Movie Review by Neils Hesse
Director: Michel Reilhac
Pornography is pornography whether it was filmed fifty or sixty years ago or indeed one hour ago it is still pornography. None the less this is a collection of twelve silent French blue films from 1905 to 1930 – the first major general theatrical release of an unashamedly explicitly sexual film in the UK which has been given an R-18 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification. Good old fashioned silent movie humour mixed with hardcore sex, ranging from masturbating peeping toms, man on man action, beastiality, spanking and cartoon characters going by the hilarious name of “EverReady Burton”, the name in itself does not leave much to the imagination.
Humorous at times to see the old porn stars physical features – love handles, potbellies, as liposuction was probably not available then – they are a motley crew of off duty prostitutes and actors wearing ill-fitting disguises such as big fake moustaches to conceal their true identities. Apparently these films were shown to would be customers in brothels back then in those times.
THE GOOD OLD NAUGHTY DAYS is definitely not going to get a massive theatrical audience or distribution and it’s certainly not worth going to the cinema to see. It’ll probably be best viewed by cinematic history porno buffs if such people exist.
All in all this is a collection of porno movies that the distributor is trying to sell to an art house audience as something of historical value when in fact some of the more extreme content of this collection of films has nothing to do with today’s mainstream hardcore adult movies and would not be acceptable in that industry even today.
While today’s hardcore is acceptable to many people in today’s society this dressed up ‘historical’ film is simply dirty and nasty, black and white, silent and old.