Destricted

Destricted is a collection of short films linked by a common theme of sex. Like Shortbus, Lie With Me and 9 Songs, the film has achieved notoriety for its inclusion of unsimulated, graphic sexual activity. Ostensibly investigating the realms of art and pornography, the film has been exhibited at the Tate Modern in London, followed by a number of other events, and is now on UK DVD release with an 18 certificate. The DVD was released in a limited edition silver vacuum-pack on September the 25th, 2006.

The classification of the film as an 18 in the UK is itself an indication of the content of the film, a reflection of its intent to present itself as art rather than pornography, for which a Restricted 18 classification would be more suitable. A US release is, of course, unlikely.

The films:

Balkan Erotic Epic / Marina Abramović

Almost educational, this film features old rituals from the Balkans. Each ritual is introduced and followed by a short film section or animation showing the mechanics of the ritual. We see a variety of women leaping about in the rain, trying to get the raindrops to fall on their labia. A field of men, viewed from above, fuck the ground to ensure its fertility for the coming year; a rather bizarre sight if truth be told. Three sets of men in traditional Balkan dress stand proudly before us as a Balkan folk song is played over the top, the subtitles looking strangely incongrous beneath their erect penises which protrude from their flies. The animation of a Balkan housewife removing a dead fish from her vagina is surreal, particularly when she grinds it up to brew a love-potion-esque mug of tea, but not as alarming as the one where she wipes her vaginal secretions on her son's face to bless him for a journey.

Hoist / Matthew Barney

Made up in greens and browns, with shredded leaves and moss surrounding it, a penis slowly becomes erect over a period of minutes. For the first few minutes it is unclear what is happening; it seems as though some strange, slug-like creature is writhing slowly over a forest floor. A large machine is then introduced to us, and workmen attach it to a crane so that its wheels might be hoisted from the ground. Rumbling into action, the camera slowly zooms beneath to the drive shaft of this massive vehicle. There, initially stroking it before raising himself to rub his erect penis against the wax-coated, spinning shaft, is a man. Presumably the owner of the penis at the beginning of the film, he is covered in leaves, dirt and other plant matter. A large gourd hangs from his anus and there is a similar protrusion from his mouth. He continues to rub his penis against the drive shaft as the camera zooms and pans, slowly, occasionally showing the edges of the massive, lazily spinning wheels of the machine. Eventually, after drawing back his foreskin, the man achieves orgasm and ejaculates. We zoom back out from the belly of the machine, past the spinning wheels, and the film ends.

Sync / Marco Brambila

Short, but clever. Taking hundreds of scenes from different pornographic films, the director cuts it all together with a frantic drum track to make a new film. The scenes are chosen and cut together so that it looks like one shot, but with the actors' faces, legs, buttocks and genitals changing in a constant blur. It produces a kind of generic porn film and serves to show that there truly is only so many ways you can fit people together.

Impaled / Larry Clark

One of the more intellectually fascinating pieces. A series of young men appear and are asked a variety of questions about their attitude to sex. It becomes apparent that they are auditioning to take part in a porn film, although the interview also reveals their own attitude to sex as a generation that has grown up with readily available porn. It's fascinating, for example, to find out that each of the men believes it is important to ejaculate outside the vagina, or to note the utterly naive expectations of various aspects of sex. One young man is chosen, and at this point he is asked to interview and choose from a range of female porn stars. He chooses an older woman who is willing to have anal sex with him. She performs fellatio on him, and they have vaginal and anal sex. He eventually ejaculates, following a slight accident during the anal portion of the activity. Most people realise that if you're going to try that you're inevitably going to notice something brown one day. Of course, in the glorious world of pornography such things never happen, and the revulsion on the young man's face is wickedly joyful to behold. A sad film, actually, and probably the best of the bunch.

We Fuck Alone / Gaspar Noé

Strobe lit for about twenty minutes, I'm afraid. Two people in separate rooms masturbate while watching the same piece of pornography. A young man with a bizarrely Hitler-esque haircut masturbates and fucks a sex doll before fucking its mouth with a handgun of some kind whilst ejaculating into its vagina. The woman uses soft toys to stimulate herself. Every now and then we zoom into the television, through the pornography which forms a reflection of the solo sex act, and back out into the other room. The message, one presumes, is that sex without love is merely masturbation using another human. Either that or Gaspar Noé is actually mad. (See Irreversible for further evidence of this, but take care to check for some further details before committing yourself; it's violent.)

