实验爱神 Xperimental eros

King of Porn, dir. Jeff Krulik. Any compilation that includes a Krulik documentary automatically makes that project a home run. Here, the legendary filmmaker takes his customary deadpan style to illuminate the collection of Ralph Wittington, whose stacks and stacks of porno videos, magazines and one-sheets have totally taken over his entire house and is so impressive that the Museum of Modern Art has agreed to take it upon Wittington’s death. Krulik makes no commentary or judgments for or against Wittington’s hobby, which would be easy to do, and just lets the man show his most prized possessions in a purely straightforward manner. We never learn how he got into the porn collecting game, why he does it or even if he actually enjoys watching pornography, but somehow the less we know the more fascinating Wittington becomes. This is clearly the best film on the DVD, but how could it not be?
　　Blue Movie, dir. Mark Street. This is the first of the found footage films and Street takes extreme close-ups of women’s faces from old stag movies and literally turns this into a “blue” movie with some blue color overlays. Like King of Porn, we get an intense look at these subjects without ever really knowing who they are or how and why they got into their situation. The women are all beautiful and happy appearing, but the end result is very sad and serves to show just how hollow actual pornography is at its core.
　　Sneakin’ and Peekin’, dirs. Tom Palazzolo and Mark Rance. This is a bizarre documentary from the ’70s that, again, gives little in the way of explanation. Palazzolo and Rance sneak into the woods and you figure the set-up is that they’re going to surreptitiously film a nudist colony. However, what they shoot is even more strange than that. At some unnamed event, all the men are clothed while women walk around buck naked and eventually compete in some sort of competition. The gals all walk in a circle behind a rope, which gives the appearance that they’re being herded like animals into the slaughterhouse. Meanwhile, dozens of dirty old men photograph them while Palazzolo and Rance sheepishly ask for specific poses. On the one hand, you want to know what the competition is and why these women parade around like slabs of meat, but since we don’t, it all seems the more horrifying.
　　Removed, dir. Naomi Uman. This is a brilliant found footage manipulation in which Uman has taken an old European porn film — soft-core, I think, and one of the kinds that gave cable channel Cinemax the nickname Skinemax — and removed the female characters and replaced them with blobs of white light. Each of the scenes Uman has chosen deal with voyeurism. Also, all the chicks are groped and fondled both by themselves and headless males. There’s never any penetration. But as they watch and get turned on, we watch and are meant to become aroused simply by the sounds of dirty talk and groaning.
　　The Influence of Ocular Light Perception on Metabolism in Man and Animal, dirs. Thomas Draschan and Stella Friedrichs. This is the least “sexiest” film in the collection that only makes oblique references to sex. Again, this is mostly found footage, but most of it is fairly mundane — people swimming, scientific experiments, etc. It only all takes on sexual connotations with brief, almost unrecognizable images of erotic imagery.
　　The Color of Love, dir. Peggy Ahwesh. Like Blue Movie, Ahwesh takes a stag film and manipulates the imagery. But this time the sex is way more graphic as two lesbians make love while straddling a blood-smeared male corpse. What’s already a strange premise for an erotic film — I’m as