The Psychosexuals (1997) / The Psychosexuals 2 (1998)

Speaking to The Rialto Report in 2017, Gregory Dark was asked if he ever had trouble consistently conjuring up the type of bizarre, surrealistic imagery that defined his adult features. Dark responded in the negative, stating “I never run of ideas of strange images or strange things, it's just ever present with me. Just odd ideas that are not necessarily connected but these ideas just never end in my head.” It's easy to take Dark at his word as not only was he prolific but his ability to subvert the expectations of adult film time and time again was unparalleled, especially during the 90's. With the last Rinse Dream video having been released in 1993 and John Leslie taking the gonzo route from 1995 until his passing in 2010, Dark was a man on an island in the second half of the 90's in terms of unorthodox adult fare. The series of films made by Dark from 1996 to 1998 saw Dark further pushing the limits of adult films, but around the same time Dark's plate was becoming increasingly full, with Dark becoming an in-demand music video director which was soon to become a full-time gig. Dark did however deliver two more mind-warping hardcore videos before bowing out entirely in the form of The Psychosexuals and its sequel, both of which further Dark's 90's experimentation while also feeling like a logical stopping point.

Coming after abstractions like Snake Pit (1996), fourth wall-breaking psychological profiles of adult performers like Shocking Truth (1996) and a grotesque rant like Living on the Edge (1997), The Psychosexuals is a curious work in that Dark takes bits and pieces of his previous few films and reworks them in The Psychosexuals, resulting in a film that, while certainly identifiable as a Gregory Dark film, does things just a bit differently. Dark doesn't seem all that interested in telling a story per say, but the film does have a narrative thread, Dark framing the sex around a Total Recall (1990)-esque scenario surrounding William X, a mysterious business man type testing a virtual reality headset that can project any sexual fantasy as realistically as possible. A rather ingenious way of plotting an adult film, and Dark does bring this idea full circle, having X override the system and become stuck in his fantasy world, though Snake Pit again comes to mind with things becoming obscured rather quickly, Dark's music video experimentation being applied right from the opening credits. Although the virtual reality concept could have provided Dark the chance to be interactive and break the fourth wall yet again, Dark was wise not to repeat himself and indeed the tone of The Psychosexuals, while still being intense as ever with certain moments sure to give a shudder to normie viewers, is noticeably different than the films that came before, the film even containing two of Dark's most random yet hysterically funny bits of dialogue.

The Psychosexuals 2 can lay claim to be Dark's most abstract film. A mighty big statement, not just with the likes of Snake Pit and Shocking Truth in mind but also New Wave Hookers 4 (1995) and The Devil in Miss Jones 5: The Inferno (1995) as well. Unlike the first film, Dark has no time for anything close to a story and while the film might not contain the elaborate production design of his past films, the sheer amount of post-production experimentation with the visuals and editing make the film Dark's most avant-garde and experimental. While not technically “about” anything really, the films focus is the various sexual exploits of a nameless voyeur, Dark repeatedly cutting back to said voyeur in a bondage mask, Dark yet again manages to take the most base formula for an adult video and produce something totally alien. 99.9% of the film is presented in first person, including the sex, Dark showing off his technical trickery even in one of his most threadbare yet oddly stylish in its own way productions, with all the hallucinatory post-production image altering resembling some of the same techniques used by Jess Franco in his later digital films. Like the first film, The Psychosexuals 2 strikes a slightly different tone than the rest of Dark's later 90's self-produced works and sees Dark experimenting even more with the styles he was playing around with in music videos, though the slight discomfort that Dark's adult films have the potential to produce is ever present.    

Along with the heavy music video workload, by 1998 Dark was becoming increasingly frustrated with the adult industry. Although Dark told Psychotronic Video in 1997 that he enjoyed making the films he was doing at the time, Dark was also a longstanding critic of his chosen industry, feeling that too many hardcore directors were content with being boring. Dark is quoted in the Psychotronic piece saying “And as far as straightforward porn... quite frankly, I've never watched anyone's pornography except my own... I just don't know what other people do. I shoot porn according to what I consider professional filmmaking... I try to use odd cutting styles, counterpoints of images, flashing, musical video kind of stuff. See, I don't make porno films just to make money, because I don't make that many porno films. I try to do films I really want to do. And if I stop liking them, then I don't want to do anymore.” That last sentence proved to be prophetic as both Psychosexuals films stand as Dark's last two hardcore titles. Given how late in the game they came, it's unlikely that either will be viewed in the same light as New Wave Hookers (1985), but both films, really all of Dark's adult work from the mid-to-late 90's, showcase a singular talent pushing things as far as he possibly could and really do signify the end of an era.