House Call / Richard Prince

An old porn film with the soundtrack replaced with strange, industrial-tinged electronica. The film has been produced by recording a television showing the porn video. You can't see the edges of the screen, but the pattern of phosphor dots is clearly visible, making a grainy, washed-out image. It's strangely clinical to watch, and not even slightly erotic. Although, come to think of it, not one of the videos has been remotely erotic so far. Plenty of genitalia and nudity, but not a lot of eroticism. Perhaps that's the point.

Death Valley / Sam Taylor-Wood

We pan slowly across a desert scene. A man appears, walks nearer to the camera and removes his shirt. He opens his jeans, pulls them down to his thighs, kneels and masturbates. A few minutes later he uses his t-shirt to lean his elbow on and continues to masturbate, keeping his body off the ground by supporting it on his knees and elbow. He kneels up, wanks some more, props himself up again and eventually ejaculates onto the desert floor. And then it ends. If you like men then I suspect this is the nearest you'll get to erotic, and I'm not sure why this isn't just pornography - it's a man wanking in front of a camera. Still, there you go. Art needs no explanation...

Sources: Do visit the imdb for more information. Someone there has also gone through the films one by one for you. There's not a lot of information on Wikipedia, but you can always pop over to the Destricted website for more info.

The Villain - Trick Trick

"I don't want your faggot money any goddam way..."

The Villain is an extremely exclusive album by US rapper Trick Trick, probably best known for his work with Eminem, since his solo efforts don't appear to have troubled the charts very much at all. Anyway, what makes it exclusive is that you're not to buy it if you're gay. Or lesbian. Or even bi-curious. I'm not sure if wanking off in the shower with the rest of the football team after soccer practice would preclude you from purchasing, but it's probably best to err on the side of caution, particularly if you looked to the left or right to see how your neighbour was getting on. Similarly, if you've ever thought a same-sex friend to be vaguely ripped, or if, indeed, you use the word 'ripped' seriously, you'd best leave this album on the shelf: Trick Trick don't want your dirty faggot cash. Okay?

"Every time you turn on the TV, that sissy shit is on, and they act like it's fucking okay."

'Dyke bitches' Ellen Degeneres and Rosie O'Donnell come off particularly well on the album, apparently, although Mr Trick Trick did want to go on the record about all this, telling All Hip Hop that the album wasn't really aimed at a homosexual audience. Whether his co-performers Eminem, Ice Cube and 50 Cent share Trick's views is beyond the scope of the interview, sadly.

"The world is changing for the worst when shit like that happens. And I address that issue. I address it as hard as hell"

So, yeah - if you are a bit poofy, then watch out. Mr Trick's determined to send a 'scud missile right through (your) fucking cruise ship'. Oh - full disclosure time: I'm slightly camp at times, so I've not been allowed to listen to this album. Instead, I got my bitches together, we went on a bit of a cruise around town looking for a real trick. The treat is optional!

"He goes both ways / Either way he's gay / Ain't no other way to say / He's a fucking faggot so I'm lettin' off my AK / Bust 'em in his forehead / He ain't worth lettin' live / A man and man shouldn't raise another man's kids!"

The Villain was released by Koch on the 29th of September, 2008. It doesn't come with free bullets, so if you do want to shoot some faggots as suggested above, bear in mind that will cost extra. The eloquent, achingly poetic quotes are by Christian Mathis, better known as portly rapper Trick Trick. And oh, is it just me or the fact that he's called 'trick', he's released on 'koch' records and he's got an obsession with being gay lead you to think that he might just be a screaming bender, trapped in the tortured closet of his own internalised homophobia... oh, okay; just me then.

Original interview here. Album available here. Dustbins available here.

