Hetero, Homo, Sado and Pseudo: Skin Flicks Offer All Perversions

TAKE the MTA one stop past Park to Washington Station. Let the fat ladies with shopping bags sweep you up the rickety wooden escalator. Turn left at the tattered John Havlicek for hairspray, climb up past tattered John hawking Record Americans, and you will find yourself on Washington Street--address of Boston's best skin flick parlors.

Washington Street starts at the mouth of the Charles, sweeps southwest past Government Center, Z-slashes through the heart of West Roxbury, and plunges dead south through the suburbs of Dedham and Westwood. For most of these 25 miles, the street is dark and quiet.

Standing at Washington Station, on the eight-block strip from the Old South Meeting House to Michael Breen Square, you will see nothing but a jumble of neon and a jungle of blaring discotheques and smutty bookshops.

At night, policemen are posted at every intersection on this strip. A navy blue M.P. paddywagon watches over one of the discotheques. Gangs of well-liquored sailors and well-lacquered women stroll the street, stopping to chat in convenient alleyways. At Breen Square, a plump Polish girl will offer to show you her apartment.

TEN motion picture theatres line these eight blocks, including three skin flick parlors named, in patriotic Bostonian fashion, the Mayflower, the Pilgrim, and the State.

Posters outside these three theatres make good reading even for weekend windowshoppers. There are glossy stills from the films--mostly nude women with their breasts and bottoms blacked out with magic marker. This proves to be somewhat misleading, since in the picture these same parts remain covered with panties and pasties, but most regular viewers eventually catch on to the trick.

If you see the films, you may succumb to sneaking suspicions that some of the advertised shots never appear. This may be deliberately false advertising, but more than likely the scenes in question--certain to be the most sordid in the films--fell beneath a censor's scissors.

The three theatres marquees, with letters as large as any north of Times Square, often bear such inspired titles as "Lotita," "Fanny Mill," "Hawaiian Thigh" and "My Bare Lady."

This week, the Pilgrim features "Agony of Love" and "Wonderful World of Girls"--for "broad minded adults with young ideas." A gaudy poster for the first film proclaims it has been "banned over half the world!" If the other half should seek revenge, a familiar yellow and black sign hung just overhead offers some solace: "Fallout Shelter, Capacity 1145."

In the sidewalk case at the May-flower, a tawdry blonde beckons by-passers to "Infidelity Any Style" with "Come in Darling, my husbands (sic) at work." The film promises to be "Daring! Bold! A slice of life!"--apparently a new variation on the still more popular "piece of ass."

By the time you reach "Party at Lil's Place" at the State, the supply of adjectives (but not exclamation points) has apparently been exhausted. After such feeble attempts as "a scathing film of a girl without morals!" the poster-painter throws up his brush with "Her desire was always there!"

All three theatres charge $1.75 for admission--fifty cents more than the straight establishments on the street. If you measure flesh by the acre, however, this is the best buy since the Louisiana Purchase.

Theoretically "adults only" can get in on the deal, as the theatres announce in signs large and numerous. The Pilgrim, classiest of the three (occasionally showing films like Loves of a Blonde), asks patrons to please be 21 or older. The Mayflower and the State will have you if you're eighteen.

THE ticket-seller is a kindly old lady who looks up from a Screen Romances to demand proof-of-age. If you hand her a hastily marked-over expired driver's license, and act incredulous when she questions it, she will take your two dollars and wave you on in.

Just inside the lobby is the inevitable snack bar, but it gets little use, and the popcorn man doubles as ticket-taker. Since there are no inter-missions, and the coming attractions are the real show-stoppers, a trip to the snack bar or men's room means you miss a mile or more of skin. Two-bit milk taffy suckers sell the best.

Even on your first trip to a skin flick parlor, what first strikes you is not the bare bosom on the screen, but the people in the audience. There are about fifty lean men, sitting bolt-upright and silent, and scattered evenly throughout the theatre. Un-written skin flick code says no one may sit within three seats of anyone else, even on crowded weekends.

The same code makes it faux pas to laugh or smile at even skin flick comedies (which are extremely un-popular and therefore used only as second or third features). Skin flicks are serious business.

