Darkness behind the porn furore

Mario Van Peebles (right) plays his father Melvin, who made the groundbreaking Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song

It is difficult to imagine two films now that would cause such public furore as Deep Throat and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song did in 1972, when they were both made.

The former was a comedic porno movie which caused Harry Reems, its male lead, to be imprisoned, the latter a thriller which dared to present a black American cop-killer from the ghetto as a hero.

Despite, and probably because of, the outrage, both gathered heaps of money; although the celebrated porno movie made nothing for either filmmakers or stars, and a great deal for the Mob. These two documentaries about the cult hits tell it more or less like it was and make fascinating watching.

Inside Deep Throat has a moral ambivalence about it. It details both the appalling treatment accorded to Reems and the ridiculous complaints from the Nixon era's moral majority as well as the more intelligent feminist complaints, later taken up by Linda Lovelace, the female star, about the systematic degradation of women.

In the original, Lovelace plays a young woman with a clitoris in her throat who had to resort to fellatio to satisfy herself.

What followed was a spate of "adult" movies, such as Behind the Green Door and The Senator's Daughter, which in the States that allowed them, screened to an audience beyond the dirty-mac brigade. And then came the dispiriting gynaecological porno videos which are produced in their thousands today.

Directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato clearly take the side of the film. The roll call is long of those defending the movie as a sentinel against the repression that suggested that women had no right to enjoy sex as much as men.

It includes contributions from Norman Mailer, Helen Gurley Brown, Dick Cavett, Larry Flynt, Erica Jong and Wes Craven (who initially made some pornos). Gerard Damiano, Deep Throat's director, claims it made him feel like a real independent filmmaker.

But he wasn't really independent, since the Mob took more than the cream off the top. The film was made for $25,000 of Mafia money and made $600 million for them.

Baadasssss!, Mario Van Peebles's tribute to his father Melvin, who made Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, may be a bit more of a cinematic mess than Inside Deep Throat - but then so was the original, and you can't help liking both.

It recounts the story of the indefatigable black American director who, though turned down by major studios and independent financiers alike, moved heaven and earth to make his ground-breaking film that stood to bankrupt him.

He also lost the sight of an eye during the shoot, got the clap and didn't behave very well towards his young son (Mario).

Mario plays him with an affection which doesn't preclude a less than misty-eyed view of the man, and his film sums up the time of Woodstock, the Vietnam War and the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King to good purpose.

Basdasssss Song, about a sex worker who kills two racist policemen and goes on the run, was shot in 19 days with bits and pieces of a budget, partly gathered from Bill Cosby, and finally taken up by the Black Panthers.

Peebles had conned two Jewish brothers (Manny and Mort Goldberg, both marvellously played by Len Lesser) who owned downtown theatres to run it in the first place. It went on to outgross Love Story and pave the way for Blaxploitation.

Mario's tribute is funny, energetic and characterful, even if it isn't exactly smooth as silk. And its rousing climax of triumph over adversity would satisfy even the Hollywood money men who consistently refused Melvin's original blandishments.

Both documentaries celebrate a time when movies could still make a difference, for good or bad. They show us a slice of cultural history that now seems a good deal further away than a mere 30 years or so.

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