Monday Classic Drive-In Porno Double Feature, thanks to Internet Archive

August 28, 2023 6:21 AM

Historical NSFW content presented only for consenting adults to view in the privacy of wherever they deem to be private.
Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy [Wikipedia] is a 1976 American erotic musical comedy film [1h18m, IA] loosely based on Lewis Carroll's 1865 book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Chatterbox [Wikipedia] is a 1977 American comedy film [1h13m, IA] about a woman with a talking vagina.

BONUS: Alice in Wonderland An X Rated Musical Fantasy Soundtrack (Cassette Version) [56m]

I'm posting these for historical interest only. They aren't good movies, but they are legendary. I can only think of maybe three other porn films from this era that I can name*, but these are two of the most bizarre. I mention "Drive-In" because the Fiesta Drive In in El Paso, Texas [Cinema Treasures] is where I first saw Alice In Wonderland. (It's still open as of reports earlier this year.) And imagine my surprise when I found them just sitting there, on the open internet.

*Deep Throat, Debbie Does Dallas, Flesh Gordon. You're welcome.

posted by hippybear (43 comments total)

There used to be a drive-in next to the county fire training facility. When my department would go for evening training on the way out we'd park the firetrucks where we could see the screen, hop up into the hose bed, and watch for a while. No sound, of course, which made these films even stranger.
posted by tommasz at 6:31 AM on August 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've mentioned to younger people--to their disbelief--that not only did there used to be movie theaters that specialized in showing hardcore pornography, but that they advertised in local newspapers, such as the one that I delivered when I was a kid, alongside the "legit" theaters. I had no idea, however, that there were drive-in theaters that showed it. The past really is another country.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:57 AM on August 28, 2023 [7 favorites]

There was a drive-in porno theater downhill from my hometown. Once while the whole nuclear family was driving down the ridge road, my mom tiredly looked over that way and said, "Look, Abehammerb, that's where you were conceived."

Goddammit mom.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 7:24 AM on August 28, 2023 [52 favorites]

I have one of the musical numbers from Alice embedded in my brain. It's a hoot of a movie.

There's also the Rocki Whore Picture Show, a high budget Wicked Pictures porn sendoff of, well, you know, and they break the fourth wall repeatedly stating that they're a parody and, no, they're not about to break into well known song and instead sing some other song.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:31 AM on August 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

My drive-in theater experience was in the upper Midwest and the nastiest the drive-ins would get would be R-rated fare, usually with the word "cheerleaders" in the title. Still, they'd pack them in.
posted by Ber at 7:36 AM on August 28, 2023

I first encountered this movie on Cinemax (aka Skin-emax) after midnight back in the mid 80's.

odd note, I recently posited how odd it was to re-skin HBO to MAX considering the past association, perhaps too time worn to make a difference today.
posted by djseafood at 7:37 AM on August 28, 2023 [6 favorites]

Ah, brings back memories of the Rebel Drive-In in early 1980s Austin. A porno on the big screen is a sure fire bet for a great first date.
posted by smcdow at 7:41 AM on August 28, 2023

The only one I've seen is Flesh Gordon: fairly soft-core, generic stoner humour, and surprisingly good art-direction.
posted by ovvl at 7:48 AM on August 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

Kristine DeBell (Alice) would later go on to be in Meatballs and, most importantly, A Talking Cat?!
posted by dismas at 8:09 AM on August 28, 2023 [6 favorites]

Recently learned about the mid-seventies musical Let My People Come.

To someone from a younger generation, the 70s seem almost frighteningly horny. How does the mile high club ever become a thing? For god's sake, I could have better sex in a Stasi black site prison cell than I could in an airplane bathroom. Was it chosen specifically because an airplane bathroom is the most physically uncomfortable and least erotic place in the universe? Or were people just that goddamn randy all the time? Was it the leaded gasoline? Is this just naturally how people get when there's a functioning middle class?? What the fuck was going on??
posted by cubeb at 8:21 AM on August 28, 2023 [20 favorites]

For anyone interested in this sort of thing, The Rialto Report is an excellent long form blog that takes a behind the scenes look at the early days of the porn undustry.
posted by hoodrich at 8:33 AM on August 28, 2023 [5 favorites]

I've mentioned to younger people--to their disbelief--that not only did there used to be movie theaters that specialized in showing hardcore pornography, but that they advertised in local newspapers, such as the one that I delivered when I was a kid, alongside the "legit" theaters. I had no idea, however, that there were drive-in theaters that showed it. The past really is another country.

a little after Pee Wee Herman passed away, my wife, a university professor, was spending the idle minutes before the start of a class chatting about the man with the students who had arrived early.