Living on the Edge (1997)

Speaking to The Railto Report in 2017, Gregory Dark commented on the misleading reputation his adult films have for being sadistic and violent, stating “I think that people, because of the intensity of the scenes and how odd they were and how non-erotic in places they were and how, peculiar so to speak, you would think they were violent but they're much less violent than anything, you know, that I've seen over the last few years. But yet they're stranger than anything I've seen over the last few years.” Indeed, Dark's surrealist sex films always had an unusual intensity to them, quickly gaining a reputation for upping the raunch factor in the sex scenes to the point of being un-erotic, with performers often wearing bizarre costumes and/or animal masks. Dark's total disregard for adult video conventions reached its apex in the 90's with films like Snake Pit (1996) and Shocking Truth (1996) where he began injecting an unnerving psychology to his films, breaking the fourth wall to interview performers before and after sex scenes. Always an incendiary director in one way or another, Dark's later 90's titles have a sinister disposition to them and Dark's film with the biggest attitude problem came in 1997 in the form of the bizarre and spiteful Living on the Edge, where it seems as if Dark's intention was not to arouse viewers, but rather to repulse them.

Opening with a nameless man ranting about what's reality and fantasy to an individual in a donkey costume, Living on the Edge is yet another one of Dark's subversions of the plotless adult video. Not once does Dark attempt to craft a narrative, but just like Shocking Truth, Dark's approach puts the film worlds away from gonzo. If the film has a centerpiece, it's the nameless man who's sole purpose is to berate the performers to their sex scenes, wherein Dark goes out of his way to remove even the slightest trace of eroticism. Just as he did in Shocking Truth, Dark presents the sex devoid of any context or fantasy scenario, though nothing about Dark's imagery is rooted in reality. Although the man in the donkey costume doesn't partake in any of the actual sex, he just wanders in and out of scenes at random like Star Chandler's devil character in the Shocking Truth videos, there is a pretty strong donkey fixation throughout, with several grotesque looking donkey masks being worn at points during the scenes, the nameless man ordering a performer before one such moment to “Dance for the jackass gods!” Despite the rawness of the sex and the overall harsh tone of the film, Living on the Edge never gets quite as grimy as Snake Pit gets in spots but its also not quite as slick and detailed as the first Shocking Truth, Dark once again balances his production value with some of the more unsanitary moments of the film.

Despite being a niche filmmaker in an already fairly niche market, Dark's films had always done good numbers and even got good reviews from AVN, the industry's top trade publication who dubbed Living on the Edge a winner in their brief review of the film, though others at the time felt Dark had finally taken the weird sex a bit too far, some even proving Dark right by misremembering scenes in the film being violent. As strange as it might sound for an adult video reviewer to get offended by anything, the breakdown of the film by the Cyberspace Adult Video Review website come across as just that, with the reviewer puzzled by many of Dark's decisions, even claiming film is too mean to its female performers. Dark himself commented on his reputation, telling Psychotronic Video in 1997 “I suppose you could say I'm somewhat megalomaniacal about my films. I tell the sex stars exactly what to do. I tell the cameraman every move... the performers think I'm heavy-handed. I shoot very, very hard scenes. And I do that to push the envelope of these people's minds." It's worth pointing out that even with all the infamy, some of the biggest adult names of the 80's and 90's worked with Dark numerous times with zero complaints, even Roxanne Hall, who took a break from the industry following Snake Pit, after supposedly being “broken” by her scene, still worked for Dark again in a Melvins video, submerging herself in a bathtub full of worms.

Dark explained his unorthodox approach to adult films in the same Psychotronic piece saying “I just find the whole act of sex to be very peculiar... visually. Even the sounds they make... that's what I try to capitalize on, those moments of oddness... What if the girls were really beautiful and the guys were wearing... duck costumes. How would that be sexy? Or would it be sexy? Maybe if you made it really nasty, that would be sexy? Or would it be nasty and weird? I mean, what exactly would that imply?... There's a lot of things you could do that are kind of disgusting... And what I'm basically trying to do is is explore new directions. How can you discover a new way of finding and exploring of the dark side of sexuality? I mean, this is the kind of question I keep posing to myself... But the films which result aren't always going to be completely erotic because you need to uncover stuff.” Although Dark was nearing the end of his hardcore run, Dark nonetheless continued to find new directions to explore before fully devoting himself to directing music videos. Those accustomed to Dark's warped style of hardcore should find the barbed, albeit noticeably more bitter, tone and deviancy of Living on the Edge to be genuine Dark. Everyone else will be repulsed and possibly genuinely unsettled, much to Dark's delight.

