A Brief History of Sexploitation Cinema
Before the Golden Age of Porn there was a small, but dedicated number of true visual artists working in the sex film industry. These filmmakers produced some of the slickest and most artistic 'art films', now often just referred to as sexploitation.
Sexploitation had a definite heirarchy of quality. There were cheapo knockoffs of more mainstream movies and ideas as well as 'Roughies', quickie black and white productions that wallowed in sex and violence as their only offering. Goofy, Benny Hilly level comedy was also a huge part of the genre, particularly after the release of Russ Meyer's The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959), after which time the floodgates were open and nudie pictures were everywhere.
Radley Metzger stands out as arguably the most talented of the sexploitation auteurs. He had a visual panache and sense of framing that respected the genre as well as his actors. If you haven't seen any of his films, you owe it to yourself to explore a little of what he did and see that there was some very artistic work done during the heydey of 60s sexploitation.
The film I am featuring here is a Radley Metzger presentation of a film by Mac Ahlberg, a Swede who made a handful of sexploiters, but went on to mostly work as a cinematographer in American made horror and exploitation movies, most notably his work with Stuart Gordon on Re-Animator and other classics like Chained Heat and Hell Night. I believe Metzger acquired distribution rights to the film and released it through Audobon Films.
The poster pictured above is an original British Quad movie poster that presents more horizontally, than the traditional American 1-sheet. The standard size on the UK Quad is 30"x40". You can also see that the distributor added a paste-on and threw out Brigette Bardot's name in an attempt to bring in more viewers. Perhaps the film did not initially generate the enthusiasm they'd hoped for and needed a more well known name to play on.
Above is the movie tie-in novel that accompanied the release of I, A Woman, which utilizes the highly suggestive image that was turned into a painting for the UK poster.
Thanks for reading. (Everything sourced from my own personal library and collection.)
ALL ORIGINAL CONTENT.