Secret Games Trilogy (1992-1994)

Along with being two of the most ghettoized genres, despite being successful audience favorites, the erotic thriller and horror genres share a few interesting characteristics. While many actors, directors and writers have used both genres as starting points and quickly moved away from the genre, many found themselves becoming specialists and icons in their fields and became associated with the genre. Although associated more with horror, sequels are another parallel between horror and the erotic thriller. Curiously, it took 14 years for one of the genres biggest titles, Basic Instinct (1992), to get a sequel, and it remains the only studio erotic thriller from the genre's 90's heyday to receive a sequel. The direct-to-video market however thrived on sequels throughout the 90's with many films inadvertently spawning franchises. Adult auteur Gregory Dark was one director who quickly proved himself an erotic thriller specialist, being at the forefront of the DTV erotic thriller explosion with Carnal Crimes (1991) and he would eventually become the master of the DTV sequel as well with Mirror Images (1992) being followed by an excellent 1993 sequel and Animal Instincts (1992) becoming a trilogy. Although a number of the key obsessions that would define Dark's erotic thrillers were established in Carnal Crimes, it was the follow-up, Secret Games, where Dark really found his groove with Secret Games perfecting the “bored housewife” scenario and spawning a trilogy of its own.

Despite living a leisurely life, Julianne Langford as grown increasingly frustrated with her husband Mark (Billy Drago) paying more attention to his cushy job than her. Following the advice of her friend Sandy, Julianne introduces Sandy to Celeste (Delia Sheppard), a madame for high class escorts operating out of a lavish mansion who informs Julianne that she can be anything and anyone she wants to be should she join Sandy and the other girls under Celeste's wing. Reluctant at first, Julianne eventually indulges herself, giving herself the name “Arianna” and soon meets Eric (Martin Hewitt), one of Celeste's biggest spenders. In spite of the Celeste's warnings to never become attached, Julianne becomes smitten, and Eric seems to be as well, returning numerous times to see Julianne, though the fairytale soon turns dark when Eric reveals his possessive nature and his intent to keep Julianne all to himself, preparing to take out anyone who becomes an obstacle.

A seminal film for not just Dark but for the direct-to-video erotic thriller as a whole, Secret Games could be seen as the perfect distillation of everything that placed Dark's erotic thrillers a notch above other films in the genre. Dark may have had all his main ideas in place with Carnal Crimes, but Secret Games is where everything gets smoothed out and a mythology of sorts begins to develop that runs through both the Secret Games sequels as well as several of Dark's future erotic thrillers. For the first Secret Games, Dark takes the influence of one of his favorite films, Luis Buñuel's Belle de Jour (1967), and crafts his own signature take on prostitution (which would become the driving force of the future Secret Games sequels), the bored, affluent housewife, voyeurism and out-of-control fantasies, variations of which would soon be at the center of films like Animal Instincts and Mirror Images. Just as Dark's themes are slightly more polished in Secret Games, the same could be said of characterization as well with Martin Hewitt's Eric being the quintessential erotic thriller villain. While future Dark heels like Woody Brown in Secret Games 3 would brilliantly channel rage and frustration and were much more physical, Hewitt is much more understated and slyly sinister. The surreal influence of Buñuel also manifests in the form of religious based dreams and note that the style of such fantasy scenes in Dark's erotic thrillers is more opulent than the abrasive surreal imagery found in Dark's adult films.

When the time came for a Secret Games sequel, Dark carried over the prostitution theme, but the film itself was wildly different from the first, focusing not on a bored housewife but rather a husband, Kyle Lake (Hewitt), an ex-critic turned out-of-work performance artist who's sex life with his professor wife Heather has long lost whatever spark it once had. While Heather goes out of town, Kyle calls an escort service and after meeting high-end call girl Stacey, Kyle quickly begins to fall in love with her, but also begins an affair with Irene, a potential home-buyer interested in buying Kyle's house. Falling harder for Stacey and trying to dissuade Irene's romantic intentions, Kyle documents his thoughts on video, breaking the fourth wall and delivering monologues to the camera, musing on the concepts of love and sex.