"He really was ahead of his time. It's unfortunate that his career was cut short because he was arrested for indulging himself in a porn theater."

"A -- what? There were ... porn ... theaters?"

"Let me tell you about the state of adult entertainment before there was an Internet."

I told her that she was a terrible influence on these young minds, and she merely replied, "I"m an educator. I educate the young. If the kids come out of my classroom knowing something that they didn't know when they walked in, then my job is done."
posted by bl1nk at 8:47 AM on August 28, 2023 [30 favorites]

I seem to remember a drive in of my youth that had two screens facing each other. Kids films one side, adult (steamy mainstream, not porn, I think) the other.

How did they handle the sound? Low power radio????
posted by clew at 8:51 AM on August 28, 2023

Why were people fucking so much in the 70s? Two huge factors: The birth control pill (introduced in 1960, "widely" available in the 70s), and Roe v. Wade was 1973. Women are a lot more likely to be sexually active when they can control their own reproduction. STDs spread like wildfire in the 70s, but treatments generally worked well. AIDS wasn't making people scared about sex again until the 80s.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:56 AM on August 28, 2023 [14 favorites]

I discovered a VHS taped-copy of Alice in Wonderland in my parents' sock drawer when I was just in about 8th grade. I knew it was something sexy-times (why I was rooting through their sock drawers, tbh) so I waited until no one was home, and watched the whole thing all the way through.

I tried to watch it again immediately after (rewinding a video takes so long), and got busted before it could even play. I was grounded and given a lecture on respecting others' privacy.

Also, I have never memorized anything so thoroughly on one viewing, before or since.
posted by heyitsgogi at 8:57 AM on August 28, 2023 [6 favorites]

"What's a nice girl like you doing on a knight like me..." I rented the Alice porno musical on VHS when I was 18 (back in the mid-90s) and thought it was charming and fun. Same with Flesh Gordon.

I also remember The World's First Nudie Musical, with lines like "I'm the lesbian butch dyke/ That's why people call me Mike." And the showstopping finale "Let me eat you."
posted by skullhead at 9:01 AM on August 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

I have never seen Chatterbox, but I have seen the trailer, unexpectedly, before a screening of Chicago at the Alamo Drafthouse with my elderly parents. It was an uncomfortable experience.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:07 AM on August 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

I was watching Insatiable, starring the great Marilyn Chambers, for research purposes recently, and I'd forgotten how much dialogue there was in classic porn movies. Like, exposition and backstory and cut to threesome and more exposition and repartée and cut to blowjob.

Plus, things happened in real time. "Hey, baby, I'm coming over to have sexy sex with you." And we'd see the woman driving. For a while. On multiple thoroughfares. No jump cut from ignition to doorbell. I guess that was to pad the running time and not have to film as much fucking/sucking?

And for those who are unfamiliar with Fucking in the '70s, there was an actual on-premises swingers sex palace in Manhattan called Plato's Retreat where one could go and have all the sex one could want, at least in theory. It also, reportedly, had an all-you-can-eat buffet. From what I understand, it was much easier to satisfy one appetite than another.
posted by the sobsister at 9:27 AM on August 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

The pussycat theater chain ran ads every week for porn movies in the la times sunday calendar section, but I didn't know about them being screened at drive ins until I read a ya book published in the 80s in which the protagonist and her friends go to a drive in multiplex. She matter-of-factly states that a few screens are showing x-rated movies ( they don't go to them).