Bollocks

Bollocks, at its plainest, means testicles, and thus makes a perfect expletive. That said, on a more complex level it can also refer to utter destruction. Utter destruction, yes: the kind of utter destruction you only get when you've left your nan alone with the DVD player and she's pressed all the buttons on the remote trying to get the tape to rewind. It's a simple yet pleasing word, favourable to the tongue with a pleasant aftertaste, and one which is well known to anyone of British origin, though recently it's made a pleasing bid for world domination. Online dictionaries, however, will politely refer you to the word bollix, for which www.thesaurus.com provides alternatives such as blunder, botch, flounder, mistake or the more appropriate muff up. In Britain, you see, bollocks fits perfectly alongside every other sexual swear word ever invented, solely because it refers to balls but also because it can be used in a whole range of situations. This is the acid test of swear-words, and bollocks passes with flying colours.

How? Well, despite this simple definition, bollocks (like any other swear word) has a whole plethora of obscure meanings. Just like shit, in fact: everyone's favourite brown word. Shit can mean the worst of the worst ("These cornflakes are shit!") or the best thing ever ("This oregano, Brian, is the good shit"). Fuck works in just the same way, maybe to an even greater degree.

It comes as little surprise to find, then, that bollocks is also possessed of this marvellous ability, though with one proviso. For bollocks to mean good it is usually, though not always, accompanied by the word dog's. The dog's bollocks apparently arrived on the scene in 1989, though where and how remains entirely unclear. Viz magazine, in particular, had a penchant for the phrase, but then anything even vaguely smutty was a magnet for the Viz crowd. Incidentally, apostrophe freaks will note that it is a particular canine's testicles which are undergoing scrotal scrutiny, and not the general testicular region of all dog-kind, though nobody stops for an instant to imagine why the balls of a dog would be quite so exciting. (Perhaps it's those afternoons of fun round at Auntie Maud's, flicking the prominent testicles of her jack russell just to hear it yelp. I know it is in my case...)

Things probably came to a head with Sex Pistols' 1977 release of Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols, which sparked various courtroom-related shenanigans concerning the use of the word bollocks. Legal action took place under the Indecent Advertisements Act of 1889 after the manager of a Virgin Record Shop in Nottingham was forced to dismantle his display of Sex Pistols' posters and subsequently arrested. Arriving in court, the whole case revolved around the use of the word bollocks, an alleged obscenity. The issue was eventually sorted out by Richard Branson, who called upon James Kingsley, a professor of linguistics and a former priest, to testify that the word bollocks was eighteenth century slang and entirely acceptable. He explained the bollock was an Anglo-Saxon word meaning 'small ball'. Additionally, bollock was used as a slang term for clergymen, indicating their reputation for talking nonsense, or a load of old balls. Some things never change.

Since that time the use of the word bollocks has become as much part of British life as fish and chips, roast beef and mushy peas. Anyone now, at approximately quarter to eleven in the Dog And Duck on a Friday night, espousing their theory of world domination with gay abandon, can expect several shouts of Bollocks! and, in fact, will appreciate it. Such is British culture.

Memorably, Jasper Carrott recalls in one of his books, how there was a time where the whole of North America were blissfully unaware of the word bollocks. A friend, moving to the United States, took the opportunity to have a licence plate which displayed the word 'bollocks' in a slightly bastardised form. Upon, one day, being asked its meaning he collapsed into laughter and informed the enquiree that it meant 'spots'. Apparently, Jasper was with the unfortunate lady when she marched into Boots, pointed to a large zit on her chin and asked for some cream to rub into her bollocks. With regard to the veracity of this story, curiously enough the word 'bollocks' springs to mind...

Erosmachine - Jean Michel Jarre

Erosmachine is the 2:54 b-side to Jean Michel Jarre's 1971 7" single 'La Cage'. Like La Cage, it is an experimental track based around manipulated tape loops and acoustically-altered analogue recordings. In a later interview around the time of Chronologie, Jarre recalls measuring and splicing the magnetic tape to create the background rhythm track, composed of clanging metal and twanged steel rulers, forming a mechanical, machine-like background. The same rhythmic pastiche is re-used in Chronologie Part II as a representation of time passing, this time created with far less effort using a computer.

Erosmachine is a disturbing track, as over these mechanical twangings and grindings is the breathy sound of a woman, gasping and moaning, and electronic chords straight out of early David Cronenberg soundtracks. It's like the theme song to some mad, sexual horror film - the rape scene from 'Tetsuo: The Iron Man', or those penetrating cables from a H.R. Giger painting. And then, at the end, the screaming starts...