Shocking Truth (1996) / Shocking Truth 2 (1997)

Throughout the 90's when Gregory Dark was pulling double duty in both the hard and softcore worlds, a conscious decision was made to keep the two separate with the “Gregory Dark” moniker reserved strictly for the adult films whereas the erotic thrillers were typically singed with “Gregory Hippolyte” or a variation on said name. Primarily done for marketing purposes, it made sense as Dark's adult films and erotic thrillers are two very different animals, though there are instances where certain parallels can be drawn, the concept of the interview, or interrogation, being a constant obsession of Dark's. Several of Dark's erotic thrillers like Carnal Crimes (1991), Secret Games 2: The Escort (1993) and the Animal Instincts trilogy (1992-1996) all feature their protagonists narrating their tales to an interviewer or breaking the fourth wall and confessing to camera while Body of Influence (1993) approached the confessional angle through a psychoanalytical lens. Dark had previously incorporated interview cutaways in both The Devil in Miss Jones 3 and 4 (1985), though he would bring back the interview in a hardcore context in a big way beginning with Snake Pit (1996), which psychoanalyzed its performers before and after their respective scenes. Dark would once again step into the role of grand interrogator in the Shocking Truth videos, with the interviews coming to the forefront in two of Dark's most challenging and ahead of their time video experiments.

Unlike Snake Pit which, although being one of Dark's most inaccessible and abstract works, did have somewhat of a reoccurring, albeit obscure, thread running through it, with Shocking Truth Dark dispenses with narrative entirely, his focus being squarely on the interviews and sex. Dark's line of questioning is similar to the ones he asked in Snake Pit, the headline question of the former “Do you think you're a slut?” being central to Shocking Truth as well and existential topics like fear and death are broached often. Dark goes even further than he did in Snake Pit however, getting the performers to open up about their families, asking what makes them feel shame and occasionally throwing in a hilariously crass question. Like Snake Pit, Shocking Truth is especially fascinating due to how the performers respond to the questions, some playing it coy and trying to avoid answering honestly while others really got what Dark was attempting and hold nothing back with their answers, getting uncomfortably personal at times. Like Roxanne Hall in Snake Pit, it's Chloe who steals the show in both her interview and subsequent scene and gives the most revealing and worrying response to one of Dark's questions, saying “It's not the darkness outside the scares me, it's the darkness inside that scares me.” Speaking to Psychotronic Video, Dark commented on that particular scene, saying “And her interview is so strange because she's so self-abusive... and she further portrays that self-abusive nature in the sex scene... It was really sort of unpleasant.”

Shocking Truth 2 takes the same approach with a new line of similarly themed questions for a new group of performers and is as equally interesting as the first when it comes to the performer's various responses to Dark's questions. This time around however, Dark opted to shoot the second half of the interviews immediately after the sex scenes have concluded, making the film even more loaded given some of the topics being discussed with many of the interviewees going to some fairly distressing places. While not without style, the production design in second film is dialed back a bit when compared to the first, which had the girls being interviewed on an electric chair, heavy blue lighting at points reminiscent of Dario Argento's Inferno (1980) and a strong voodoo influence with Dark once again dressing up his performers in skeleton and devil costumes. Dark even spliced in footage from voodoo heavy Melvins “Bar-X the Rocking M” video he directed while also taking a visual cue from the album art of Stag, the Melvins album which “Bar-X the Rocking M” appears. The second film does take off where the first one left off in terms of Dark's trademark unorthodox approach to the actual sex which by 1997 had become more intense and deliberately un-erotic, with many scenes veering off into the surreal with performers in animal masks and both films feature adult starlet Star Chandler as a nude Satan-esque character, painted red head-to-toe occasionally wandering into scenes to bark orders at the performers.

Although Dark's videos did consistently good business, Dark speculated on how viewers would react to Shocking Truth, stating in the same Psychotronic piece “But, lets face it, when people rent porno, they want to jerk off, right? Now all of a sudden I'm dealing with a lot of issues, a lot of questions, a lot of commentaries on what we see as sexual and don't see as sexual, and how the starlets relate to what we consider standard morality. And I think this format makes some viewers uncomfortable... When viewers are exposed to questions “What is sin?” or “Where will you go when you die?”, they begin to have thoughts about these things. And I think that's sort of this antithesis of porn in general. But, see, there's such a distinct level of mediocrity in the whole porn market that, in order for me to push the envelope of pornography as it currently exists, I've got to go to these different places.” Dark would continue to go to different places for a few more years before bowing out of hardcore in 1998 to focus on music videos, but his continued ability to find inventive ways of subverting a medium even after what it had become far into the 90's made Dark the last of his kind, with the Shocking Truth films being stand out titles from a period of immense creativity for Dark.

Snake Pit (1996)

Given their radical, surrealist approach to adult films and the fact that both are often labeled as the godfathers of “alt-porn”, the names of Gregory Dark and Stephen Sayadian (Rinse Dream) often seem intrinsically linked. While there are obvious parallels that can be drawn between the two, just like whenever Jess Franco and Jean Rollin or to a lesser extent Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, are held-up alongside each other, the results are the same. Similar in some ways, yet ultimately the styles of both are entirely singular. With that in mind, one undeniable trait that both share is the way in which both, in their own unique ways, managed to subvert what the adult video had become in the 90's when plotless, all-sex gonzo became the industry standard. Sayadian did this brilliantly in both Party Doll a Go-Go! (1991) and Untamed Cowgirls of the Wild West (1993), pulling the rug out from under unsuspecting video store back room patrons expecting typical adult fare. While his films were always out of the ordinary, Dark's work in the mid to late 90's became even more experimental and confrontational with Dark exposing not only the bodies of his performers but their minds as well, a tactic that began with Snake Pit, a fairly extraordinary and at times distressing piece of video art that delivers exactly what it's cover promises, “the ultimate descent into erotic insanity.