Iirc the book was set in FL.
posted by brujita at 9:33 AM on August 28, 2023

And on the topic of newspaper ads for adult films, I well remember the matchbook-sized ads all scrunched together on one page. Mainly the imaginative stage names the actors had. All these years later, I still recall "Myles Longue."
posted by the sobsister at 9:38 AM on August 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

I genuinely wish there were theaters that would show these kinds of old X-rated movies. We have a little art-house place near us that does cutesy little theme nights, why not have an X-rated series? I guess maybe this stuff is too exploitative and male gaze-y for their vibe, which ... I totally get.
posted by uncleozzy at 10:03 AM on August 28, 2023

I was tickled to find the soundtrack for Alice In Wonderland so people who were curious about the songs could check those out without having to watch the film if they aren't into that kind of thing. The music is better than you expect it to be.
posted by hippybear at 10:07 AM on August 28, 2023

I'm positive I can remember at least three of the musical numbers from this version of Alice. I also recall a dream sequence where IIRC the lead pops popcorn in her vagina. It's certainly something.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:36 AM on August 28, 2023

It is really fascinating that in the 70s they were really concerned to make smut that was also ART and now we just don't care about any of that for the most part. I do think a lot of it had to do with the question of obscenity and the pressing issue in the 60s and 70s of legality of pornography which seems more or less settled (for the time being, the current supreme court would probably happily make it illegal again) but it's also the case that once pornography had a secure legal framework it isn't like a grand tradition of high falutin porn continued on after that. Instead it steadily got boiled down more and more to the basic essence of people fucking on camera for your enjoyment. That makes me think something else was it play with that generation of pornographers. Like they really wanted to be lascivious and also auteurs. They wanted respect, I guess?
posted by dis_integration at 12:02 PM on August 28, 2023

And we'd see the woman driving. For a while. On multiple thoroughfares. No jump cut from ignition to doorbell.

In fairness, this wasn’t unique to porn — many old shows did this (Hawaii 5-0, Rockford Files, etc. etc.) I find some episodes agonizing to watch for this reason — hey, let’s get a long shot of an avocado-green Impala driving for five minutes down highways in the middle of nowhere! Then we’ll show the actor exiting the vehicle, crossing the street in traffic, and knocking on a door!
posted by aramaic at 12:13 PM on August 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

And we'd see the woman driving. For a while. On multiple thoroughfares. No jump cut from ignition to doorbell.

Umberto Eco called this out specifically in his essay "How to recognize a porn movie":

A movie in which Gilbert did nothing but rape Gilbertina, front, back, and sideways, would be intolerable. Physically, for the actors, and economically, for the producer. And it would also be, psychologically, intolerable for the spectator: for the transgression to work, it must be played out against a background of normality. To depict normality is one of the most difficult things for any artist – whereas portraying deviation, crime, rape, torture, is very easy.

Therefore the pornographic movie must present normality – essential if the transgression is to have interest – in the way that every spectator conceives it. Therefore, if Gilbert has to take the bus and go from A to B, we will see Gilbert taking the bus and then the bus proceeding from A to B.

This often irritates the spectators, because they think they would like the unspeakable scenes to be continuous. But this is an illusion on their part. They couldn’t bear a full hour and a half of unspeakable scenes. So the passages of the wasted time are essential.

I repeat. Go into a movie theater. If, to go from A to B, the characters take longer than you would like, then the film you are seeing is pornographic.

posted by jackbishop at 12:43 PM on August 28, 2023 [8 favorites]

let’s get a long shot of an avocado-green Impala driving for five minutes down highways in the middle of nowhere! Then we’ll show the actor exiting the vehicle, crossing the street in traffic, and knocking on a door!

You've just described everything I loved about Better Call Saul.

Instead it steadily got boiled down more and more to the basic essence of people fucking on camera for your enjoyment. That makes me think something else was it play with that generation of pornographers. Like they really wanted to be lascivious and also auteurs. They wanted respect, I guess?

It also became much cheaper to make and distribute porn in the era of home video, which led, I would assume, to the quantity-over-quality ethos.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:46 PM on August 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

> It also became much cheaper to make and distribute porn in the era of home video, which led, I would assume, to the quantity-over-quality ethos.