Sex Dwarf - Soft Cell

Sex Dwarf is a track by Soft Cell, and let's hope you were aware of that when you clicked on this, lest you turn out to be curious about actual dwarves and wish to see them in a range of sexual situations. Actually, if that is the case, you'd be better off hunting on Google Images, or some other specialist site. However, while you contemplate this, consider the real truth, which may or may not be a revelation to you: in the mid-eighties the band Soft Cell, comprising Marc Almond and Dave Ball, produced a track called Sex Dwarf with a video so awful, so disgusting, so downright perverse, that the police seized the master tapes and burnt them. That's right - we're talking the levels of perversion that get your master tapes seized.

Take a pause. Do a little research... it's true.

Really, it's true. Mind you, so is the fact that most of it would be considered quite tame if you accidentally spliced it into the middle of 'Saw IV'. There's a sobering moment, if ever I saw one.

So let's be calm for just a while. Let me tell you about Soft Cell's first album, a joyously sleazy affair called Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. You may wish to consider exactly where they thought they were going with that title. It's hardly demure, and you wouldn't expect a coy glance and a blush to follow once you'd placed the pristine black plastic twelve inch on your turntable. Coy glances, as predicted, failed to follow...

'Frustration', the first track, was the story of a man doomed to a life of middle-aged hell, and the video seemed to centre about the poor bastard's death, with Marc Almond doing everything apart from dancing on the coffin. No, wait - he more-or-less did that, actually. Literally. 'Tainted Love', the second, was destined to become Soft Cell's most celebrated song, despite (or perhaps because of) the peculiar 'Roman Cricket' visuals (complete with 'Please God Make Marc Almond's Skirt Longer' moment), but the following tracks: Seedy Films and Youth, were far more indicative of the depths Soft Cell were determined to plumb. All credit to them, in my book, and do take a breath now, ready to fill it in later, because this is where 'Sex Dwarf' clunk-clicked. 'Entertain Me', the follow-up, was sardonic, but 'Chips On My Shoulder' redeemed it all, despite the over-acting, and 'Bedsitter' is amazing, even more amazing than 'Secret Life' and the celebrated (which means covered by David Gray) 'Say Hello, Wave Goodbye'.

Soft Cell was doomed to a life of sleaze: right from the moment Marc Almond tarted himself up with black eyeliner and Dave Ball set the synths up inside a cage for their very first Top Of The Pops appearance, their fate was sealed. 'There's more to Soft Cell than sleaze,' claimed Marc Almond in one interview. A page later, he was discussing the Marquis De Sade and 120 Days Of Sodom. It's in the sleeve notes of the 2005 live release, if you want to confirm it for yourself. But let's get back to the video, controversial as it is:

The video begins with a starlet chained to a table. The chains are gold, because no expense has been spared. Marc Almond is stroking her, all over. Yes, all over - breasts included. Naked, dirty, sexy breasts. Which, considering the Soft Cell audience is mostly gay, simply makes us admire Marc for doing what must be done. Deep breaths and stroke...

At this point, Dave Ball, who usually (wisely) constrains his efforts to pressing bits of synthesisers, brings a meat cleaver down on a wooden crate. It's really quite ironic that it's surprising when a dwarf leaps out, dressed in some sort of sadomasochistic leather outfit, including a massively prodigious jockstrap. We are, if I may side with the viewer for a moment, utterly shocked. It's a dwarf in a jockstrap. What's worse, he's going to indulge in sexual relations with anyone in sight, and this is where it all goes horribly odd...

I have failed to mention the meat carcasses. You see, the meat cleaver fits in with Dave Ball's outfit, as he is inexplicably dressed as a butcher. In fact there are approximately six meat carcasses hanging enticingly from the ceiling. They are props, and they are clearly there to be used. Dave Ball has already been seen playing a chainsaw with a violin bow, and it's hardly suprising when he begins running about using the chainsaw to cut pieces of meat from the carcasses.

