When I first saw the 70's stuff in the mid-80s, some of it was really grainy or poor-quality when transferred to tape. Some things were better, especially if they had been at least a little bit remastered. I don't want to sound like a broken record, but the poor quality went right along with the sleaziness and basic primeval sex of many of those films and added to their appeal for me.

Some of the other studios back then were Bijou Video (like the catalog), Jaguar, and P.M. Productions. I also recall one called "Old Reliable" that typically had straight guys being interviewed and then jerking off on camera. All of this product is a real contrast to the contrived stories that started appearing in the 80's. Some of the bareback and fetish studios (Treasure Island, Dick Wadd, etc.) have scenes or movies that recall the old style, but generally things have moved on.

There was also the increasing abundance of muscle-bound gym bodies. Porn moved on to show a standard of physical appearance that many or most guys couldn't realistically achieve. I suppose gay men have always had some degree of body-image and self-image issues, but it seems accentuated by the way first porn and then the wider culture emphasize more and more "perfect" bodies in advertising, TV, movies, etc.

Anyhow, Jack Wrangler was another big star who work in gay and straight movies then, later worked somewhat in theatre and especially as a producer for his wife, singer Margaret Whiting. Again, the Wikipedia article is fascinating. Wrangler always considered himself gay but not part of what he saw as the "gay lifestyle."

This is a really interesting discussion to me and I wish I had time to write more. There's a gold mine of people and topics here.

~ Bob

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Years ago a used bookstore in the area got in a collection of "vintage" gay magazines - as infopop mentions above - all muscle bound guys in tiny posing straps (so no dick showing) all oiled up and flexing.

It was amazing to me that this qualified as "porn" in the day (the magazines all had articles on exercise so they could say they were informational not porn) but for a gay guy this was all that was available.

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I fully agree with Bob here when he says that the poor quality of the 8mm gay flicks went so well along with the expected sleaziness of the genre. I am actually not sure that I would want to view them in a sort of remastered version.

John has mentioned all the magazines with oiled, super-athletic bodies that embodied t the aesthetics of the 70's. The east Med got very few of those in our time and day. But the gay guys had some limited access to the throve of the pre-WWII porn which only sometimes showed a 'strappin' fellow' here and there.

Every dude I have ever talked to about the gay porn 'loved it'. But the porn was neither cheap nor universally and easily available. The societal environment was however, mostly very sexually positive and permissive. Nude beaches used to be an absolute default for ALL the young guys. Nightly skinny dipping was a most usual thing you and your buddies could do. You wear your best bud's shirt or underwear on all kinds of pretexts, and he wore yours.

KD

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When watching the early gay porn movies the "dirtiness" was part of the fun - the "clean" sex was M/F - when you see those old gay movies it is sneaking out into the woods - doing it in a bathroom - it had the added element of being "bad boys" and doing something that is "wrong". Which just added to the fantasy because as kids we would sneak into the woods....




I don't know much history of gay porn - but looking at old magazines on line, in adult bookstores and the like you can see that suddenly in the 70's there was a breakthrough - they changed from guys posing - dicks soft or covered - to full on porn. So I am assuming some "decency" law here in the US was struck down and the publishers were no longer in fear of arrest just for distributing the magazine. Many of the old posing magazines would also have a section where you could buy "20 naked photographs of Steve for only $10 - sold as collector to collector only" - so they had used that to sidestep the law for awhile.

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I'm not a lawyer but I know enough (B.A. in PoliSci, lawyers in family, etc.) to say "it's complicated." First off, there are separate rules for Federal and State purposes, and States or their localities might ban (or have banned) things that were permitted in other states or in interstate commerce.

Summarizing a lot from Wikipedia again, there was a decision in 1957, Roth v. United States which established the test for obscenity being based on "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest." That was both clarified and muddied in 1964's Jacobellis v. Ohio which had four different majority opinions and two different dissenting ones. The 1960s were such confusing times, weren't they?

Anyhow, that was the case where the idea of an obscene work being "utterly without redeeming social importance" came from, which led some pornographers to include or at least to claim that they were making observations about "free love" or the Vietnam War or whatever. Justice Stewart also famously wrote words to the effect that he couldn't define obscenity but "I know it when I see it." I think this is the decision that opened the floodgates. Starting in the 1960s you started to see more erotic movies and such released as "art films" or low-brow comedy or satire, especially European imports. This was also when Russ Myer was getting into the height of his low-budget "sexploitation" films.

By later in the decade mainstream US films were being a lot more blunt about sex ("Valley of the Dolls," "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," "Easy Rider," were just a few) and porn was pushing the edges even more. Myer eventually made the satirical musical "Beyond The Valley of the Dolls," a non-sequel that was disavowed by author Jacqueline Susann - she sued him - which was initially rated "X" and years later changed to "NC-17."

1973's Miller v. California set a three-tiered obscenity test "(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."

This appears to be the general standard still followed in the US. However, how it's applied and enforced varies a lot depending on people and circumstances. Reagan's Attorney General Edwin Meese had a famous anti-pornography campaign which he announced, if I remember correctly, standing in front of a bare-bosomed female "Spirit of Justice" statue.

I could go on, I tend to write too much, but I need to move to my "real" work with CFS's content and programming, not just indulging my own curiosity and tendency to research things.

~ Bob

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Yup. Doing something wrong and forbidden (at that time) AND getting away with it was a point of major attraction.

A few dudes understood that sticking by the book only and playing by the rules alone was not going to get them very far in life, careers, sex or anywhere else in particular. Those who wrote the rules certainly had THEIR best interest in mind and not OURS.

So, to some extent, m2m sex was disruptive, system-challenging, and a training for the young guys to learn how to challenge the systemic order of things.

KD

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The doing something you were not supposed to do was a major factor when we were younger and just starting to experiment.

"You show me yours, I'll show you mine", playing doctor, truth or dare - a big part of the appeal was we knew it was "wrong". We were being rebels - even if it was not much of a rebellion. We were doing something that only adults were "supposed" to do.

It is part of growing up and testing your own independence. The fact it involved being naked was just an added plus!

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A bit later on, in college, the dudes knew very well that what we were doing (m2m sex) was 'wrong' from the societal vista.

To some, this may have been an expression of the rebellion, if you will.

For the others, this was yet another great example how rules, and prevailing views had to be challenged. How you, too, were going to tilt the game into your favor, away from those who had rigged it in the first place to serve their interests.

Evolutionary theory says that humanity has been endowed with higher intelligence for the purpose of partner selection. Landing a sexual partner, keeping your underground coterie of like-minded men going, AND making sure that you did not end up being caught in those days certainly did NOT amount to rocket science. But for an 18 y.o. this used to be a game of very high stakes that required some planning, thinking and lots of action in-between. Typically, the dudes who played with fire got burnt now and then. But ALL of them learnt how to play...

KD

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