The
X-Rated
Videotape
Guide VII
Patrick Riley
(Prometheus)

It's hard for some of us geezer Puritans to conceive of the fact that there are 6,000 new pornographic films that have come on the market in this country in the last two years. What's even more confusing is that one person --- and we are assuming that Riley doesn't have a bevy of panting helpers --- has the time, stomach, and energy to go through and watch these things, find out the details of actors, directors, dates of production, distributors, and come up with a reasonable, literate description of the plot line. On top of that, he gives us ratings, and notes on the most apparent (or most appalling) facts about the actors. What hath god wrought?

In this case, God --- or her alter-ego --- has produced 751 pages of porn-facts, complete with titles such as The Older Women's Sperm Bank, Senior Squirters (#1-3), Obedient Slaves of the Wild West (#1 & 2), The Tool Box Abductions, Agony of Love, Lace & Lash, Tokyo Dreams #7 --- The Wet Panty Story, and my own personal favorite, presumably about one of our Chief Executives, Wee Willy's Winky.

In the wet world of porn there is not only an astounding gush, of features that is, but an obscure referential language. Like any discipline (philosophy, law, medicine), pornography has technical terms --- like "God Botherer," "Morning Glory," and "Dutch Boy." Without too much imagination, one can decipher "squirting," "gang bang," "internals," and "double penetration" --- but we were baffled (until we waded through the glossary) by phrases like "Suitcase Pimp," "Shrimping" (has something to do with feet), "Reverse Cowgirl," (evidently a certain way of conjoining with another party), "Pencil Test" (we won't tell you) and the omnipresent description of movies designed for people almost too weird for the author to describe: "raincoaters."

Riley has obvious affections to go along with his affectations. He seems smitten with a series of flicks called The Global Warming Debutantes, to which he dedicates several rambling descriptions, with especial passion for #12 ("MUST SEE"). He says it is "guaranteed erection causing fodder" and then goes into a long exegesis of the plot which is just as coherent as one could expect in movies that don't especially care about plot. By contrast, he tells us that Shooting Gallery is BAD.

Its not BAD in the sense of a con job; it's just nauseating and disgusting and should be consigned to the dumpster (which appears in many of the scenes here) along with it's director...

Strange mainstream movies appear here and there, such as Tootsie ("No sex feature movie"). He also gives a fairly poor rating to the highly overrated Boogie Nights ("Simulated sex feature movie with girl/girl...") and because Riley is the expert, even identifies the porn movie that turns up in it --- the porn movie within the porn movie (it's something called Exhausted.)

In his introduction, Riley gives us a brief lecture on the lack of PC in the book, pointing out that The X-Rated Videotape Guide could not and never will be politically correct. But he then points out that there is a definite PC world in the porno movie biz: "Girls are never 'uggas:' either you don't say anything at all or they're 'cute.' Girls are not 'chickies' but paradoxically 'babes' is OK." Those of us who have never heard much less conceived of the word "uggas" will be suitably baffled or amused by this, depending on our own PC.

At times, Riley can be quite wry, as in this entry from the Glossary:

WOOD: An erection. The inability to get wood is the bane of the porno stud. Contrary to the belief of many porn-viewing males, "can't hold back" is not generally the problem in making a sex scene. You try keeping an erection for two hours or so in front of a half a dozen bored and impatient strangers with a female who, despite her looks on video, is uninterested in have sex with you.

A "God-Botherer," by-the-bye, is defined as "An anti-sex religious fanatic," and a "Dutch Boy" is "A male who is obsessively attracted to lesbians." It has something to do with young men and the water-control facilities in Holland, but we didn't quite get it. Nor should you.

--- Leslie Seamans