The best film of the trilogy and one of the best films from Dark's softcore cycle, Secret Games 2: The Escort stands out from both the other Secret Games films as well as most of Dark's other softcore films in a few ways. The first and most obvious being that it's actually not an erotic thriller, but rather a blistering erotic psychodrama. The second, and more important difference being the film is male-centric. By and large, most of Dark's erotic thrillers earn the “women's picture” tag with the majority of the storylines focusing on a female main character and more often than not in Dark's softcore films, female sexuality is at the center. Secret Games 2 is the complete opposite and it's perhaps because of that that the tone of the film is noticeably more sinister. Dark always had a fairly jaundiced take on romance and sex in both his hardcore and softcore work but even still Secret Games 2 is an angry, bitter film that once again see's Dark presenting marriage in a less-than-ideal light, but Dark has much more to say about the relationship game in general and does so in a fascinatingly experimental manner via Hewitt's home video monologues, foreshadowing Dark's own Shocking Truth (1996-'97) videos somewhat. Dark also brilliantly plays a secret game of his own with the editing, waiting for just the right moment to reveal a timeline swerve, really hammering home just how easily both sexes can confuse sex with love and use each as a weapon.

When Dark turned the series into a trilogy, he returned to the first film for inspiration, essentially telling the same story with some additional tweaks and giving the louse husband a different job, a doctor this time around, Alex Larson, who's demanding job keeps him away from the new home he just bought with his wife Diana (Rochelle Swanson). Growing increasingly fed up with Alex canceling plans and outright neglecting her in general, Diana takes the advice of her new neighbor and accompanies her to the home of Ruthie, a high class madame. Like Julianne in the first film, Diana can't bring herself to go through with it at first, though eventually gives into temptation and soon becomes the favorite of Terrell (Woody Brown), one of Ruthie's highest paying, albeit most mysterious customers. Terrell's affections however soon cross the line as he begins to terrorize Dianna, making her his plaything in a twisted psyschosexual game and posing a threat to those around her.

Despite the plot similarities with the first film, Secret Games 3 is actually a superior film in a few areas. This time around Dark puts the fractured marriage front and center, heightening the drama and tension once the film really kicks into thriller gear. The film also feels much more like a mean thriller than the first film thanks to the physicality of Woody Brown. While Martin Hewiett was brilliant as the villainous Eric in the first Secret Games, his approach was more laid back and low key. Very snakelike. Brown by contrast is brute force. It's not that Brown is all histrionics. Quite the opposite, in fact his calmer moments are some of his most chilling, it's just that his characters for Dark are always holding in years of rage and are always on the verge of exploding with violence. It's the same bottled up aggression Brown brought to his role in Animal Instincts 2, Dark's softcore magnum opus, the same year. Dark also gives Terrell a much more credibly dangerous background and the climax of the film is certainty some of Dark's most outright violent this side of his slasher film See No Evil (2006). Although Dark sets aside the surreal, Buñuel influenced religious based fantasy scenes from the first film, the two bookend bathtub scenes, along with being quintessential additions to any erotic thriller, do leave some things open to interpretation, a rather brilliant move by Dark at the last minute to further set the film apart from the original.

Dark himself was open about the Belle de Jour influence. Speaking to Psychotronic Video in 1997, Dark described the first Secret Games as “Sort of a Belle de Jour, that's what it was based on, more or less. A little surreal, it was sort of a cross between Belle de Jour, Emmanuelle and a Chanel commercial”. Dark again mentioned Buñuel's film in his excellent Rialto Report interview, even mentioning the giant Spanish poster for the film he has hanging in his living room. The first film is also notable in Dark's erotic thriller cycle for being the first Dark softcore film to feature former Penthouse pet Delia Sheppard who would take the lead in Mirror Images, play a critical role in Dark's Night Rhythms (1992) and appear once again in Animal Instincts. In the same Psychotronic piece, Dark opined on Secret Games 2 saying “There's a great deal of menace in that film... I looked at the film about a month ago, and quite honestly, I think it's a lot more interesting than most of the stuff put out by folks doing this shit.” Indeed, and in truth the same could be said of the entire trilogy which is why all three stood out in their day and over 20 years later still stand as an example of how higher a caliber Dark's softcore works were in the grand scheme of 90's erotica.

