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Strange New World: Sex Films of the 1970s
Black and white / 710 pages / Adult content and strong language (to read Comments click on 'See all Reviews') To look at the world of the past through films can be a sobering insight into how things have changed, but to look at the world of the 20th century through sex films is to witness a world that is almost inexplicable. In no decade is this experience more bizarre than the 1970s, and yet it is less than half a century in the past. Was society really so strange and different only forty years ago?
These films were often not pornography, as we understand the term. But what were they? Who made these films and why, and who were they made for? What did they say then, and what do they tell us now? In some cases, what were we thinking But in others, what have we lost? Nothing even remotely like these films is being made today. What has replaced them, and how, and why?
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JON ABBOTT, born in 1956 and a teenager in the 1970s, looks back at the era through over two hundred films exploiting sex and nudity, some of which he loved, and some of which he... liked a little less! This opinionated and fact-filled history looks at the strange new world that adults of both sexes and all ages found themselves in during the 1970s and surrounding decades, from the 1950s to the present day.
It looks at films from all around the world, including America, Britain, France, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Czechoslovakia, China, and Japan, at sci-fi, horror, crime thrillers, comedies that weren't funny, and serious-minded films that were hilarious.
Some of the best-known masters of sexploitation are well represented--Stanley Long, Greg Smith, Joe Sarno, Russ Meyer, Mac Ahlberg, Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, Tinto Brass--as are some of the sex films' most beautiful and prolific practitioners--Sylvia Kristel, Gloria Guida, Lina Romay, Maria Forsa, Edwige Fenech, Felicity Devonshire, Christina Lindberg, Joelle Coeur... and such mainstream movie names as Jane Fonda, Jenny Agutter, Julie Christie, and Pam Grier.
JON ABBOTT has been writing about films and TV for over thirty years in a variety of publications, trade, populist, and specialist. This is his fifth book.
Look out for the 150 page color supplement to this title, The A--Z of Bad Girls, a Naked Pulp special.
These films were often not pornography, as we understand the term. But what were they? Who made these films and why, and who were they made for? What did they say then, and what do they tell us now? In some cases, what were we thinking But in others, what have we lost? Nothing even remotely like these films is being made today. What has replaced them, and how, and why?
,
JON ABBOTT, born in 1956 and a teenager in the 1970s, looks back at the era through over two hundred films exploiting sex and nudity, some of which he loved, and some of which he... liked a little less! This opinionated and fact-filled history looks at the strange new world that adults of both sexes and all ages found themselves in during the 1970s and surrounding decades, from the 1950s to the present day.
It looks at films from all around the world, including America, Britain, France, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Czechoslovakia, China, and Japan, at sci-fi, horror, crime thrillers, comedies that weren't funny, and serious-minded films that were hilarious.
Some of the best-known masters of sexploitation are well represented--Stanley Long, Greg Smith, Joe Sarno, Russ Meyer, Mac Ahlberg, Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, Tinto Brass--as are some of the sex films' most beautiful and prolific practitioners--Sylvia Kristel, Gloria Guida, Lina Romay, Maria Forsa, Edwige Fenech, Felicity Devonshire, Christina Lindberg, Joelle Coeur... and such mainstream movie names as Jane Fonda, Jenny Agutter, Julie Christie, and Pam Grier.
JON ABBOTT has been writing about films and TV for over thirty years in a variety of publications, trade, populist, and specialist. This is his fifth book.
Look out for the 150 page color supplement to this title, The A--Z of Bad Girls, a Naked Pulp special.
710 pages, Paperback
First published August 7, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 23, 2017
The personal notes of the author based on his vast porn collection. There is hardly any structure in here. Just the movies he had consumed over the years.
