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The following review moves into uncharted cine-buff territory: adult cinema from the 70’s —a genre that is worth closer appreciation and is receiving just that from the DVD label, Vinegar Syndrome. Thanks to this enterprising US DVD company, many adult titles from the mid to late 70’s are being rescued and preserved as cultural artefacts —and why not— as if Criterion were moonlighting on an undisclosed project. The care bestowed on some of these titles is pleasantly surprising; when one considers that many of these films probably only exist as faded, scratched 16mm prints, it is quite astonishing to see the love and care taken on the restoration process. The company is run by Joe Rubin who has a love for exploitation films of all sorts from the 70’s. 1 The Vinegar Syndrome roster is quite considerable and growing with each passing month.
Vinegar Syndrome has various sub-categories to slot their DVD releases into. In this case, it is the Peekarama-Big 2-Unit Show, which mimics the Times Square grind house experience: a double feature of hot, sweaty, and well produced films. The filmmakers who were producing such films in the 70’s had far more flair than much of the rubbish being sold as exploitation fare today, which has very little personality or sense of genre history.
The first title off a double-feature DVD is Baby Rosemary from 1976, directed by John Hayes under his nom de guerre, Howard Perkins; using a pseudonym was a common practice for filmmakers working in the adult film industry in those days since a surprising number of them also worked in mainstream film. Hayes has quite a history behind him as an exploitation filmmaker, and has the distinction of having one of his early short films, The Kiss (1959), nominated for an Academy Award. He also directed an exploitation favorite of most horror connoisseurs: Grave Of The Vampire (1974). His history as a filmmaker is well worth perusing,...