Described at the time of its release as a porn take on Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957), it wouldn't be fair to label Snake Pit as 100% plotless, though the film is one of Dark's most abstract, rendering any narrative cohesion obscure from the get-go. Structured around a back alley dice game with toy bones, skeletons and grotesque masks with “Hatman”, as he's billed, being the luckiest player, Dark segues to a sex scene when Hatman dons a new mask. The first thing that stands out about Snake Pit is the grungy, shot-on-video look and feel of the film. Whereas Dark's previous features were notable for their striking and colorful design, Snake Pit is scaled back considerably and as a result feels more prurient and dirty. Being a Dark film, of course the masks from the dice game come into play during the sex scenes and with there being no context to speak of for the actual sex, the addition of the masks makes an already uncomfortably odd film feel slightly more sinister, further subverting the formula of non-narrative sex videos. The film could also be seen as the culmination of the editing techniques Dark had been experimenting with in films like New Wave Hookers 4 (1995) and The Devil in Miss Jones 5: The Inferno (1995) with Dark loading the film with mind altering, almost subliminal cuts that are somewhat reminiscent of the flash cuts utilized by Alain Robbe-Grillet in films like Eden and After (1970) and Successive Slidings of Pleasure (1974).

What makes Snake Pit such a fascinating watch however, are the interview or “interrogation” segments that bookend the sex scenes with Dark getting inside the heads of his performers with a series of questions Dark developed along with a psychologist. Just as his films are worlds removed from standard pornography, the kind of penetrating questions Dark asks go far and beyond the realms of cliché casting couch Q&A's. The question of whether or not the girls in the film see themselves as sluts comes up often, along with more existential questions regarding the nature of evil, what scares the performers or do any of them see themselves going to Hell. It's especially interesting to see how each girl differs in their answers, some a bit more coy than others, some confused while some hold nothing back, almost to the point of concern. Kim Kataine, for instance gives one of the most memorable answers claiming that she doesn't fear Hell as she feels like she's already there, but it's Roxanne Hall that outdoes everyone in both her interview and subsequent sex scene. Among other things, Hall states that she believes it's her destiny to burn in Hell and that she fears herself, knowing that one day she's going to take things too far sexually and die with a smile on her face. “...I brought too many fucked up things out of her fucked up head” Dark told Psychotronic Video. “We were just moving her through her psychological landscape and she just overloaded... went crazy.”

Shorty after Snake Pit, Dark made his first foray into music videos, collaborating with the brilliant band the Melvins, directing the video for “Bar-X the Rocking M” off the masterful Stag album. Much of the videos imagery is informed by Snake Pit, including multiple instances of a dancing Hatman, the band playing a similar game with the same bones and skeletons as in Snake Pit and most startlingly, flashes of Roxanne Hall submerged in a bathtub full of worms, extended scenes of Hall featuring in the full uncut version of the video that played in select night clubs. Hall would take an extended break from adult films following Snake Pit, though she didn't think twice about doing the Melvins video with Dark. “...I didn't push her too hard in this video” Dark joked to Psychotronic Video in 1997. Dark said of the Melvins video “I really believe it's the best piece of film I've made in eight years, even though it's the first music video I've done”, though it was soon to become a full-time gig for Dark as the 90's drew to a close. Dark would incorporate flashes of the Melvins video in his follow-up to Snake Pit, Shocking Truth (1996), which would also take the interview concept even further, dispensing with narrative entirety, Dark fully taking on the role of psychoanalyst and pushing the psychological comfort levels of adult video viewers.

Sex Freaks / Flesh (1996)

It might seem strange to refer to an adult film distribution company as “conservative”, even stranger when when said company has released films from the likes of Stephen Sayadian, John Leslie and Gregory Dark, yet “conservative” is exactly the term Dark used when describing VCA. From Let Me Tell Ya 'bout White Chicks (1984) to The Devil in Miss Jones 5: The Inferno (1995), VCA was Dark's main distributor, with the second half of the infamous Dark Bros team being Walter Gernert or “Walter Dark”, a co-owner of VCA. Despite this, Dark has gone on record saying that he and VCA CEO, the late Russell Hampshire, often butted heads, with Hampshire never really “getting” Dark's work, his radical approach to adult films being the antithesis of the classic type of eroticism Hampshire was used to. While being interviewed in 1997 by Psychotronic Video, Dark claimed “...I think Russ Hampshire is concerned about making good movies when he can... I just want to explore visual imagery which VCA doesn't find particularly erotic.” Following The Devil in Miss Jones 5, Dark formed his own production company, Dark Works, securing distribution through Evil Angel (just as the aforementioned Leslie had done around the same time) and came out of the gate swinging in 1996 with Sex Freaks and Flesh, two films which saw Dark taking his already renegade style into stranger, more perverse and confrontational territory.

