Sunday, November 04, 2012

Movie Ad of the Week: SEX IN THE COMICS (1972)




SEX IN THE COMICS is a live action attempt to recreate the notorious adults only "eight pager" comic books (Tijuana Bibles) of yesteryear, starring porn actors like Ric Lutze and Rick Cassidy hiding behind pseudonyms ("Lance Hardon" "Reggie Balls") while wearing masks of famous comic strip characters Dagwood, Dick Tracy, Barney Google and others. One of the performers appears to be Duke Mitchell?! Directed by "Eric Von Letch" (rumored to be Anthony Spinelli), SEX IN THE COMICS opened in two porn houses in New York City on December 20, 1972 (The IMDb has it listed as a 1974 release). Ads for SEX IN THE COMICS appeared in all the New York newspapers except the Daily News, which advertised it as THE 8 PAGERS.


In 2003, Chris interviewed makeup artist Byrd Holland for Fangoria. The following exchange is taken from the resulting article, "Horror Out of the Box" (Fangoria #231, April 2004, pg. 68-71, 80)...

BYRD HOLLAND: In the early 1970s, I was approached to do a film, and they had a budget where I could do my thing, make castings of faces, sculpt and create prosthetics. They wanted me to do Dick Tracy and other famous cartoon characters, men and women --

CHRIS POGGIALI: That sounds like SEX AND THE COMICS.

BYRD HOLLAND: Was that it? I was a little suspicious at first. I asked if they had the rights to use those characters, and they indicated that they did. I was excited about the project, but then the production manager said to me, “Don’t worry, if the police happen to come, we have a buzzer and the red lights will go on -- we'll move you right out the back door, no one will ever know you’ve been here.” I said, “If the police come for what?” He said, “This is an X-rated movie.” I said, “You’re talkin’ to the wrong man!” and I just got up and walked out. [Laughs] Only in Hollywood can you be interviewed for a job in a legitimate profession and get told “You’ll be protected in case the police show up!”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is available to watch at 'X-Hamster'. It's truly bizarre.