VIRGIN SACRIFICE completes the trilogy of films contained on a single disc I recently netflixed. We covered the other two--WILD WOMEN OF WONGO--and BOWANGA BOWANGA--here and here.
VIRGIN SACRIFICE was the second-best, after WONGO but before BOWANGA. You're getting the juciest bits in the clip here. But there is a scene in the film not present in the trailer, a shot that lingers on the completely bare breasts of the (white woman) sacrificial victim for longer than a subliminal moment. I thought that highly unusual for the era, but as we are reminded at this site chronicling the history of sex in the cinema, such moments have existed since motion pictures began.
Continuing the baldness theme, there's something disturbing about this recent Hair Club for men infomercial. Don't Mike and his stepdaughter seem to be a bit too flirtatious with each other?
There's controversy about whether anyone has ever had sex in space. If they have, they're not admitting it. So given that, it's no surprise that there's never been pornography filmed in space. Though apparently not for lack of trying. Laura Woodmansee provides some details about this subject in her book Sex in Space:
In the final days of the Mir, Russia was looking for new, capitalist ways to obtain funding to allow the space station to remain operational. One idea that was seriously considered involved allowing a production company to send a pair of actors to the space station to film the first pornographic movie in space. Originally titled, "Space Flight has a Price," the name was changed to "The Last Journey." The story follows a cosmonaut who refuses to leave his scheduled-to-be-abandoned space station, so ground controllers come up with the "brilliant idea" to send a woman up to seduce the wayward cosmonaut into returning home to Earth...
The porn stars were in top shape and ready to have sex in space. Yuri Koptev, the General Director of the Russian Space Agency at the time explained, "Life has made us change our mentality and one has to overcome snobbery when dozens of millions of dollars are involved."
Sadly, the pornographic Mir movie never did happen because the production company could only raise $7 million of the $23 million dollar price that the Russians demanded. The Russian Space Agency wanted the cash first and would not take promises to pay the balance after the film was released. Mir was de-orbited and crashed into the ocean in March 2001.
But Woodmansee notes that there has been pornography filmed in weightless conditions, aboard a plane flying in a ballistic arc flight path to produce temporary weightlessness. She writes:
The Spanish-produced sex video, The Uranus Experiment 2 includes a scene filmed in weightless flight. One particular segment is supposed to depict several male and female astronauts having sex in weightlessness, but was obviously filmed here on Earth, and no amount of rotating camera angles can fool the viewer into believing that this is a weightless shot. But at the end of the scene, the 20-second "money shot" is indeed filmed in weightless conditions on an aircraft.
Sex in Space is a curious book. Despite the racy title, it's actually pretty restrained. Woodmansee, a science journalist, notes that she attempted to balance "the giggle factor with serious scientific questions about reproduction and the future of humans in space."
[From Life for September 24 1956. Two separate scans, top and bottom.]
Judging by the reaction of the people in the background, these are either a) real transgenic tiger men walking down the street; or b) very convincing masks. In either case, the viewer is forced to ask, "Are tigers particularly famous for their sartorial choices?"
BONUS: this ad may serve as Furry porn, if you're so inclined.
Are you having trouble getting drunk? Are your mixed drinks not having the proper effect, fast enough, or perhaps engendering too large a hangover? Does your choice of drink preclude picking up the partner you truly desire and deserve at your local bar?
That's because you are not taking astrology into account! Your zodiacal sign is all-important in determining your proper beverage!
Or so we learn from this magazine pamphlet (source unknown, but probably Playboy of a certain vintage).
Read on, after the jump, and you'll learn what cocktail you should be imbibing!
Here at WU Central, we're all about providing useful knowledge to our eager readers, serving as a resource to help them with their perplexities.
For instance, I cannot count how many times readers have written in with this question:
Well, now you need no longer live in darkness and confusion, as we present the scanned pages of a 1972 youth sex-education manual: A Boy Today...A Man Tomorrow. The cover is reproduced below, and the rest of the content after the jump.
On a semi-serious note: we've all seen sex-education materials from earlier decades that are full of prejudices and misinformation. While I have not yet read every word of the current sample, I found what I did read to be highly broadminded and useful and in line with current teachings. Note that the version here is a 1972 revision of a 1961 revision of a 1959 original. I'd love to have the earlier versions, to see the differences.
It's easy to make fun of the Sixties, but their legacy in such matters as this is truly exemplary.
Discovering traces of a forgotten surrealist/pop artist is always nice and weird. That's why I'm happy to present here some data on Eugênio Hirsch--a name I believe will be little-known to English-speaking art-lovers.
I took the liberty of having Google translate his Spanish Wikipedia entry, and then cleaned up the text a bit.
Eugênio Hirsch (Vienna, 1923 - Rio de Janeiro, September 23 2001) was a visual artist of Austrian origin, considered one of the pioneers of Brazilian graphic design.
Eugênio Hirsch was born in Vienna, Austria in 1923. Given the imminence of World War II his family emigrated in 1938 to Argentina, where Hirsch was highlighted as a graphic artist. During his stay in Argentina, he lived in Buenos Aires where he worked for the Encyclopedia Codex. In 1947 he met Monteiro Lobato, who illustrated texts mentioned in the editorial. He also lived in San Miguel de Tucuman where he worked with Lino Spilimbergo Enea.
In 1955 he emigrated to Brazil. Beginning in 1960 he was hired by the publisher "Civilização Brasileira" and in a short time revolutionized the concept and design of book covers, becoming one of the biggest names in this specialty. In 1960 he won the Jabuti Award (highest distinction in the field Brazilian literary and artistic). He was considered a pioneer of graphic design with decisive influence on subsequent generations. One of his favorite quote was "Uma feita layer is to attack, did not to please" ( "A cap is used to attack, not to please"). In 1965 he traveled to the United States where he collaborated with Playboy magazine and then to Europe, but then returned to his adoptive country, Brazil.
Among his most famous works include the illustration done for the novel Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. He was also recalled for his eccentric personality.
Eugênio Hirsch died in Rio de Janeiro on September 23, 2001.
You can see some of his book covers on this Flickr page. But my favorite is this one he did for the novel Flesh by the great Philip Jose Farmer.
How did I chance upon Hirsch's work? Through this pictorial in Playboy for December 1965. The mildly NSFW totality of the feature is to be found after the jump.
Every election year, politicians seek to invoke a mythical Golden Age, when life was simpler and more wholesome. Take the Edwardian Era in America, for instance, when the moral fiber of the country was still unpolluted--
--and when a drag queen like Julian Eltinge was a top attraction in high society and popular culture alike.
Category: Animals, Body Modifications, Body Painting, Guns, Hollywood, Movies, Nature, Sexuality, Sex Symbols, Collectors, 1950's, Central America