November 1, 2016
Jon Abbott, known for his books and articles about vintage television, began writing this chunky tome for a publisher who wanted a serious scholarly book on the topic of seventies sex films. Abbott found he couldn’t keep to a serious tone when writing about sex movies so ended up self-publishing. The fact that he makes no attempt to restrain his personality is a large part of what makes the book such an entertaining read. His cornball humour, cranky rants and special pleading on behalf of terrible movies which just happen to feature his own personal lust objects completely naked for nearly their entire running time make for a rollicking fun time. His writing can be insightful, especially when writing about classic films like Klute, Don’t Look Now or The Beguiled. And he gives a good run-down of particular sexploitation genres, such as nurse movies and women-in-prison films. You are bound to read about many titles with which you were unfamiliar. The illustrations are a mixed bag. Abbott has used screen grabs, DVD covers, posters, etc. Anything he doesn’t have to pay for. Reproduced on buff paper they are never going to be seen to their best advantage, but he’s done, for the most part, a pretty classy job with choice and layout. (An exception is a very blurry picture of the cover of the DVD of Thriller : They Call Her One Eye which fills pg. 414)
Prudish censors, “man-hating feminists” and art-house snobs and some of the directors they lionise are all on the receiving end of grumpy rants. While I may share some his sentiments, I find myself amused at how heated he becomes on the topics. He saves his biggest rant until the end of the book where he pontificates against everything from Fifty Shades of Grey to the teaching of climate change in schools (not sure what that has to do with sex films.)
Mostly he knows his subject. The fact that he refers to Michelango Antonioni (whose work he loathes) as a member of the French New Wave can perhaps be forgiven in the light of his thoughtful analysis of Jean-Luc Goddard’s Contempt. (The index can be a bit unreliable at times. In looking up Antonioni I found a listing for pg. 468 which contains nothing but a DVD cover featuring Satan (for Mario Bianchi’s Satan’s Babydoll). Maybe Abbott is trying to say something. Also the index listing for Pier Paolo Pasolini takes you to a write-up about Don’t Look Now that doesn’t mention him.)
I’m not sure why Abbott didn’t write about Pasolini’s The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales or The Arabian Nights. He mentions The Canterbury Tales only in regard to censorship debates in England. These are key films in the depiction of sexuality in the cinema of the seventies. And he discusses only one film by Radley Metzger (The Image) and that is one of his least typical. I suspect Abbott isn’t overly keen on Metzger, but it would have been interesting to read his comments on films like The Lickerish Quartet and Score, which have significant cult followings. Personally, I would have loved some coverage also of the sexploitation movies produced by Harry Novak, such as The Pig Keeper’s Daughter, Wilbur and the Baby Factory and The Toy Box. He does well with his coverage of Russ Meyer and Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, but I would have liked to see him delve as far into the absolute rubbish that was coming out of the U.S. as he did into the absolute rubbish coming out of Europe and the U.K.
Abbott provides context for his coverage of seventies sex films by leading in with discussion of a key 1950’s sci-fi film I Married a Monster from Outer Space, the Carry On movies (which he hates) and the sixties output of Russ Meyer. To round things out on the other end, he gives us a run down on some of the more sexually daring art movies of recent decades and some of his favourite modern soft and hardcore porn. His faith that the episodes of the hardcore College Rules website and DVD series are actual home-made orgy recordings made by real students on college campuses and that the offer of $10,000 for submissions isn’t just ballyhoo seems a little naive to me. Still he uses them as evidence for how relaxed some young people are about sex these days. I wouldn’t doubt that, but professional quality porn is not easy to shoot and trusting college students to cover the legal requirements necessary seems too risky.
What I look for from this kind of book is that it inform me about movies I’ve never heard of, inspire me to revisits one’s I’ve seen, maybe make me laugh and challenge me with opinions which clash with my own. This book did all of that. While all the coverage of interchangeable Jess Franco and Jean Rollin films might drag a little, mostly it’s a romp through the sublime, the hilariously godawful and the sizzlingly sexy.
Prudish censors, “man-hating feminists” and art-house snobs and some of the directors they lionise are all on the receiving end of grumpy rants. While I may share some his sentiments, I find myself amused at how heated he becomes on the topics. He saves his biggest rant until the end of the book where he pontificates against everything from Fifty Shades of Grey to the teaching of climate change in schools (not sure what that has to do with sex films.)
Mostly he knows his subject. The fact that he refers to Michelango Antonioni (whose work he loathes) as a member of the French New Wave can perhaps be forgiven in the light of his thoughtful analysis of Jean-Luc Goddard’s Contempt. (The index can be a bit unreliable at times. In looking up Antonioni I found a listing for pg. 468 which contains nothing but a DVD cover featuring Satan (for Mario Bianchi’s Satan’s Babydoll). Maybe Abbott is trying to say something. Also the index listing for Pier Paolo Pasolini takes you to a write-up about Don’t Look Now that doesn’t mention him.)