Breathe. Let's take stock. As we speak, Marc Almond is cavorting in raw meat with a scantily clad tart, while Dave Ball chainsaws raw meat into smaller chunks. Try to imagine why the British police impounded the tapes and burnt them as we continue with the show...

There are a few more semi-naked men, and now Marc's stripped off his black vest and is clad only in a jockstrap, too. There are women about, also dressed in leather, and - oh, lots of blood, bits of meat, the odd bit of offal. You see, the chainsaw's spitting blood about as it carves up the carcass, and Marc Almond appears to be smearing the blood over his body as he gropes at his jockstrap-clad crotch.

Meanwhile, there's a be-wigged woman with a rib of beef on her tits, and a dwarf with a liver (which isn't, technically speaking, his) humping her. The blood's everywhere, and it's true - at one point Marc Almond pulls the elastic of his jock strap rather lower than you'd want him to and rubs the blood into what must surely be his pubic hair. By the end of the video we see a panting Marc Almond leering through an orgy of blood, beef and cheap tarts to giggle 'That's nice!' as something white and horrible drips from his lip.

A little history. Tacked onto the end of Tainted Love in the official video collection, Marc Almond reads dramatically from a tabloid newspaper. Here's what he reads:

"Soft Cell have made a pornographic video as outrageous as those shown in London's Soho. Lead singer Marc Almond is shown masturbating through his clothes and rubbing raw meat into naked women. He strips down to only a jockstrap and appears with a dwarf in the same attire.'

People familiar with the history of the band, and of Some Bizzare records boss will be delighted to watch as an obviously drugged-up Stevo incisively comments 'Yes. Yes. Analysation of people!'. The aforementioned DVD, incidentally, does not feature the original Sex Dwarf video, instead there's a be-suited Marc Almond conducting some nicely-dressed dwarves with a baton; it's all rather sarcastic, really.

I expect you want to watch it now, right? Well, it was here, but sadly it seems to have vanished again. Good luck finding a copy; it's been the holy grail of Soft Cell fans for years, and while it hardly compares to some of the more shocking videos available on the internet now, remember that the whole sleazy affair took place right in the middle of the Thatcher years, when homosexuals were threatening the very fabric of society with their evil, evil agenda. Dwarves, raw meat, gold chains and jockstraps probably didn't help the cause much...

Penis Landscape

Penis Landscape is the affectionate name for work 219: Landscape XX, by the Swiss artist H.R. Giger. Created in 1973 from airbrushed acrylic on paper covered wood, the original piece measures 70 x 100 centimetres. To those who have seen Giger's work before, it comes as no surprise that of the two names, Penis Landscape is the more appropriate.

You are familiar with Giger's work, by the way. It's almost impossible not to have heard of Alien, lovingly designed by Giger with an appropriately phallic head. Species, too, provided an opportunity for grotesque sexual imagery, and the idea of loving Giger's work has become something like a mark of the elite. William Gibson mentions Giger's paintings of New York in Idoru, and the underworld of the internet is almost smothered in Giger-esque imagery. Failing that, album covers by Emerson, Lake And Palmer, as well as artwork involving Debbie Harry may well have come to your attention.

Landscape XX, however, remained entirely unremarkable for a decade until the Dead Kennedys chose to feature it on the sleeve of their 1985 album Frankenchrist. At this point, work 219 became of the utmost importance to a San Francisco court. In 1986, the painting, and various newspaper clippings associated with it were scrutinized fiercely. Eventually, the image was declared to be art, and therefore not pornography, after a period in which the album remained unavailable.

The image itself is as visually stunning as all Giger's work. It features six whole penises and three half-penises, their base and scrotum cruelly snipped off by the image's edge. The head of each penis is inserted into a vagina, though at least one appears to be on the verge of slipping out, and only one has been prudent enough to use protection. All but the buttocks and genitalia of each individual are hidden by that peculiar, scummy surface Giger seems to love painting, leaving a repeating pattern of penis, vagina, penis, vagina, which you realise could easily continue on to infinity. The style fits with Giger's obsession at the time, vast repeating landscapes of tiled images, always with a grotesque or shocking theme: the heads of diseased infants wail at us from the image, or a cracked metal skull, held secure with wires, is drilled from above by a sinister and filthy mechanism.

