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.

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.