When I conducted a little Q & A with “Rock ‘n’ Roll Frankenstein” director Brian O’Hara a while back, I came to discover that he had spent his early filmmaking years editing porn in the 80s – that means he was actually cutting film and dealing with flicks that had stories…somewhat – for a man named Phil Prince at Avon Productions. What I didn’t know, and have only very recently come to learn, is that during his down time, Brian shot interview footage with Prince and several of his cohorts. Cutting this footage together with archival porn and outtakes from the Avon vault, the result is this 20 minute documentary on Phil Prince and the violent porn of yesteryear.
In the 70s and 80s, when porn was called hardcore it actually meant something. There was a lot of violence back then with themes of rape, torture, sexual deviance and general misanthropy making their way into just more than specialty films, but your run-of-the-mill skin flicks as well. These films were rough. They were the real hardcore. Brian O’Hara grants us a behind the scenes look at the making of several of these films that play like jerk-off material for the criminally deranged. There’s no real insight into why exactly so many of these films were so mean back then. One will just have to gather that it’s the mainstreaming of porn that has taken the teeth out of it. Hollywood-like egos see porn stars being treated like household name celebrities and not pieces of meat like they used to. To me, porn was way more interesting back in the good old days. The good old days when the films were dirty and dangerous and starred people that didn’t look like they bathed frequently and were churned out by sleaze merchants such as Phil Prince, who shares a few of his philosophies on porn in O’Hara’s film, all the while maintaining the stance – “Hey, I’m just trying to make a living here.” The guy really doesn’t have anything profound to say, but he is quite the character. Lovers of vintage filth may just adopt him as their new hero, while ogling the treasure trove of classic porn footage O’Hara has included in this documentary.
