres as the sensational expose: The Peddlers of Sin, Calls Girls of Frankfurt, and good old des, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll: Smoke and Flesh and The Lust Combo amongst others. Also represented are posters for more familiar offerings, such as Debbie Does Dallas and Emmanuelle.