One of his last attempts at anything resembling a narrative, Sex Freaks centers on Julio Midnight (Rip Hymen) the owner of an avant-garde performance theater who answers to Lips, literally a set of lips (belonging to Sharon Kane) on a TV screen that gives Julio his orders. Using a voodoo-esque type of hypnosis aided by Barbie looking dolls, Julio lures everyday citizens to his theater to perform in surreal sex shows, after which they are turned into upstanding citizens, though Julio soon meets his match in Sweat Meat, who's fierce sexuality transfixes Julio, rendering his methods of control impotent.

Given that most of the sex in Sex Freaks is presented as performance art pieces, the obvious film to compare it to would be Stephen Sayadian's Cafe Flesh (1982), but just as Cafe Flesh is unmistakably a Sayadian film, everything about Sex Freaks is quintessentially Gregory Dark. Being one of the first of his own Dark Works productions, Dark's typically crass attitude even more pronounced here. Always an outrageous visualist, Dark outdoes even himself here, with sex scenes featuring performers dressed as giant bugs, clowns and skeletons, the later becoming more prominent in Dark's next few films, Sex Freaks is certainly one of Dark's most visually accomplished works and the last of his adult features to be shot on film. Dark also outdoes himself when it comes to offending every special interest group possible with the film taking barbed shots at feminism, one feminist performance artist's act in the film being titled “The Importance of Being a Filthy Fucking Whore”, and pretentious artist types who, as Hymen puts it in the film, are “staunchly conservative in their liberalism”. There's also a curious exchange of dialogue between Hymen and the previously mentioned feminist performance artist regarding the first amendment, and Dark's jabs at the censorious anti-porn feminist types and “staunchly conservative liberals” make the film even more relevant than it was in 1996. Never shy about racial content, Dark once again obliterates any and all taboo with Hymen wearing blackface and a group of masturbating, sex act viewing onlookers in Fu Manchu like get-up's.

Flesh, although narrative based, is a much looser affair. Held up in a hotel room, Eric Shank (Tom Byron), a hitman on an assassination mission, is late in getting the job done, much to the annoyance of his superior who continuously berates Shank. A resting Shank is soon overtaken by an altar-ego, Nipples the Clown, who “broadcasts” bizarre sexual scenarios into Shank's head causing an already on-edge Shank to slip further into a state of sexual psychosis.

One of Dark's more insular films, there are times where Flesh comes across as a surreal stage play, with the film playing out on a limited number of sets. Given that most of the sex is presented as Shank's hallucinations, technically the story never really leaves Shank's hotel room, though the whole story of Shank's job is essentially window dressing, this being a hardcore Dark affair it becomes apparent very quickly what the main focus is going to be. Despite this, Dark does achieve a nice feeling of paranoid claustrophobia during the moments of Byron alone in his room and Byron certainly holds nothing back in his portrayal of his prurient, face-painted altar-ego, his dialogue as Nipples featuring several of Dark's cynical musings on sex. In a lot of ways Dark can be compared to Jess Franco in that both drank from their own personal wells time and again and more often than not, did so in a way that didn't feel lazy and that's certainly the case with Flesh and the sex scenes. While it doesn't reach the heights of Sex Freaks, the sex in Flesh is about as far removed from what would be considered typical adult fare. Clowns have always been a go-to visual for Dark but voodoo based, graveyard imagery is once again used as a backdrop and while much more scaled back than Sex Freaks with Dark going back to shooting on video, the staging of the sex does make the film an appropriate follow-up to Sex Freaks.

The voodoo influence in both films stems from Dark's childhood and his anthropologist father. In the Psychotronic Video piece mentioned above, Dark recalled “My father was also an occultist, very interested in the works of Aleister Crowley. He used to sing me voodoo songs in French when I was a child, so I pretty much grew up with it... Then when I was around ten, I heard he disappeared mysteriously in Haiti. So naturally I became more interested in occultism as I grew older. My mother tried to get me away from the voodoo thing, but I started getting back into it at age eleven and just remained interested in it. People look at the voodoo religion the same way they do ritual magic, as if it's evil. But it's just as gray as everything else – neither good nor bad.” Speaking specifically about Sex Freaks, Dark said “Yeah, there's some symbolism there. I'm still very interested in the voodoo religion. With the dolls there's sort of this sympathetic magical relationship between the human and the artifact of the human. Rip Hymen's character is very much like a Maldoror type of person...” It's an influence that would become even stronger in Dark's subsequent video projects, though Sex Freaks and Flesh ushered in a new, more free period for Dark, giving political correctness and adult video conventions a defiant middle finger in the process.  