I’m not sure why Abbott didn’t write about Pasolini’s The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales or The Arabian Nights. He mentions The Canterbury Tales only in regard to censorship debates in England. These are key films in the depiction of sexuality in the cinema of the seventies. And he discusses only one film by Radley Metzger (The Image) and that is one of his least typical. I suspect Abbott isn’t overly keen on Metzger, but it would have been interesting to read his comments on films like The Lickerish Quartet and Score, which have significant cult followings. Personally, I would have loved some coverage also of the sexploitation movies produced by Harry Novak, such as The Pig Keeper’s Daughter, Wilbur and the Baby Factory and The Toy Box. He does well with his coverage of Russ Meyer and Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, but I would have liked to see him delve as far into the absolute rubbish that was coming out of the U.S. as he did into the absolute rubbish coming out of Europe and the U.K.
Abbott provides context for his coverage of seventies sex films by leading in with discussion of a key 1950’s sci-fi film I Married a Monster from Outer Space, the Carry On movies (which he hates) and the sixties output of Russ Meyer. To round things out on the other end, he gives us a run down on some of the more sexually daring art movies of recent decades and some of his favourite modern soft and hardcore porn. His faith that the episodes of the hardcore College Rules website and DVD series are actual home-made orgy recordings made by real students on college campuses and that the offer of $10,000 for submissions isn’t just ballyhoo seems a little naive to me. Still he uses them as evidence for how relaxed some young people are about sex these days. I wouldn’t doubt that, but professional quality porn is not easy to shoot and trusting college students to cover the legal requirements necessary seems too risky.
What I look for from this kind of book is that it inform me about movies I’ve never heard of, inspire me to revisits one’s I’ve seen, maybe make me laugh and challenge me with opinions which clash with my own. This book did all of that. While all the coverage of interchangeable Jess Franco and Jean Rollin films might drag a little, mostly it’s a romp through the sublime, the hilariously godawful and the sizzlingly sexy.
February 18, 2021
The writer sure knows his porn but this book goes on for so long it becomes tedious. Despite the title, there is much more that what you bargained for, and this is not always a good thing.
What I don't like is how the writer lumps together genres that have nothing to do with each other. You get eurotrash, exploitation, sexploitation, French new wave, horror, hard core porn, whatever. I feel it would have been better if he had written separate books on each subject instead of tossing them all together in one cauldron. I'm sure there are readers who will enjoy this unrestrained style but I find it hard to take seriously a book where you get Goddard next to X-rated video smut.
The last part dealing with the X-rated crap ought to be removed. Completely out of tone with the rest of the book. Furthermore, if you take the title, most of the book is off topic.
What I don't like is how the writer lumps together genres that have nothing to do with each other. You get eurotrash, exploitation, sexploitation, French new wave, horror, hard core porn, whatever. I feel it would have been better if he had written separate books on each subject instead of tossing them all together in one cauldron. I'm sure there are readers who will enjoy this unrestrained style but I find it hard to take seriously a book where you get Goddard next to X-rated video smut.
The last part dealing with the X-rated crap ought to be removed. Completely out of tone with the rest of the book. Furthermore, if you take the title, most of the book is off topic.
January 26, 2026
The author comes across as a boring intellectual snob.He didn't blame see the films in the cinea,only Last Tango admits ilk,instead watching the dvds.He worried what his daughter thinks of his Amazon wish list.
He doesn't like the Carry Ons but Lord the Cofessions.Well there's no accounting for taste.
He calls actors he doesn't like as lavish or obnoxious,which could equally apply to his comments.
I was only inter in British films so for me this was a quick read,otherwise it would have become a tedious bore.
The photos,which are part of the text are of a truly appalling standard.
Finally,just to keep you happy,there is a 19 page article on Elvis.Not of a non sequiter.
He doesn't like the Carry Ons but Lord the Cofessions.Well there's no accounting for taste.
He calls actors he doesn't like as lavish or obnoxious,which could equally apply to his comments.
I was only inter in British films so for me this was a quick read,otherwise it would have become a tedious bore.
The photos,which are part of the text are of a truly appalling standard.
Finally,just to keep you happy,there is a 19 page article on Elvis.Not of a non sequiter.
June 13, 2019
A gigantic quantity of summaries, listings and bad quality pictures hardly amount to a good book... This one is particularly tedious even for anyone interested in the subject. I'll give it one extra star for the good taste of the author.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews