Lowbrow adult movies once constituted a major chunk of Montreal's cinema fare, as dimly-lit 18-and-over joints exploded across towns in the 1970s.
Nowadays only such solitary place exists, the Cinema L'Amour on the Main (formerly The Pussycat) and it's seen as a lovable throwback.
But these friendless, secretive and lonely places emerged and persevered in spite of disapproval from residents and authorities.
The first such establishments cropped up under the reign of Mayor Jean Drapeau, a savvy veteran whose entire reputation was built on fighting smut and crime.
But Drapeau's prudish ways were challenged by a massive baby boom demographic who embraced sex and drugs and rock and roll, and weren't keen on having their appetites limited by middle aged humbugs.
Drapeau was brazen in his opposition to such films asQuiet Days in Clichy, which he obsessed over days after the much more important October Crisis of 1970. He also offered free publicity by fretting about the visiting topless African Ballet and singer Muriel Millard for her midriff poster slapped on construction sites around town.
Quebec adopted three categorizations for films in 1967: For All, 14 and Over and 18 and Over. The grown up designation suggested naughtiness and nudity at the very least
The Bureau de surveillance du cinema replaced the old-time censors and the board saw its priority as being to allow adults to watch what they liked and ensure that young people don't get to see the same naughtiness.
Montreal had no dedicated porn theatres in 1968 although something called the Cinema Underground (Revue Theatre) offered A trip in Erotica, while the mainstream Snowdon played the Danish- SwedishI, A Woman for four months before authorities shut it down and attempted to fine the theatre, a fiasco that dragged on until 1974 when all charges were finally dropped.
Judging by the oft-obscure internet traces of these forgotten films, viewers required a high tolerance for boredom. It must have been hard not to doze off in those dark and lonely seats, as the sexual titillation, which was, by all measure, scarce.
Montrealers Andre Link and John Dunning started churning out daring movies, starting with Valerie, about a girl who meets her true love after leaving the convent and becoming a hippie prostitute. Dunning and Link would go on and the spectacularly crazy Ilsa She Wolf of the SS.
Valerie played to an 18-and-over crowd at the Parisien, so the line between art and sexploitation was still being drawn.
Other adult-sounding films playing in Montreal the time were the Miracle de l'amour at the Canadien and the Plaza. Les Filles de Plaisir at the Mercier, andI am Curious Yellowat the Festival theatre.
The films only suggested sex and offered brief flashes of passing nudity, or simulated sex at best. They were packaged as European art films or educational, so Montrealers who furtively slunk into Sexual Freedom in Denmark had to sit through a lot of people being interviewed in the streets of Copenhagen. Eventually the director gets to the part showing a half dozen blondes frolicking around on a bed. It played at 5117 Park Ave.
***
What went on inside Montreal's porno theatres? That remains a dark-roomed mystery. According to David Simon's hit TV series The Deuce, prostitutes patrolled offering their services in Manhattan porn theatres. No records of such activities are apparent in Montreal, (although older Montreal gays report that certain theatres were hotspots for quickies).
By 1972 certain theatres were become enshrined as dedicated smut joints but many mainstream theatres were playing adult fare. The Seduction of Inga was at the Bonaventure, The Big Bird Cage was at The Capitol and Suburban Wives at the Salle Hermes of Cinema V.
That year in New York Deep Throat came out and featured much explicit oral sex. It became a massive hit and fodder for chinwags, but the film would never play Montreal, which led some to complain that the Montreal was being prudish.
The actual theatres were naturally, already movie theatres before porno came. They simply needed business after business plummeted with the arrival of TV. The owners cannot be blamed for trying to stay afloat in the face of obvious impending doom.
In spite of the enticing newspaper ads, the movies were dull, at least from what we can tell from the online video snippets. For example Smoke and Flesh at the Eros seems to have no nudity but for a girl who loses at strip poker and runs up the stairs, Justine de Sade seems even tamer.
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One young entrepreneur, McGill student Robert Lantos, made the shrewd move of seizing on the low-effort-high-profit formula by getting rights to The Best of the New York Erotic Film Festival. It was hot stuff at the time but a more recent viewer commented, "No film has bored me this much."
By 1973 the porn theatres had become a staple that passersby didn't even notice, even with long-running films like "La Sexualite chez les adolescentes," which played at Plaza K Mart and the Omega.
La Presse bemoaned the wave of smut as one editorial bemoaned in 1973 that "Montreal police made so many mistakes (Ballets Africains, I, A Woman) that they seemed to have let go the handle after the axe."
Porn theatres were slugging it out against the Kung Fu movie fad of 1976 as Raquels Motel a film made six years earlier, played the Eros, while The Guy Cinema next to the metro entrance offered Hot Sex in Bangkok and Keyhole Report.
Porn theatres almost made their smut movies look important upon occasion, as several theatres united to show the same films and buy a larger newspaper advertisement, which resulted in the Pigalle, Versalles, Rivoli, Greenfield Park all plying "While The Cat's Away." And "Millionaires' Women."
Who went to porn movies and why? The question will forever remain unanswered as the pasttime was not one to be celebrated openly.
Montreal of those years was also full of about four times as many strip clubs and ubiquitious street hookers (a time-honoured spectacle that has now gone totally extinct), so the face of sex was omnipresent and seemed normal in a way that might seem odd today.
Needless to say the theatres began their slow decline with the rise of VCRs and the temporary emergence of porno booths where viewers could slide change into machines in cubicles, which also now appear to be largely gone.