The Devil in Miss Jones 3-5 (1986-1995)

Sequels have long been one of the most parodied aspects of adult film and justifiably so, with there being thousands of gonzo adult videos released as part of numerous series who's entry numbers are into the double digits. Even some of greats were susceptible of falling into the never-ending sequel trap given the various changes the adult industry throughout the years. For instance John Leslie's Voyeur series lasting for 37 entries before Leslie's death in 2010. Still, much like mainstream films, there are instances of adult sequels that break the mold, even if they're destined to be overshadowed by their predecessors. One of the most crucial and influential titles from the “golden age” of porn or “porno chic”, Gerard Damiano's The Devil in Miss Jones (1973), first got a sequel in 1982 from Henri Pachard in which star Georgina Spelvin returned to the titular role of Justine Jones. Four years later the series would take a drastically different turn under the direction of Gregory Dark with The Devil in Miss Jones 3: A New Beginning and its immediate follow-up The Devil in Miss Jones 4: The Final Outrage. Dark would return to the franchise years later with The Devil in Miss Jones 5: The Inferno, which once again saw Dark putting Justine Jones through his warped vision of the underworld while continuing to take the adult video into more bizarre and difficult territories.

Following a terrific opening credits sequence set to the infectious tune of the Gleaming Spires “A Christian Girls Problems”, A New Beginning introduces a new variation on the character of Justine Jones. After an argument with her cheating boyfriend, Justine (Lois Ayres) hits the town and brings home a despondent groom (Paul Thomas) who was dumped at the altar, though their rendezvous is cut short when Justine hits her head on the headboard, breaking her neck. Awakening to total darkness, Justine is greeted by Negro (Jack Baker), welcoming her into Hell. Not believing any of it, Negro informs Justine of a way out, a treacherous trek through the various sexual perversities of Hell.

New Wave Hookers (1985) may be the film Dark will be best remembers for, but there's a strong case to be made for The Devil in Miss Jones 3 being his finest work. Perhaps no other hardcore film of Dark's best represents just how different and innovative a filmmaker Dark is and just how much he stood out from his contemporaries working in the adult field in the 80's. The only possible comparison being Stephen Sayadian's Nightdreams (1981) and Cafe Flesh (1982), with Dark's immaculate production design fully embracing the artifice of his unique vision of Hell, each new scenario Justine is either witness to or a participant in being more arresting than the last. Equally eye-popping is leading lady Lois Ayres, who's “new wave hooker” look and irritable mood are in perfect synchronicity with Dark's “fuck you” attitude. Always an incendiary filmmaker, the film feels even more daring the older it gets, the racially charged barbs hurled back and forth between Ayres and Baker are sure to have some blushing more than the outrageous, oftentimes taboo shattering sexual content. Both play off each other brilliantly, virtually every line of dialogue uttered by Baker and Aryes responses being hysterically funny, though the film is also a who's who of some of the biggest names in the adult field of the time like Tom Byron, the previously mentioned Paul Thomas, Amber Lynn, and Vanessa Del Rio who, in one of the films most unforgettable scenes, finds herself ravaged by a gang of rat men.

Shot as one long film but split up into two releases, The Final Outrage continues where A New Beginning left off with Justine continuing her trek through Hell. Dark takes the racial element even further with a specific section of Hell, “the racist room”, designated for individuals condemned to fornicate with those they felt superior too while living and later in the film Dark obliterates a specific taboo that, while hardly rare in adult films, is approached in a manner so blunt, very few if any other directors would have the nerve to attempt. Part 4 also carries over another, crucial aspect that featured prominently in the third and which would become a staple in Dark's films, the interview concept. Throughout both films, there are numerous cutaways to interviews or testimonials with various people from Justine's life, each giving their impressions of what kind of person she truly was. These segments are equally funny and bizarre as the rest of the film and while character development wasn't exactly Dark's main priority with the films, they do serve to make that previously mentioned taboo scenario all the more perverse. The idea of the interview, or “interrogation”, is one of the few parallels that can be drawn between Dark's hardcore work and his erotic thrillers, with several of his softcore protagonists “confessing” the narrative to either an interviewer or directly to the camera and later hardcore works like Snake Pit (1996) and the Shocking Truth (1996-'97) films being centered around interviews with the female performers.