Carnal Crimes (1991)

If the erotic thriller were to be analyzed through a Gartner Hype Cycle, the genre could currently be seen as experiencing its “Slope of Enlightenment”. Time has revealed the erotic thriller to offer much more than it was ever given credit for during its heyday or “Peak of Inflated Expectations”. Little wonder (Or perhaps it's ironic?) then the genre and its complex depictions of sexuality are finally starting to gain appreciation again when the prevailing attitudes towards the types of sexuality, particularly female sexuality, seen in 90's erotic thrillers seem increasingly illiberal. While legends like Paul Verhoeven and William Friedkin owned the big-budget studio side of the genre with benchmarks like Basic Instinct (1992) and Jade (1995), even more fascinating was the direct-to-video/late night cable area, the undisputed champion of which was Gregory Dark. After revolutionizing adult films with his outrageous and surreal style, Dark, along with producer Walter Gernert, AKA Walter Dark, the second half of the Dark Bros, noticed a niche to be filled in the marketplace for sexually charged, noir-based potboilers a good year before Basic Instinct. The erotic thrillers made by Dark from 1991 to 1996 represent the very best the genre has to offer. The genesis of them all, Carnal Crimes, saw Dark was already confident in the ideas he wanted to explore with his softcore films as he found himself becoming an auteur in a new medium. 

Despite her attorney husband Stanley being an overweight, neglectful louse, Stanley's wife Elise is desperate to bring back some spark in their long defunct love-life, though she fails to turn Stanley's attention away from his work. Something changes in Elise when Stanley introduces her to Renny (Martin Hewitt), a mysterious photographer with a penchant for sadomasochistic imagery at an exhibit of Renny's work. Immediately taken by something in Renny, Elise soon finds herself in Renny's shop and not long after outside his apartment fire escape, beginning an affair that briefly fills the void in Elise's romantic life. The fling quickly takes a turn for the dangerous when Elise becomes aware of Renny's past, suddenly finding herself the central player in a twisted game.

Despite being the first in what would eventually total fourteen erotic thrillers for Dark, very little of Carnal Crimes feels like a first time go-around with virtually all the obsessions Dark would explore in his subsequent softcore films on display. By and large, a lot of the themes in Dark's erotic thrillers are are fairly representative of the direct-to-video erotic thriller as a whole like bored, affluent wives embarking on affairs with potentially dangerous men, voyeurism and sprinkles of sadomasochism. Dark, however, always took each of those ideas and turned them on their heads and even at this early stage, Dark is already finding ways to subvert them. Like most of Dark's erotic thrillers, Carnal Crimes is very much a “women's picture” with the female at the dead center of the story and Dark giving extra attention to psychology, more specifically psychosexuality, with a genuinely surprising late in the game twist that wouldn't feel out of place in a Sergio Martino giallo, making the film, and the way certain characters are perceived, all the more interesting. By his own admission, Dark's erotic thrillers were never “sex positive” and right from the beginning with Carnal Crimes there is a fascination with supposed adults failing to properly handle their desires. The married life also isn't presented in a very warm light in Dark's softcore films from the put upon wife's point of view, something which began here with Carnal Crimes, Dark brilliantly using the twist to reveal even more secrets hidden between Stanley and Elise.

Dark has long credited himself with the explosion of erotic thrillers in the 90's. During a 1997 interview with Psychotronic Video, Dark claimed “I sincerely believe I started it in this country. Zalman Kin is credited with it, but I did Carnal Crimes way before his stuff. I was developing Carnal Crimes in '89, and there were no erotic thrillers in the US at that time. My softcore films are really not so much underground. I mean, Hollywood tries to rip me off in wholesale fashion as often as they can. Carnal Crimes was my first bored housewife feature, where the heroin gets involved with the “wrong” guy”... Dark described leading lady Linda Carroll as “very pretty” and “very strange”, telling Psychotronic “I saw her sitting outside of this casting call, and she was so strange... had this bizarre energy that I can't quite describe. I thought she might be right for this character. But she was quite difficult to work with and proved me wrong”. With the Secret Games (1991-94) and Animal Instincts (1992-96) trilogies plus films like Night Rhythms (1992) and Body of Influence (1993) following in quick succession, Carnal Crimes, being the first of Dark's softcore thrillers, might get overshadowed by Dark's thrillers that followed, but the film is a crucial stepping stone in Dark's career and being his first in the genre, a crucial and frankly, essential erotic thriller.

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.