WEED (1971)

Before saying goodbye to the straightforward documentary film, Alex de Renzy swung hard with Weed, an epic, captivating, and thorough look at marijuana, another taboo subject on the cusp of wider acceptance in the early 70’s. A fascinating stamp in time, Weed was made in the shadow of the ongoing work of the Shafer Commission, […]

COUNTDOWN (1967)

Robert Altman’s filmography is one that lacks heroes in the conventional sense. What it is in no short supply of are people who stumble upwards into some sense of accomplishment or peace. Sometimes it happens a little too late, but it happens nonetheless. For Altman wasn’t all that interested in the white-hatted good guy myths […]

THE DELINQUENTS (1957)

Far from the wide, multi-character canvases he would eventually pioneer and master, one couldn’t ask for a more uncharacteristic debut from Robert Altman than what was delivered with The Delinquents. Shot in 1956 but not released until the following year, the enterprise was the result of Kansas City theatrical exhibitor Elmer Rhoden wanting to get […]

INNOCENTS ABROAD (1971)

Alex de Renzy’s Innocents Abroad is an invitation by the filmmaker to explore various locations across Europe and witness the cultural shift as the sexual revolution grips specific countries and cities. Definitely a direct follow up to his previous year’s groundbreaking Pornography in Denmark: A New Approach, the idea put forth in Innocents Abroad is […]

SEXUAL ENCOUNTER GROUP (1970)

It’s difficult to puzzle out how much of Sexual Encounter Group, an 81 minute odyssey of guided, mannered group sex produced by director Alex de Renzy for exhibition in his Screening Room and beyond, is a genuine time capsule or an orchestrated put-on. Regardless, beginning poolside and concluding with a post-coital immersion, what unfolds between […]

A HISTORY OF THE BLUE MOVIE (1970)

Soon after the release of Alex de Renzy’s Pornography in Denmark: A New Approach in 1970, a rash of other filmmakers and producers decided to get in on the act and make their own “documentaries,” then a semantic-but-legal safe haven for producing or projecting non-simulated sexual acts. One of the earliest and most notable examples […]

PORNOGRAPHY IN DENMARK: A NEW APPROACH (1970)

Somewhere in the catalog of great cosmic ironies, Russ Meyer being the first filmmaker to adapt John Cleland’s Fanny Hill to the big screen is one of the more twisted. The book, a bawdy, lusty tale of a young girl’s misadventures and blossoming sexual awareness, was published in ye olde England in 1748 and was […]

ADOBE ANGELS (1991)

After retiring from the adult film business in 1987 for a more conventional life in Hawaii, director Bob Chinn eventually moved back to the lower 48 and settled with his family in Albuquerque, New Mexico where he became a successful camera salesman at Kurt’s Camera Corral. It wasn’t long, though, before the filmmaking bug got […]

PANAMA RED (1973)

A hippie musician is given 72 hours to unload 500 kilos of grass on various funky acquaintances throughout the Los Angeles metroplex. Cisco Pike, you say? Nope. This is Panama Red, the second film from director Bob Chinn’s Pantheon Pictures and the only film on the filmmaker’s resume that was awarded a PG rating from […]

FLESH OF THE LOTUS: A JOHNNY WADD NOVEL (2011)

“Trust me, Johnny.” These words are passionately delivered to private investigator Johnny Wadd who lives in a world where trust is hard to come by. It’s a world where lifelong friends take paths that twist in different directions but end up in the same bottomed out gorge of Los Angeles in 1972, a world of […]