‘Like a Sex Time Machine’: The Rise of HD-Remastered Vintage Porn and Erotica
Story Excerpt: The decline of physical formats like DVDs and Blu-ray among mainstream entertainment consumers has paradoxically resulted in an unexpected feast of availability for cult, fringe and obscure movies, both via streaming and VOD services and specialty Blu-ray for collectors — a phenomenon that also includes the classics from the Golden Age of pornography (and erotica) in the 1970s and ’80s.
The trend resulted in odd finds like long-unavailable Walerian Borowczyk’s “Eurotica” classics being unexpectedly beamed into Apple TVs worldwide via Netflix, or a confusing collection of random Italian giallo or 1950s Japanese film noir being snuck into homes via Amazon Prime.
In the world of adult the digitally remastered resurrection of many titles that were only whispered about in the days of exclusively physical releases, resulted in mainstream VOD services like HotMovies striking deals with restoration houses and cult movies distributors, and indie powerhouses like Pink & White Productions’ streaming service PinkLabel.tv deputizing an experienced art house curator to buttress their LGBT erotic classics menu.
XBIZ spoke with HotMovies’ Mike Kennedy and PinkLabel.tv’s classics curator Jenni Olson about this trend, which is both important in historical/archival terms, and as a way to remonetize rights holders’ dormant IPs.
‘It’s Like History or a Time Machine’
HotMovies’ Mike Kennedy pointed out the pioneering work in getting these vintage titles out done by DistribPix, a film archive dedicated to independent restoration and distribution since the mid-1960s.
“We noticed DistribPix was probably the first company to start exploiting these vintage titles,” Kennedy explained. “They had some of the old classics, like Radley Metzger’s ’The Opening of Misty Beethoven’ (1976). They had it for broadcast, and then they did the whole Blu-ray thing.”
Back in the days when physical releases led distribution schedules, Kennedy noted, the VOD transfers started shaping up as an aftermarket. “What we’d do is we’d rip apart the entire DVD and release each little section of it — behind-the-scenes, the interviews — and then we would feature each as separate scenes,” Kennedy explains. “We got a really good response right away. These vintage titles weren’t your normal, run-of-the-mill ‘Big Boob Lesbian Stepsister 42,’ and I think people were really excited.”
Back in April, as XBIZ reported, HotMovies.com announced they were offering the exclusive VOD debut of remastered classic films from the “Golden Age of Porn.”
Kennedy admits he welcomed the remastered titles fondly into HotMovies for nostalgic reasons.
“Myself, I grew up watching the 1980s porn, and some of the 1970s,” he told XBIZ. “To see those classic movies so clear, that’s the thing,” he says about the crucially improved picture quality. “It’s like history, or a time machine. I love looking at the decor, and the furniture. It brings all that feeling, it really gives you an idea of what the reality was back then. You see the way it really was and not the way people portray now when they do a period piece.”
The new digital transfers’ image quality improvement, he said, is notable compared to not only the original VHS releases of some of these films, but also early-2000s DVD rips.
“We at HotMovies have been doing this for a long time,” Kennedy explained. “We started encoding a lot of stuff from VHS, even from Beta, and even from the DVD stuff, back in the day — and now you look at that stuff we put out on DVD 15 years ago and say, ‘That looks like crap.’”
“Compared with the way we are showing these porn classics on HotMovies right now,” he added, “what we got now it’s unbelievable.”
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