We may be led to ask why. Aside from the standard answer, confirmed by court ruling (It's art!), this painting is merely part of Giger's usual theme-based work. From the earliest moments in his career Giger has focused on specific themes, whether it is the Passagen series - stark images of dimly-lit passageways, many blocked in some way by curious yet simple metal devices - or the Erotomechanics portfolio: images of sex between things which are part metal, part flesh, sometimes part of the landscape, all seen from strange viewpoints - either unbearably close up or so distant that the act itself becomes simply a part of the surroundings. This is what the landscape series achieve: these infinite planes of image simply serve to reduce their contents to near-meaninglessness. Their purpose, save for existing in their own right as 'art', seems merely to entertain or, if we read Giger's accompanying words in his book ARh+, to horrify.

Felching

The Encyclopedia Of Unusual Sex Practices has surprisingly little to say on the subject of felching. The word felch refers, author Brenda Love tells us, 'to either stuffing animals into the anus or vagina, or to a partner sucking semen out of one of these orifices. For such a well-known, if not necessarily well-respected, tome to have so little to say is almost unthinkable, and thus we encounter the problem: how to define felching.

A Form Of Bestiality, Or Merely Oral Retrieval Of Semen?


Those who dare to define felching are neatly divided by its meaning. A quick search outside e2 provides a whole wealth of resources claiming to know what felching is, and one or two who claim to perform it on a regular basis. For proponents of the semen-drinking faction tips involving drinking straws abound, and only one source goes as far as to point out the risks involved where an exchange of bodily fluids takes place. Those who prefer to think of felching as a sexual act involving small animals quickly descend into urban myth, exchanging the same story of a gerbil-related mishap that it is claimed appeared in the LA Times. The story never appeared, and variants can be found on usenet tracking right back to 1993.

Alternative stories include the tale of a certain Richard Gere, who arrived at Los Angeles hospital with yet another hapless gerbil lodged in his rectum. The story comes in a dizzying range of varieties, both with and without fur, plastic bags or sources of lubrication. None of these variations (it hardly needs to be pointed out) are true.

Urban legends make poor evidence for any definition - the correct term for such practices appears to be gerbilling - and it would, therefore, seem prudent to define felching as the retrieval of semen from a bodily orifice into which is has been recently deposited. This includes the vagina or the anus. Interestingly in the light of such practices as nasolingus, and no doubt as a result of common sense, no sources mention other potential orifices such as the nose or ears. It should also be noted that despite the implication that one would felch out one's own semen, there is the possibility of felching out the ejaculate of another, previous lover.

Semen Retrieval: Why Would Anyone Want To Do That?


There is no doubt that felching deserves the monicker unusual - it's not one of your more common sexual practices. In fact, as seen above, the term is more often used derisively, to insult or slander, rather then taking the form of a simple descriptive phrase for a sexual act, presumably of pleasure to at least one of the two people involved.

In a world where golden enemas, Roman Showers and hygrophilia are recognised sexual practices, there is clearly a place for felching. It may be considered unsafe, but then so are many forms of sexual activity where bodily fluids are exchanged. Certainly the semen re-ingested from one's partner would be liberally mixed with vaginal discharges or, if the anus were the orifice of choice, a varying quantity of rectal mucus or even feces. Sounds unpleasant, but the practice of coprophagy has been around for a very long time, and adding semen to the mix is hardly going to make it worse.

The question of why an individual would wish to do such a thing is one best answered by such individuals. Either one is the type of person who finds the idea of sucking semen back out of the orifice into which one has just deposited it an arousing and irresistible one, or one is the type of person who finds it inherently abhorrent.

Regardless of which category one falls into, the only acceptable attitude anyone can have regarding such practices is one of tolerance; ultimately, the practice of felching is of no consequence to anyone except those involved, regardless of the social niceties it bruises, or the feelings of disapproval it may cause to well up within us.

Debbie Does Dallas

One of the five best selling porn films of all time, Debbie Does Dallas appeared in 1978, close enough to the release of The Exorcist, The Driller Killer and other such notorious seventies video nasties to provide blessed (if rather sticky) relief from a stream of blood and gore. Starring Bambi Woods, whose parents must surely have realised a name like that gave her little choice of career beyond pornography or wildlife films about deer, the film is, in truth, abysmal. Cheap, badly edited and portraying some of the worst acting in the history of bad acting, one can only assume the producers were fully aware most people would be focusing on the more 'artistic' content of the film - namely the endless parade of naked breasts and white, hairy arses.