The Inferno, the fifth in the series and the last to be directed by Dark, is also the most surreal and abstract. While the film is built around the premise of yet another recently deceased Justine Jones, played by an almost entirely silent Juli Ashton, being thrust into a variety of sexual scenarios by Satan himself, this time played with scene chewing gusto by non-sex Dark favorite Rip Hymen in an absurd devil costume, Dark takes the same approach as he did with New Wave Hookers 4 (1995), nearly dispensing with narrative altogether in favorite of a Dante-inspired tableaux of highly imaginative and immaculately designed sex scenes. While not as charged as the third and forth films in terms of sensitive subject matter, Dark does take some none-too-subtle shots at feminism, with Hymen describing Justine as a virtuous drag and if the name Justine didn't already make it obvious, the influence of the Marquis de Sade is apparent in all the films and perhaps moreso in The Inferno, with Justine's “initiation” into the various sexual proclivities of the underworld being very Sadean in nature. Like New Wave Hookers 4, The Inferno was shot on video and finds Dark using the format to become even more experimental with editing, the film being the most delirious of Dark's entries in the series, making use of music video-esque quick cuts that would only become more pronounced in Dark's future adult videos and it would only be a year later that Dark began directing actual music videos.

While speaking to Psychotronic Video in 1997, Dark explained DMJ5 by saying “In a sense, DMJ5 is sort of the concept of the tarot card as a joke, the devil as a jokester manipulating reality through media images. Media images really interest me so we worked that into the script.” The Inferno was also the end of the line for Dark and VCA, who had been his distributor since his first adult feature with the second half of the Dark Bros. duo being Walter Gernert, AKA Walter Dark, co-owner at VCA. In the same Psychotronic piece, Dark explained “I probably could have sat down with VCA and worked it out... VCA's attitudes about music, content and dialogue are very conservative. And in my films it's not that I want to denigrate or be misogynistic so much. I just want to explore visual imagery which VCA doesn't find particularly erotic. My stuff is about, visual interesting shit with sex going on. It's not necessarily about eroticism.” It's precisely that attitude that made gave Dark's adult films their reputation. Being sequels to one of the biggest titles of the porno chic era, The Devil in Miss Jones sequels are perhaps going to be overshadowed by the legendary first film, but Dark's three films in the series stand as some of his best work with the fifth film leading to a new chapter in his career.

New Wave Hookers 2-4 (1991-1995)

Terms like “trailblazer” and “pioneer” tend be awarded rather liberally but in the case of director Gregory Dark, they're more than earned. With a body of work consisting of adult films, softcore erotic thrillers, a horror film starring a WWE superstar and music videos for acts ranging from the Melvins to Brittney Spears, Dark's career trajectory has been as idiosyncratic as anyone in the entertainment industry could hope to have. While directing the adult industry centered documentary Fallen Angels (1985), Dark became convinced that he could make a better adult film than any of the people he was interviewing, so he did. Much like Stephen “Rinse Dream” Sayadian had done a few years prior with Nightdreams (1981) and Cafe Flesh (1982), Dark's films changed the perception of how adult films looked and sounded with colorful, surreal visuals and scenarios and contemporary soundtracks. Dark made history from the very beginning with Let Me Tell Ya 'bout White Chicks (1984), one of the very first interracial sex films, but it was New Wave Hookers (1985) where Dark really changed the game. Easily transcending the Tracy Lords controversy that surrounded it, the film is widely considered one of the best films of its kind, though it wasn't until 1991 did Dark returned to his most famous title and two more sequels under Dark's direction would follow with Dark's avant-garde tendencies becoming more pronounced with each sequel.

Taking the idea of using new wave music to program women to become prostitutes from the first film to even stranger places, New Wave Hookers 2 follows “L” (Rip Hymen, a frequent non-sex actor in Dark's hardcore features), a cult deprogrammer who's just apprehended Kimberly (Madison), a prostitute involved with the “Cult of Willie”, run by its namesake (Jack Baker), a pimp who keeps his girls under control by playing hypnosis-inducing music before sending them out to turn tricks. Throughout his interrogation of Kimberly, L learns how the Cult of Willie operates, though is in for a major shock upon discovering Willie is at the mercy of a bigger, much more dangerous operation.

While the general New Wave Hookers premise of using music to hypnotize women into prostitution is outlandish in itself, Dark ups the bizarre ante considerably with New Wave Hookers 2. The idea of the music technique being appropriated by a pimp, a typically hilariously on-point Jack Baker, who holds sermons for his girls reading from “the good book”, Pimp by Iceberg Slim, makes for an already berserk scenario, Dark outdoes himself with a twist involving a cabal of women from the lost city of Atlantis hellbent on world domination. A standout film in a year ripe with unusual adult fare like Sayadian's Nightdreams sequels, PartyDoll a Go-Go! as well as John Leslie's Curse of the Catwoman and Laying the Ghost, New Wave Hookers 2 is a film Dark himself has claimed as a favorite of his own adult works. Still shooting on film, New Wave Hookers 2 is one of Dark's most colorful, with the visuals matching the story in the lunacy department, with Dark's sex scenes consisting of men in Phantom of the Opera-esque masks on leashes and human lamps, eroticism seeming like an afterthought. Dark also opens the film the same as the first, with a montage of the films female talent set to the Plugz “Electrify Me”, the theme of the series. Along with Madison, the top-shelf ensemble includes the likes of Savanna and Patrica Kennedy as well as Peter North, Randy Spears and Randy West, giving the film some casting ties with the aforementioned Sayadian and Leslie features.

