Sounds like an ordinary theater to me. I always thought it was the buttered popcorn and spilled soft drinks. It wasn’t? 
If so, it was the first and only buttered popcorn and spilled soft drinks from which you could have obtained a DNA sample.
There used to be an antiques store on Broadway and 10th Street, where they had an actual old Kinetoscope machine, stocked with vintage porn. You’d put your nickel in, crank the handle, and see The Athletic Girl and the Burglar (1905), How Bridget Served the Salad Undressed (1898), or Airy Fairy Lillian Tries on Her New Corsets (1905). Sadly, the store is long-gone, so my porn-watching days have ended.
Well, there were also some pretty interesting GAY porno theaters…a couple in New York were quite interesting…most showed a movie and then some male strippers came out and “performed” for 15 minutes or so, and then a movie would come back on. Often there was a curtain or area where patrons could gather and practice their performance as well.
For hetero fun, Germany has it hands down - so to speak. They have large rooms with rows of movie seats in the front, and small, individual tables in the back. There is a big screen showing porno. Skimply clad women come and serve (overpriced) drinks and if you happen to like one of the waitresses, there are rooms in the back where you could go to have private “conversations” for an agreed upon fee. These clubs are in almost every city and village. It is not that odd to see male and female couples go in together.
I also knew a woman artist in NY whose job it was to make the sleezly little ads that ran in the newspapers for these theaters. She would snip and cut a few pictures of buxom ladies, positition them in a certain way and then she would invent a title (the titles had to be change as some titles were more graphic than would be allowed to print in the newspaper, even in NYC!)
I once said, “those aren’t pictures of the actresses in the porno, and that isn’t the real title of the film” and she smiled, “like any guy going there is going to notice or complain?”
First it should be noted that porn of that era that you are asking about was rather innocent porn in comparison to today. When The Devil in Miss Jones, Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door came out they were considered outrageous even among avid followers of adult films. They would almost be considered “R” rated films today.
Previous to those films in the theaters, and for that matter contemporary to those, you had films that had naked people together and often they had sex and on occasion there was oral sex, but there was surprisingly little of that, but always it was incredibly bland.
I lived just down the street from the Bluebird Adult Cinema in Denver in the era you are talking about and the patrons used to park in front of my place rather than in front of the theater and then walk up the street to the theater and we residents of the block used to sit on our porches and shout crude comments as the customers would walk up to the theater. On the way back, I don’t know how many times I heard the comment “There really wasn’t that much to it.”
Now stag films were a whole different kettle of fish. Hard to get, easy to get ripped off trying to get, and generally barely visible when got. But the subject matter rivaled the worst of today’s porn although the participants involved were worth note because they were generally incredibly ugly.
Of my two memorable X-rated film experiences in the 60s and 70s (other than in Viet Nam of course) I saw a nude/sex version of Romeo and Juliet that was too silly to get aroused over and to stupid to think was funny. The other was on the island of Guam (an island surprisingly like an isolated smaller version of LA). The theater I went to was a regular cinema during the early part of the evening and showed X-rated films after 11 p.m., so I saw a double feature of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Behind the Green Door. As I remember there was a second X-rated film after Green Door, but by that time I had fallen asleep and I missed it completely.
TV
Both of the two porn drive-ins I’ve seen (both now closed, alas) had tall standards of bright lights at just the right height aimed at the road to effectively make the screen unviewable from passing traffic.
You have GOT to write a book, Musicat! No pun intended, but these stories blow the hell out of MASH and GOOD MORNING VIETNAM.
I remember going to the XXX Drive-in circa 1970 with 3-4 other guys in the car. They were straight. I wasn’t, and I’m still not. That was a frustratingly exciting time.
And they were “turned on” too. This was straight porn, and there was a lot of shifting around in the car to get comforable. There was also a bit of a cool down phase between movies. Nobody could get out of the car right away to go to the snack bar. I mean you couldn’t walk out of the car at full mast.
Another time my Spanish teacher was working the ticket booth. He knew we were all 15 and 16 (suppose to be 18), and let us in for free.
One fine day in the late 1970s I became 18, therefore a legal adult, and next time I was in the big city (Albuquerque if you must know), I went to an X-rated movie.
a) They didn’t publish show times. You just walked in and sat down while the movie was in progress.
b) Boring, no plots, not particularly sexy.
Never bothered seeing another one.
If you think any of those would almost qualify for ‘R’, then you saw edited ‘soft-core’ versions. I saw Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door, and they are as raunchy as any XXX you’d see today.
I don’t know if this is still done today, but at one time in porn history I believe it was common to shoot two versions of a flick at once. One was softer-core; tits, but not hard cocks. Writhing and flopping, but no screen-filling closeups of penetration and no cum-shots.
The softer versions were shown in more restrictive venues, I guess.
So that’s why they had they’re hand in all those weird and awkward positions in those old films. They do it today as well. XXX is for video and DVD and the soft core is for pay-per-view. I didn’t think that was why they had their hands there back then though.
You know, this is my most informative thread ever. Cool guys! And gals. I really want to see Eve’s old porn. I saw some clips from old French ones from about the same time but they edited them. Color me curious.
I saw a few “dirty movies” in a drive-in theater with my ex and another couple—the other guy had a very dry sense of humor, a keen eye for the absurd, and kept us laughing so much that the movies became secondary. I do remember that one of them was disguised as a documentary on cures for impotence–the cures all involved a lot of oral sex on a bald-headed fat guy who never showed any improvement.
A couple of miles from our house, there is an antique / collectible shop that has quite a collection of OLD soft-core photographs that go beyond nudity but not quite to the limit. Almost like a RetroRaunch collection. Interesting but very overpriced, IMHO.
Whoever commented on the 16mm “stag” movies has obviously seen a few—he describes them just as I remember them. Someone else, I think, was equally accurate as to the abundance of pubic hair. Ah, yes, the good old days.
That line is funny enough by itself, but consider that I first read it as “I really want to see Eve’s old poon.”
Cleanup on aisle 5!
[glaring through lorgnettes] “Well, really!”
Actually My step dad says the scenes in taxi driver where travis bickle goes to a porn film were basically correct in the few hed been to were basicaly old rundown movie theathers
As fo 20s and 30s porn nate wests book day of the locust pretty much described it (except they watched it in a brothel) you knew someone who showed it and charged ya so much to see it and generally moved on to the next town or spot before the law caught on