Yes, Euro films can be great even in another language, but knowing the plot makes it that much more erotic. Any ideas about where to find these films in English?
And as an aside, does anyone know why these movies aren't easy to find in the United States? My sense is that the the American movie companies don't want people to know how good Euro movies are! It would cut into their profits.
Movies like Seventeen, Pleasure Busen, Color Climax, etc. are of much higher quality than the crap the United States puts out.
-AL
Euro movies -- in English?
Re: Euro movies -- in English?
Unfortunately in my experience there is very little choice. Some movies didn't even come out in the langauge of the actors themselves; several movies French actresses only came out in German, for instance.
I completely agree with you that the added touch of knowing the plot line adds a huge amount of eroticism. Watching two people screw gets old fast when you've seen it 50 times but when you add all sorts of spice (her husband is in the next room; there's an incest subplot; or even just all sorts of sexy talk, etc) everything is more intense. But a badly dubbed film can be as unsexy as one in an incomprehensible language.
Expectations are different in different countries. Since very few US films had (or have) anything approaching the level of convincing acting you see in the French or German films from the 70s and 80s -- where many porn actresses and actors (think of Brigitte Lahaie, Odette Burel, Cathy Menard, or among the men, Alban Ceray) could have easily worked in straight cinema -- the US market came to expect it less and less. Even an acceptably good US actress like Veronica Hart or Annette Haven absolutely pales by comparison to the acting skills of a Morgane or a Barbara Moose, or many of the actresses in the Josephine Mutzenbacher series. The reason is obvious: Europe offers far fewer opportunities for actors than the US, thus many talented people in Europe gravitated to porn (and still do). And there is subsequently a lot of cross-over; most recently, a Hungarian ex-porn actress working in Italy now hosts a daytime children's show!
So since the US porn market, which DID produce a handful of truly erotic films in the past, has no longer come to require anything but bump-and-hump acted by apparently brain dead people, then investing in a dubbed version of a "movie with a plot" is a waste of time. However, there are a few scattered suppliers in the US who do carry the Euro language originals.
As for English versions of a few "classics", the best I can suggest are some of the recent DVD issues of 70s and 80s French films that have dual-language tracks, including English.
(Now all we have to do is convince producers to add subtitles to the DVDs, so those of us who watch movies late at night in a crowded apartment building can keep the sound off!!...)
I completely agree with you that the added touch of knowing the plot line adds a huge amount of eroticism. Watching two people screw gets old fast when you've seen it 50 times but when you add all sorts of spice (her husband is in the next room; there's an incest subplot; or even just all sorts of sexy talk, etc) everything is more intense. But a badly dubbed film can be as unsexy as one in an incomprehensible language.
Expectations are different in different countries. Since very few US films had (or have) anything approaching the level of convincing acting you see in the French or German films from the 70s and 80s -- where many porn actresses and actors (think of Brigitte Lahaie, Odette Burel, Cathy Menard, or among the men, Alban Ceray) could have easily worked in straight cinema -- the US market came to expect it less and less. Even an acceptably good US actress like Veronica Hart or Annette Haven absolutely pales by comparison to the acting skills of a Morgane or a Barbara Moose, or many of the actresses in the Josephine Mutzenbacher series. The reason is obvious: Europe offers far fewer opportunities for actors than the US, thus many talented people in Europe gravitated to porn (and still do). And there is subsequently a lot of cross-over; most recently, a Hungarian ex-porn actress working in Italy now hosts a daytime children's show!
So since the US porn market, which DID produce a handful of truly erotic films in the past, has no longer come to require anything but bump-and-hump acted by apparently brain dead people, then investing in a dubbed version of a "movie with a plot" is a waste of time. However, there are a few scattered suppliers in the US who do carry the Euro language originals.
As for English versions of a few "classics", the best I can suggest are some of the recent DVD issues of 70s and 80s French films that have dual-language tracks, including English.
