Strange repackaging of older films

[Immy]

There's a used vid store near me clearing out hundreds of older VHS porn titles, most in their original big boxes. I bought a tape called Frat House that looked like a promising Animal House rip-off maybe from the late-70s/early 80s. No cast listing and a babe on the box I didn't recognize but oh well, for $5 I took a chance.

It turned out to be two vintage films intercut together - Swinging Sorority (1974) and Loose Times at Ridley High (1984) with Tom Byron, Paul Thomas, Kim Carson and a young Bunny Bleu. An hour-long runtime meant scenes got cut (in fact it's about 80% Loose Times) but Swinging Sorority, though cheap looking and grainy, looked like a more no-holds-barred production. At one point six guys "initiate" a cheerleader into their frat and random babes dance topless at the local bar. Great stuff. Wonder how available the original Swinging Sorority is?

Ever notice bizarre random packaging like this?

[fictioneer]

VCX, in the 80s, had Sorority and its companion, Swinging Ski Girls, on tape. I have both of them. Some parts are obviously hardcore but edited around explicit shots for the most part. Ski is set mostly at the local topless bar, and spends a lot of time on girls taking a bath, sometimes with company, after their dance sets and waitress gigs. It also includes a 10-minute scene, scored to Ravel's "Bolero," of a skinny, kinky-hair coed fucking her boyfriend, in which he's obviously boning her, with some penetration shown. She's in both movies, as are some of the others. (Don't know if your print of Sorority includes the sequence where she and a babyface blonde who looks like Savannah's mom share a ratty-looking dope dealer. Nothing is really seen, except for the blonde holding the guy by his boner, but he's the same guy who fucked the blackhair in Ski, presumably her real life Old Man.)

The pix were made in 1972 or maybe 1973 at Eugene, OR, and most of the cast appear to be venturesome U of Oregon student amateurs, or maybe just college town hippies scoring some dope and rent money. A few pros are on hand as well. The filmmakers were from Hollywood and the motivation seems to have been that police harassment had pretty much shut down the porn biz in Los Angeles, so they went up north to do some filming.

An almost-certainly related production is Street Girls, made abt 1973 in Eugene and released in 1975 by Roger Corman's New World Pictures. (Corman didn't make the film, which was a pickup for distribution, and probably one that was extensively edited by New World, as with Tender Loving Care. The DVD edition of Street is the same one I saw at the drive-in, 35 years ago, so no other print may be extant now.)

Christine Souder, the lead in Street Girls, is also featured in Sorority and has what looks like a genuine hardcore scene. (Reddish-brunette, walks in on another coed being softcored by the professor after class, then goes back to the dorm and fucks her own boyfriend. No penetrations shown, but she's constantly reaching down to adjust him.)

The release versions of Ski and Sorority are comparatively soft though probably shot harder and edited down in hope of making the drive-in circuit. One of the reviewers at Something Weird has a bit of a jones for the girls from these movies (is there someone who doesn't?) and has noted their presence in a couple of other titles -- Virgin Forest and The Lucifers -- that SWV carries, with the implication that they do harder footage in those. I haven't seen either of these movies.

Somebody who could probably clear up the haze on this is mainstream director Barry Levinson, who was the writer on Street Girls. I doubt he's willing to do it, however! Michael Miller was the director of Street Girls, and though he cops to having done Teenage Fantasies he doesn't list either of the Swinging films in his creds, so I presume he's innocent. Credits on Ski and Sorority are identical and fake, and I've never seen a statement on who actually made them. Most of the cast are unknowns and apparent amateurs, but there are a few ringers. The gangbang girl is a pro, as is the housemother at the sorority (she wraps the original by doing a softish but pretty lesbian scene with a very *nder*ge-looking girl who has hair down past her ass). A stiff-dicked Rick Cassidy also appears in both movies, undoubtedly fucking his scene partners though it's not directly shown.

[Immy]

Great info, thanks fictioneer. Tender Loving Care and Teenage Fantasies are also on my wantlist. Cool to know they're in the same vein.

BTW, you sound suspiciously like the legendary 12-string from other sites. Do you resemble that remark?

[Bill Bulloney]

That re-boxing of old films was FAMOUS when the VCR first came on to the market in quantity. There were zero films being done ready for tape, so was quite simple and quick to avoid the copyright problems as Congres in USA was still arguing the situation (over a few years too), and the tape dealers were printing them as fast as they would sell. If you owned a common old 35 MM film projector with sound, you could then rent it out for more than the purchase cost.

Remember that a blank tape in early era cost like $60 each.

Wm.

[gadgeteer]

Originally Posted by fictioneer

....The pix were made in 1972 or maybe 1973 at Eugene, OR, and most of the cast appear to be venturesome U of Oregon student amateurs, or maybe just college town hippies scoring some dope and rent money. A few pros are on hand as well. The filmmakers were from Hollywood and the motivation seems to have been that police harassment had pretty much shut down the porn biz in Los Angeles, so they went up north to do some filming....

....Credits on Ski and Sorority are identical and fake, and I've never seen a statement on who actually made them.

Late 1974 is the earliest so far I've seen any ads or trade-mag mentions of those, and Continental Film Corp's lobby cards for the general release were dated 1975. Continental was a releasing company run by Nancy Lindsey of Amber Theaters, which operated the Roxy, Fine Arts, Cine Cienega, Cave, and several other screens in the LA market.

The Oregon connection was the producer, Robert Marsden, from a fairly prominent family that, among other things, had been in the theater business up there and in SoCal.

[gadgeteer]

Originally Posted by fictioneer

Credits on Ski and Sorority are identical and fake, and I've never seen a statement on who actually made them.

I came across a local Eugene news item from early '74 that may solve the director part of mystery... the timing's right:



Donald M. Brown the defendant in that article was definitely the guy better known in the 80's & 90's as producer/director Bob Vosse. He had a zillion aliases in the 60's & 70's, but "Don Trendall" for these Oregon films sounds plausible to me as one more.

I also found another movie with the same cast - Sex Station:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0276492/