Only slightly less outlandish but still outrageous is the narrative Dark concocted for New Wave Hookers 3 (1993). The film opens with John Baxter (Jon Dough), addressing the audience via video from Heaven where despite being dead, he's happy as a successful pimp and proceeds to tell the story of how he got where he is. In desperate need of money, John proposes to his beautiful wife Tiffany (Crystal Wilder) that she begin selling herself to bring in extra funds. In need of business advice, John turns to Sol (Rocco Siffredi), a shifty lawyer who informs John of a “deep house”, a brothel where women are programmed to have sex for money with the aid of musical earpiece. Tiffany is coaxed into going and John's plan works, though he begins to regret it once Tiffany starts charging him for sex and Helen (Tiffany Million), the head mistress of the deep house, affectionately known as “Boss Mama”, grows more and more fond of Tiffany due to her resemblance to a past lover and hatches a sinister plan to keep Tiffany all to herself.

With a nearly two hour run time, New Wave Hookers 3 is certainly the most involving film of the series script wise, with Dark somehow managing to work in a fairly damn endearing story of marriage into yet another spin on the central New Wave Hookers ingredient. Being a Dark film, of course the film was incendiary by design and it's not as if he gives anyone in the film a truly happy ending in the classic sense of the term, but there is something about the Baxter's that has a certain sweetness to it and Dark's warped sense of humor is ever present. The film is also notable in that it was one of three Dark hardcore features made during the same year that Dark also directed four exceptional softcore erotic thrillers, and while Dark himself deliberately tried to keep the two separated, with New Wave Hookers 3 there does seem to be a bit of overlap with Dark's Secret Games films with the central theme being prostitution, and the fourth wall breaking video playback was a crucial element in Secret Games 2: The Escort. Visually though, New Wave Hookers 3 is unquestionably a hardcore Gregory Dark film. The Phantom of the Opera masks return, Dark spruces up a sex scene with a bed with an imposing chain link headboard and the films most memorable image, as so wonderfully uttered by Wilder in the film, a “gaggle of quacking duckmen”, one of the most brilliantly deranged instances of Dark utilizing animal masks.

The most abstract and surreal entry in the series and one of Dark's strangest as a whole which is quite a feat, New Wave Hookers 4 (1995) is as different from the previous films as possible. While the opening credits is in a similar style to the previous three films, gone is “Electrify Me”. Also gone is the hypnotic music device, or any attempt at telling a straightforward story. If New Wave Hookers 4 is “about” anything, the sexual scenarios seem to all be from the imagination/hallucinations of an institutionalized midget named “Half-Pint” talking to himself in a mirror, opining on the nature of women, sex and prostitution. The inmates appear to be running the asylum as the doctor observing Half-Pint (Jon Dough) fancies himself a frog, ribbiting in-between his observations. Dark does ultimately bookend the film the way it began, but at the time New Wave Hookers 4 was Dark at his most unhinged and provoking. Dark had never catered to the trappings of conventional adult films but New Wave Hookers 4 was a different type of film even for Dark and would be a sign of things to come when Dark would go even more free-form. Deliriously seguing from one scene to the next, arousal seems to be the furthest thing from Dark's mind, with Dark dressing his male performers up as clowns, dogs, puts bird cages on their heads and in the films most infamous scene, two performers in seal costumes beg for fish on a set of ice blocks.

Following New Wave Hookers 4, several other sequels followed, though Dark had no involvement in any of them. There was even a reboot of sorts with Neu Wave Hookers (2006). New Wave Hookers 4 was also one of the last films Dark made for VCA, who had produced and distributed the series as well as Dark's other hardcore films with Walter Gernert, a co-owner at VCA, being “Walter Dark”, the second half of the infamous Dark Brothers. After leaving VCA, Dark formed his own production company, Dark Works, and secured distribution though Evil Angel, his subsequent adult work following the template set by New Wave Hookers 4, becoming more abstract, confrontational and uncomfortable, pushing the sex as well as the slick, music video style editing into even more challenging territories. Speaking to Hustler's Erotic Video guide and quoted in Psychotonric Video magazine in 1997, Dark philosophized a bit on New Wave Hookers series saying “One of the key ideas running through the New Wave Hookers series is the transference of power, inverting the normal situation and turning the male into the sex object.” While the first New Wave Hookers will perhaps always be the film Dark is most well known for, the second, third and forth films are classics in their own right, each showcasing the talents of one of the most original and innovative artists to ever work in the adult medium.