(Now all we have to do is convince producers to add subtitles to the DVDs, so those of us who watch movies late at night in a crowded apartment building can keep the sound off!!...)
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beutelwolf
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Re: Euro movies -- in English?
al ramone1 wrote:
> And as an aside, does anyone know why these movies aren't easy
> to find in the United States? My sense is that the the American
> movie companies don't want people to know how good Euro movies
> are! It would cut into their profits.
There is probably quite a bit of truth in that. I have read somewhere that when Beate Uhse tried to break into the American sex market (not just movies, also sex toys and sex shops) in the early 1980s that attempt was essentially halted by the mob, who regarded this as their own turf.
> And as an aside, does anyone know why these movies aren't easy
> to find in the United States? My sense is that the the American
> movie companies don't want people to know how good Euro movies
> are! It would cut into their profits.
There is probably quite a bit of truth in that. I have read somewhere that when Beate Uhse tried to break into the American sex market (not just movies, also sex toys and sex shops) in the early 1980s that attempt was essentially halted by the mob, who regarded this as their own turf.
Re: Euro movies -- in English?
Back then it could have been that, but I think that recently the reasons for which most Euro smut doesn't make it to the USA are different and all pertain to the different kind of laws that exist on the two sides of the ocean.
1) There is the problem of community standards and the fact that anyone can be prosecuted for carrying material that doesn't respect them. In most Euro countries if there's a trial about some movies, the only one responsible is the producer, no-one selling it can be tried if the movie has a mark from the local equivalent of the RIAA (GUFA in Germany, SIAE in Italy etc...) unless they are selling to minors something that reports "forbidden sale to minors" or similar writings. This makes the US distributors much more sensible to not stocking anything that may be questionable by local judges somewhere in Alabama or Wyoming. Since most of the Euro movies have some sort of watersports or fisting or object insertions or bondage sex or incest/rape themes, very few Euro movies qualify for direct export in the US. Local distributors could edit them, but editing and reprinting costs (for instance see prices in the UK, where most continental movies are cut for similar reasons) and this makes Euro movies non competitive price-wise with the local US ones.
2) The infamous 2257. According to this American law, the burden of proving the adult age of the performers is completely on the producers/distributors. If yankee producers don't keep track of the documents of the performers, even 80 years old ones, they end up in jail with the awful accusations of shooting kiddie porn. In all the Euro countries where porn is legal (and I think it is illegal only in Ireland) the laws against kiddie porn establish that it is the prosecutor that must proof that the perfomers were underage. So most Euro producers don't bother about collecting documents and signing papers if the performers are obviously adult. But then exporting to the US their movies would require all the documents according to US 2257 even if the movie features only JP Armand having sex with Eva Delage, who probably add up to a century and a half between themselves.
Once again collecting and keeping such documents is quite expensive, so most Euro producers are just satisfied to what they sell in the rest of the world.
Aside from that, the USA market seems to be open to Euro material.
The proof is that Euro companies that make material thought to be in line with all the American laws and standards - like Private or recently Playhouse - do distribute their stuff overseas quite well.
1) There is the problem of community standards and the fact that anyone can be prosecuted for carrying material that doesn't respect them. In most Euro countries if there's a trial about some movies, the only one responsible is the producer, no-one selling it can be tried if the movie has a mark from the local equivalent of the RIAA (GUFA in Germany, SIAE in Italy etc...) unless they are selling to minors something that reports "forbidden sale to minors" or similar writings. This makes the US distributors much more sensible to not stocking anything that may be questionable by local judges somewhere in Alabama or Wyoming. Since most of the Euro movies have some sort of watersports or fisting or object insertions or bondage sex or incest/rape themes, very few Euro movies qualify for direct export in the US. Local distributors could edit them, but editing and reprinting costs (for instance see prices in the UK, where most continental movies are cut for similar reasons) and this makes Euro movies non competitive price-wise with the local US ones.