The plot is simple. Debbie, cheerleader beyond compare, has been chosen to travel to Dallas and become a cowgirl. Alas, she is penniless and must raise the money herself. Her parents, quite wisely, refuse to support her. Despite having only two weeks, Debbie and her cheerleader chums decide to raise enough money to allow them all to travel down to Dallas and give Debs the support she deserves. (Understand that whilst this discussion takes place each girl removes her clothes and idly soaps herself in the shower, a scene that would later influence the infamous shower scene from Porky's. The display of mis-aligned tan lines is a highlight here - one girl has a white stripe that comes halfway up her buttocks at an angle of approximately thirty degrees off the horizontal.)

But where to find the money? The girls flock off to offer their services as bookshop assistants, sports equipment saleswomen and auditors of novelty candles at Mr Hardwick's candle store. The inclusion of a candle shop turns out to be a happy occurrence, of course, as later on in the film the young lady is possessed by an irresistible urge to penetrate herself with a sizeably-girthed wax item more commonly used to provide subtle or romantic illumination. Needless to say, she is discovered and diverse entertainments ensue: Mrs Hardwick somehow ends up with her fingers inside the young lady whilst her husband, never one to miss a bit of excitement in a candle shop, masturbates vigorously and rounds the whole thing off with a spot of inter-generational intercourse.

Of course, she's not the only one. Two other girls accept an offer of twenty-five dollars for a kiss. This, as you'd expect, leads to breast-licking, cunnilingus, fellatio, anal intercourse, ejaculation and a spot of ooh-look-I-can-rub-my-face-in-your-spunk. Other girls enjoy a bit of a spanking, various bouts of fondling and the usual stuff. All of it, remember, badly shot, badly edited and badly acted.

You'd think, with all this industrious copulation, there'd be enough cash to send an entire football team to Dallas, but no - in order to raise that final injection of cash Debbie is obliged to dress as a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader and indulge in various sexual shenanigans with an appropriately dressed Mr Greenfeld. In return, Mr Greenfeld will pay for the whole lot of girls to make their way down to Dallas. It's been hot, sweaty work, but it's clearly worth it... at the end of the film the word 'Next....' appears on the screen, concerning which we are left to draw our own conclusions.

There is no doubt that Debbie Does Dallas is famous for being famous, and that of those who speak of its nefarious charms few have actually seen it. Certainly the porn scenes on any copy commercially available in the UK are cut to ribbons and thus reduce the film to a rather tame, soft porn epic. The Debbie Does Dallas available today is not top-shelf, scorching-hot pornographic material. Add to this the fact that the quality, even on the later UK DVD releases, is extremely low. One of the early scenes has been clumsily edited and includes a painfully lengthy section filmed before action has been called - cue one second of teen cheerleader poised ready to 'act'.

Nevertheless, Debbie Does Dallas has entered modern culture as an epitome of adult entertainment, a paragon of pornography. Infamous but ultimately unsatisfying: an afternoon spent watching Debbie Does Dallas is not, it must be said, an afternoon well spent. Still, curiosity may get the better of you, or the urge to be one of those who can proudly say 'Yeah, I've seen Debbie Does Dallas'. If that's the case, Debbie was recently re-released in the UK on DVD in that censored, hacked-up form, or there's always those original seventies VHS and Betamax copies if you hunt round hard enough. Then, if even that doesn't quench your insatiable desire for tack, there's always the sequels... many, many sequels...

Debbie Does Dallas was directed by Jim Clark and released in 1978. It starred Bambi Woods as Debbie, and a host of other, now forgotten, actors and actresses who all did their clumsy, inept best with Maria Minestra's rather plain, straightforward script. There's surprisingly little information in The Internet Movie Database about Debbie Does Dallas, but a google search will provide those all important details, plus information on the Debbie Does Dallas play, which features no sex or nudity, functioning more as a tribute to one of the most famous pieces of pornography of all time.