The Erotic Screen

Susie Bright, “The Pauline Kael of Porn” (SF Chronicle), rips open the history of erotic cinema before the internet— from the Golden Age of lavish 35mm hardcore, to the video-inspired “Porno Spring”, initiated by none other than punk, feminist, and lesbian video-makers.

In this first volume of The Erotic Screen, covering 1967-1989, you’ll find Bright’s groundbreaking “X-Rated Advisor” columns from Penthouse Forum, her shocking “killed story” about the history of racism in the adult industry, and truly intimate interviews with legendary artists like Russ Meyer, John Leslie, Sharon Mitchell, Jeannie Pepper, and Christopher Rage.

Chapters include: the bizarre beginnings of how-to sex videos, the secrets of erotic foreign cinema, the last of Traci Lords, the eve of John Holmes’ departure, the last word on “what women want” in erotica, Susie’s blue movie favorites, (both X and R-rated), the never-spoken realities behind a porn shoot, the invention of the “blatant lesbian image”— plus dozens of fan questions answered with Susie’s panache and perceptive detail.

If you want to know why erotic movies were the first independent films to break all the Hollywood Studio rules—if you want to know why sex on screen can change your life—you need to see where it all began in this first volume of Susie Bright’s Erotic Screen.