This is what I might call the "Boogie Nights" argument but it doesn't pass muster with me. Prior to the 60s and 70s there was plenty of short, to the point, pornography, available as "loops" in seedy shops of the pre-disneyfied time square variety. Basically these short porn films had existed from the moment films were invented. There's only this brief period in the mid century when filmmakers want a big budget with real scripting and set design and costumes (and song writing and choreography!) to produce a film like Alice X. What we have now is something like a reversion to the mean.
posted by dis_integration at 1:02 PM on August 28, 2023 [4 favorites]

> the 70s seem almost frighteningly horny.

The "frighteningly" part notwithstanding, it was definitely a horny era
posted by smcdow at 1:05 PM on August 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

I went to high school in a small rural community, and I was a member of the marching band. Since we were surrounded by other small rural communities, Friday evening away games it was not unusual to spend an 45-minutes to an hour driving to our opponent field to play. One evening we were driving back, and were stopped at a railroad crossing. Next to the railroad crossing, facing the road, was a drive-in, showing a porno. Which, yes, sound off, but remember this is a bunch of high-school kids on a couple school busses. The chaperones were having fits trying to deal with it.
posted by Runes at 1:39 PM on August 28, 2023 [5 favorites]

My hypothesis about the outlier explosion of arty-porn in the 70s was that it was kicked off by Hugh Hefner bankrolling Roman Polanski's Macbeth in 1971, which, while not actually porn, showed that there was enough money in the porn industry to bankroll feature length films. Also, you had Playboy hitting its stride as a porn magazine with a veneer of class. Then it eventually declined as folks realized that maybe this wasn't a great idea after all, and then buried by Bob Guccione's Caligula (previously) in 1979.

Arty Porn can only get credibility if you could get A-list actors and directors to be involved in the project, and Caligula was the high-water mark of trying to make that happen.
posted by bl1nk at 1:41 PM on August 28, 2023 [6 favorites]

side-derail on how drive-ins work:

How did they handle the sound? Low power radio????

my wife and I enjoyed the resurgence of going to drive-in movie theaters during the 2021*/2022** COVID thaw. Audio is all delivered by radio. You tune in to one frequency for Screen 1 and another frequency for Screen 2.

It generally works ok, though depending on your paranoia and desire not to get stranded with a dead battery, you sometimes have to run your car engine to keep the radio active and AC if you're out on a hot summer night.

It would be interesting if modern drive-ins had, say, an audio stream that you could connect to via an app, but that requires investment and investment requires confidence that there's a future in drive-in cinemas.

* - do recommend seeing The Fast and Furious series at a drive-in and making engine revving sounds when appropriate. Adds to the immersion.

** - do not recommend seeing Thor:Love and Thunder or any other film with a lot of scenes happening in outer space. You are watching it at night, but the actual lack of luminance on a drive-in movie screens really muddles dark/nighttime scenes in a film.
posted by bl1nk at 1:55 PM on August 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

How did they handle the sound? Low power radio????

Originally hardwired speakers on a cord that you brought into your vehicle at every parking space. Remember at the height of the drive in era many cars had no radio and many of the older cars had pre transistor radios. Playing the radio for the duration of a movie would be a guaranteed battery killer, vacuum tubes sucked a lot of power and electrical systems didn't have all that much to spare.

Was it chosen specifically because an airplane bathroom is the most physically uncomfortable and least erotic place in the universe?

A certian amount is plain bucket listing.

That makes me think something else was it play with that generation of pornographers. Like they really wanted to be lascivious and also auteurs. They wanted respect, I guess?

Still are these kind of people it's just tough/impossible to get investors. It's the missing middle of mainstream film writ large.
posted by Mitheral at 1:56 PM on August 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

Originally hardwired speakers on a cord that you brought into your vehicle at every parking space.

That's what they had in my one and only drive-in movie experience:

Mom had become friends with a foreign-exchange student in (high school? college?) and they kept in touch over the years; at one point their whole family had a vacation in America and stopped by for a visit. Their kids were about the same age as my sister and I, and were dying to see Saturday Night Fever at a drive-in, I guess as a quintessential American experience. Problem was, it was absolutely pouring rain that night - and this was Florida, so when I say pouring I mean pouring. We had the little wired speakers hooked over the windows rolled up as far as possible and umbrellas stuck through the open part as well, trying to keep most of the rain out. It was a soggy experience, the pounding rain on the roof made the audio difficult to hear, and it was hard to see the screen unless we kept the wipers on. Personally I couldn't have cared less about the movie anyway (I was seriously into jazz, and hated disco because I found the music extremely repetitive and boring), but as the older brother and designated host I soldiered through. It soured me on drive-ins, though, and I never went back.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:24 PM on August 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

A certian amount is plain bucket listing.

