The Grindhouse Era, Part 10: Getting Harder

Scoop's note:

The approach of the 70s sounded the death knell for a grindhouse industry pressured from all sides.

• Mainstream Hollywood movies were adding more and more nudity, taking away what had been the unique selling proposition of the grindhouse offerings.
  
• Risque foreign films were filling up some of the small theaters that used to specialize exclusively in grindhouse products.
• Hard core porn was becoming more accessible and acceptable in society, and was thus taking over other grindhouse theaters.
• The real estate boom was destroying the drive-in theater market, as more and more locations found that the sale value of their large tracts of land was greater than any reasonable forecast of future operating revenues from outdoor theaters.

Lacking the talent, production values and wide mainstream appeal of Hollywood or European films, and lacking the titillation of real porn, grindhouse film makers struggled to find a niche. The grindhouse film makers took various actions to defend their markets. Brainscan's article below explains one strategy they tried - to create a "harder" product than Hollywood could offer while maintaining a certain respectability and legal status still generally denied to hard core films.

Fuzz (1970) is as hard a softcore movie as you will ever find. It is filled with porn stars, including John Holmes, some prominent cross-over stars (Maria Arnold), a grindhouse legend (Uschi Digard) and a cult goddess (Neola Graef) who would sometimes use the name, Malta. I have been to Malta and found it filled with filled with gorgeous women, but not many blondes. No matter.

Maria Arnold is in a pair of sport-humping scenes, one indoor and the other out in the sun.

Maria and Neola and Uschi sit around a fire toasting marshmallows - that is not a euphemism for a libidinous act - and then cheer on John Holmes as he pretends to do the double-backed monster with some other woman.

 

One highlight of the movie has Neola and Uschi getting very friendly with one another.

Story goes the two actresses really were friends, and they appeared together in what seems to be a dozen movies.  Neola was only 18 or 19 years old at this time; she seemed to know what guys wanted to see and she seemed to have no problem at all giving it to them.

The other highlight has Uschi and John Holmes pairing up for a session of softcore coupling.