2) The infamous 2257. According to this American law, the burden of proving the adult age of the performers is completely on the producers/distributors. If yankee producers don't keep track of the documents of the performers, even 80 years old ones, they end up in jail with the awful accusations of shooting kiddie porn. In all the Euro countries where porn is legal (and I think it is illegal only in Ireland) the laws against kiddie porn establish that it is the prosecutor that must proof that the perfomers were underage. So most Euro producers don't bother about collecting documents and signing papers if the performers are obviously adult. But then exporting to the US their movies would require all the documents according to US 2257 even if the movie features only JP Armand having sex with Eva Delage, who probably add up to a century and a half between themselves.
Once again collecting and keeping such documents is quite expensive, so most Euro producers are just satisfied to what they sell in the rest of the world.
Aside from that, the USA market seems to be open to Euro material.
The proof is that Euro companies that make material thought to be in line with all the American laws and standards - like Private or recently Playhouse - do distribute their stuff overseas quite well.
Re: Euro movies -- in English?
[url=http://www.bcult.it][b]B CULT[/b][/url]
Re: Euro movies -- in English?
i agree with you . I cant find them either.
Re: Euro movies -- in English?
I will be basically repeating what Soljaris and others have said, but Caballero in the early 1980's imported a number of Euro films: SEX ROULETTE, SENSATIONAL JANINE, EDUCATION OF THE BARONESS, WRKING FOR SEX, HAPPY HOLIDAY with Olinka, , THE PLEASURE SHOPPE, THE GIRLS OF MR. X, BUTTERFLIES, Atom Video released SEDUCE ME TONIGHT. Later a umber of companies imported Italian films with Rocco Siffredi Moana Pozzi and others (Paradise Visuals, In-X-Cess, Sin City with their EUROFLESH line, etc).
VMD has been releasign their films in the USA for some time now through Wicked. Private at first was using the since-defunct Odyssey to release their early films in the USA.
I think foreign producers don't really see the marketability of their film library (as small as it sometimes is) in the USA. Dubbing them into English, providing the required documentation as to their production, etc.
It is tough to market a Mario Salieri film (with plot line) that lasts under 75 minutes to a USA market where most adult films today are over 2 hours and of the "all-sex" type.
A lot of the Salieri titles are released in France by Colmax (and in Germany), but no English language versions seem to make their way to the USA. The other added problem is that the majority of Euro performers (and here I am speaking about French, Italian, Germany) are basically unknown in the USA. These performers do not travel to the USA to make porn films there like Eastern European perfomers. So any Euro film starring "Jane X" would be difficult to market in the USa, if the performers are unknown. With over 11,000 porn titles released in the USA every years, it would be difficult for a distributor and video chain to stock up Euro titles in a saturated US market. Wicked has released VMD titles in the USa, but they are largely unseen in most video stores.
VMD has been releasign their films in the USA for some time now through Wicked. Private at first was using the since-defunct Odyssey to release their early films in the USA.
I think foreign producers don't really see the marketability of their film library (as small as it sometimes is) in the USA. Dubbing them into English, providing the required documentation as to their production, etc.
It is tough to market a Mario Salieri film (with plot line) that lasts under 75 minutes to a USA market where most adult films today are over 2 hours and of the "all-sex" type.
A lot of the Salieri titles are released in France by Colmax (and in Germany), but no English language versions seem to make their way to the USA. The other added problem is that the majority of Euro performers (and here I am speaking about French, Italian, Germany) are basically unknown in the USA. These performers do not travel to the USA to make porn films there like Eastern European perfomers. So any Euro film starring "Jane X" would be difficult to market in the USa, if the performers are unknown. With over 11,000 porn titles released in the USA every years, it would be difficult for a distributor and video chain to stock up Euro titles in a saturated US market. Wicked has released VMD titles in the USa, but they are largely unseen in most video stores.