I think you meant plane bucket listing.
posted by bryon at 7:39 PM on August 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

So I grew up with a bit of drive-in culture baked in. We had a twin-screen drive-in that could hold over 1000 cars right in town, and during my high school years they had $5/car Tuesdays. And in high school my family had a Gold Duster, a mammoth car with bench seats, and we could easily get eight people into the car, and put a bunch of folding chairs in the back, those kind with aluminum tubing and 4" wide interwoven straps, and you're carrying your own party to the double feature. It was ALWAYS a double feature.

And really, it was a total social scene. It was all wire-mounted speakers, and was all in mono in unison, so all the speakers would be turned up and you'd sit outside your car, maybe on top of your car for a better view, and people would be going to the concessions stand and mixing things up across the maybe 5 hours you'd be there.

Anyway, my first drive-in experience was apparently seeing Pinocchio in its 1971 theatrical re-issue at age three. The whale scene really left an impression on me. That's all I remember.
posted by hippybear at 8:45 PM on August 28, 2023 [4 favorites]

Note that the other three porn movies Hippybear can name (Deep Throat, Debbie Does Dallas, Flesh Gordon) are all available on archive.org. In fact, due to bad labelling, Debbie Does Dallas is in the public domain in the USA
posted by blob at 10:05 PM on August 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

The thing about the opposing screens drive in I remember is that they played the different movies at the same time. So the speakers on stanchions wouldn’t work, and two speakers feeding different soundtracks into one car would be awful. Maybe we weren’t supposed to be watching both ways? But they always did this, it was cheaper than a babysitter.
posted by clew at 11:12 PM on August 28, 2023

I seem to remember a drive in of my youth that had two screens facing each other. Kids films one side, adult (steamy mainstream, not porn, I think) the other.

How did they handle the sound? Low power radio????

As others have pointed out, it was wired audio with heavy-duty clunky speakers that would probably stand you in good stead in hand-to-hand combat.

As for the multi-screen set-up, the last drive-in round these parts had three separate screens, placed at 4, 8, and 12 o’clock around their lot. Their movies start at 8:30 this evening and it is six first-run things, including the Barbenheimer double bill.

Although I am glad it’s still going, it’s been a while since I’ve been; Captain America was the last thing I saw there.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:42 AM on August 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

1976's Let My Puppets Come is a mixed live actor and puppet musical porno. Since it's now available to watch on the Internet Archive I skimmed thru it, and it's a lot weirder than I remember.
posted by Sophont at 11:23 PM on August 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Airplane bathroom sex... lack of imagination. Maybe watch a bunch of porn or go through the Kama Sutra - Wikipedia. There are a whole bunch of fun things that can be done in confining spaces depending on the people involved. Don't miss out on sexy fun standing shower sex....
posted by zengargoyle at 6:43 AM on August 30, 2023

Anthology in NYC has had several porn series and the New Beverly in LA screened Dracula Sucks some time ago.

When the museum of the moving image had its carnal knowledge series ( which included a bunch of films released by mainstream studios) the screening of Deep Throat was canceled

I didn't go to any of the hard-core shows...the fact that I may want to watch people fucking onscreen does NOT mean that i want to do so with the audience.
posted by brujita at 10:57 AM on August 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

In fairness, this wasn’t unique to porn — many old shows did this (Hawaii 5-0, Rockford Files, etc. etc.) I find some episodes agonizing to watch for this reason — hey, let’s get a long shot of an avocado-green Impala driving for five minutes down highways in the middle of nowhere! Then we’ll show the actor exiting the vehicle, crossing the street in traffic, and knocking on a door!

This is how I learned that Jim Garner had multiple leg injuries

You can chart the health of his knee by the size of the limp in all the foot-chases and what not

Being the 70s it's probably ol' Rockford was around a blowjob or two I guess (to stay topical)
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:30 PM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]