Customer Reviews

Black and White and Blue: Adult Cinema From the Victorian Age to the VCR

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This book could have been a lot better if it was written in more of a point A to Point B list syle of writing or rather more as a time-line. Instead the author took a lot of litery license with this book and tried to write it in the style of a romanticized novel. There is a lot of big descriptive words that were unnecessary and obscured the information that was presented. Even though it had some good information most of it got lost in all of the unnecessary words. It wasn't a total waste of money but not the best read.

Dave Thompson has created the hypothetical keystone textbook to a hypothetical college class called "Historical analysis of American Adult Cinema." The book is thorough and scholarly with regards to its subject matter. Thompson quickly dispatches controversy by claiming that the study of blue cinema is not inherently dirty, as people are moved to view films of ill repute with the same ferocity as they would a picture of a sunset. With moral objections held at bay, Thompson focuses on detailing the milestones that spurred the development of the industry starting with the first moving pictures.

The jewel in the crown of the book is the interview with (what is now a grandmother) a starlet from stag films during the great depression. It was extra-ordinarily enlightening.

The books failures are it's near total omission of non-heterosexual liaisons in film history as well as the darker side of the material: snuff. The book is grounded in an American perspective with diversions into European film.

This a great book for true lovers of film, film history, or even human sexuality studies.

P.S. There are a couple (2 or 3) puns that Thompson had the power to avoid, but chose not to. Shame on him and his editors.

Dave Thompson's history of the stag film discusses the industry from the black and white silent era to the advent of the VCR in the 1970's. In a series of chronological chapters, he takes a scholarly look at an industry for which there is little mainstream archive or history. Many of the early films have disintegrated into vinegary-smelling dust, and the official records are few.

Before the age of adult movie theaters, reels were carried by traveling entrepreneurs who showed them in clubs, at bachelor parties, and in fraternity houses. Ends of the filmstrips would wear, so with time, two or more fragments of different movies would be spliced together. Plots were paper thin-who'd want to waste precious filmstock on plot? Traveling had an added bonus because the entrepreneurs were meeting new dancers, wannabe actresses, and even adventurous husband/wife pairs willing to help film new material.

When the films moved into adult movie houses, patrons had to leave the safety of their homes to sneak down dirty alleys to watch movies away from proper society. With the advent of the VCR in the 1970's, adult film could again be viewed in private. Thompson's book looks at both American and world cinema, and includes a 28-page filmography.