In the early evening, it is nor uncommon to find an M.I.T. fraternity or a half dozen Mass General nurses seated near the back of the theatre. Even a college couple "out slumming" can be seen occasionally. Then there are squeals and titters, most often from the M.I.T. section.

BY ten o'clock, women and students clear out, and the theatre settles into total silence. The only sound is the usher, thrashing about as he watches the screen over his shoulder.

Skin flicks themselves are rarely as interesting as skin flick audiences. The general plotline never changes: take as many girls as imagination permits and get them as undressed as law permits. Undress them as quickly as possible, and leave them undressed for as long as possible.

If you've seen one skin flick, you've seen them all. Even the women look the same from flick to flick, though their names change. Good directors manage to work in a wide selection of breasts and nipples, and occasionally several skin colors, since that is the only variety possible.

The number of perversions available to writers is much more limited. Voyeurism makes for a good opener--usually a man spying on women at a swimming pool, private beach or health resort. "The Girl Killer" begins with a sexual sadist and necrophiliac watching women sunbathe on a tenement roof through the breast-shaped lens of binoculars.

NEXT comes the heterosexual scene, with the man and woman clad only in shorts and panties--though not always in that order. After a few minutes of French kissing filmed at point-blank range (a two-story tongue can be terrifying), the woman's garment is removed, though the man's is not. The camera is likely to take more interest in the garment than the girl.

Orgasm is portrayed with a close-up of the woman's twisted face or, less frequently, with an out-of-focus pan through the trees or across the ocean. The latter is not unlike short story accounts submitted by Cliffies to English C sections. Occasionally an oral-genital act is implied, though always with a shot of the passive partner's face.

Sadism comes next, with whipping and strangulation sharing current popularity. The man usually strangles the woman with a nylon stocking or his bare hands until a single drop of blood rolls from the corner of her mouth.

Strangely enough, most skin flicks also have at least one Lesbian scene. The most common form finds two semi-nude women caressing in bed. In an imaginative variation, they shave the posterior of a third female friend. Sometimes one woman begins the encounter disguised as a man. Male homosexuality, however, is carefully avoided.

FINALLY, there is always something for the transvestite. Rare is the skin flick that does not have at least one man in full feminine harness, including bra, belt and garters. Occasionally two or more men go full drag a la jack Lemmon '47 and Tony Curtis is Some Like It Hot.

Despite all these efforts, the best performances still come from the audience. During one recent from the audience. During one recent film in which the screen goes black and a passionate panting can be heard, a colored kid in the first row cut loose with an enviable imitation of a cat in heat that made even the usher laugh.

Coming attractions remain the most popular reel in any skin flick program. Even the management comes down to see them. Unlike the films they advertise, they are fast-paced and contain only the most provocative scenes. The promise of sexual perversion is often strong:

"Helga beats men into submission and then forces them to perfrom un-natural acts with her. You might like Helga. Some men do. I CRAVE YOUR BODY reaches out for new limits in sexual stimulation. See Johnny Mustang stimulate Helen Baker to the height of sexual passion ("Oh, Johnny!"). Perversion in all its gory detail . . .I CRAVE YOUR BODY!"

There is also the less than subtle promise of vicarious pleasure:

"THE HOT BED--the bed seldom used for sleep. A story that could happen to anyone. Maybe it could happen to you. Would you like it? See if you'd like to spend a night in THE HOT BED!"

Sometimes the narrator gets carried away with his own accolate:

"For years they played bridge for pennies. Now they play for other things. . . . SUBURBAN GIRLS CLUB! This game turned a whole town upside down and backwards!"

Skin flicks rarely turn out to be that good. The camera work if often good, and indeed skin flicks serve as steppingstones for young cameramen on the way to Hollywood. They also provide employment for writers on the way back.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the dialogue. Not atypical is an exchange from "The Girl Killers" between two workers in a mannequin factory, who are themselves embarrassed by the lines.

"Hey, Joe, did you hear about the sex strangler on the radio? Some guy breaks into a girl's apartment, strangles her with her own stocking, and then I guess he balls her after she's dead."

"He balls her after she's dead? Well, at least she's still warm!"

"It takes all kinds, Joe!