The loneliness, horniness and desperation that created a market for porn market is surely still around but largely quelled by the majesty of the internet.
Nowadays only such solitary place exists, the Cinema L'Amour on the Main (formerly The Pussycat) and it's seen as a lovable throwback.
But these friendless, secretive and lonely places emerged and persevered in spite of disapproval from residents and authorities.
The first such establishments cropped up under the reign of Mayor Jean Drapeau, a savvy veteran whose entire reputation was built on fighting smut and crime.
But Drapeau's prudish ways were challenged by a massive baby boom demographic who embraced sex and drugs and rock and roll, and weren't keen on having their appetites limited by middle aged humbugs.
Drapeau was brazen in his opposition to such films asQuiet Days in Clichy, which he obsessed over days after the much more important October Crisis of 1970. He also offered free publicity by fretting about the visiting topless African Ballet and singer Muriel Millard for her midriff poster slapped on construction sites around town.
Quebec adopted three categorizations for films in 1967: For All, 14 and Over and 18 and Over. The grown up designation suggested naughtiness and nudity at the very least
The Bureau de surveillance du cinema replaced the old-time censors and the board saw its priority as being to allow adults to watch what they liked and ensure that young people don't get to see the same naughtiness.
Montreal had no dedicated porn theatres in 1968 although something called the Cinema Underground (Revue Theatre) offered A trip in Erotica, while the mainstream Snowdon played the Danish- SwedishI, A Woman for four months before authorities shut it down and attempted to fine the theatre, a fiasco that dragged on until 1974 when all charges were finally dropped.
Judging by the oft-obscure internet traces of these forgotten films, viewers required a high tolerance for boredom. It must have been hard not to doze off in those dark and lonely seats, as the sexual titillation, which was, by all measure, scarce.
Montrealers Andre Link and John Dunning started churning out daring movies, starting with Valerie, about a girl who meets her true love after leaving the convent and becoming a hippie prostitute. Dunning and Link would go on and the spectacularly crazy Ilsa She Wolf of the SS.
Valerie played to an 18-and-over crowd at the Parisien, so the line between art and sexploitation was still being drawn.
Other adult-sounding films playing in Montreal the time were the Miracle de l'amour at the Canadien and the Plaza. Les Filles de Plaisir at the Mercier, andI am Curious Yellowat the Festival theatre.
The films only suggested sex and offered brief flashes of passing nudity, or simulated sex at best. They were packaged as European art films or educational, so Montrealers who furtively slunk into Sexual Freedom in Denmark had to sit through a lot of people being interviewed in the streets of Copenhagen. Eventually the director gets to the part showing a half dozen blondes frolicking around on a bed. It played at 5117 Park Ave.
***
What went on inside Montreal's porno theatres? That remains a dark-roomed mystery. According to David Simon's hit TV series The Deuce, prostitutes patrolled offering their services in Manhattan porn theatres. No records of such activities are apparent in Montreal, (although older Montreal gays report that certain theatres were hotspots for quickies).
By 1972 certain theatres were become enshrined as dedicated smut joints but many mainstream theatres were playing adult fare. The Seduction of Inga was at the Bonaventure, The Big Bird Cage was at The Capitol and Suburban Wives at the Salle Hermes of Cinema V.
That year in New York Deep Throat came out and featured much explicit oral sex. It became a massive hit and fodder for chinwags, but the film would never play Montreal, which led some to complain that the Montreal was being prudish.
The actual theatres were naturally, already movie theatres before porno came. They simply needed business after business plummeted with the arrival of TV. The owners cannot be blamed for trying to stay afloat in the face of obvious impending doom.
In spite of the enticing newspaper ads, the movies were dull, at least from what we can tell from the online video snippets. For example Smoke and Flesh at the Eros seems to have no nudity but for a girl who loses at strip poker and runs up the stairs, Justine de Sade seems even tamer.
One young entrepreneur, McGill student Robert Lantos, made the shrewd move of seizing on the low-effort-high-profit formula by getting rights to The Best of the New York Erotic Film Festival. It was hot stuff at the time but a more recent viewer commented, "No film has bored me this much."By 1973 the porn theatres had become a staple that passersby didn't even notice, even with long-running films like "La Sexualite chez les adolescentes," which played at Plaza K Mart and the Omega.
La Presse bemoaned the wave of smut as one editorial bemoaned in 1973 that "Montreal police made so many mistakes (Ballets Africains, I, A Woman) that they seemed to have let go the handle after the axe."
Porn theatres were slugging it out against the Kung Fu movie fad of 1976 as Raquels Motel a film made six years earlier, played the Eros, while The Guy Cinema next to the metro entrance offered Hot Sex in Bangkok and Keyhole Report.
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| Montrealers protest porn establishments in 1983 |
Who went to porn movies and why? The question will forever remain unanswered as the pasttime was not one to be celebrated openly.
Montreal of those years was also full of about four times as many strip clubs and ubiquitious street hookers (a time-honoured spectacle that has now gone totally extinct), so the face of sex was omnipresent and seemed normal in a way that might seem odd today.
Needless to say the theatres began their slow decline with the rise of VCRs and the temporary emergence of porno booths where viewers could slide change into machines in cubicles, which also now appear to be largely gone.
The loneliness, horniness and desperation that created a market for porn market is surely still around but largely quelled by the majesty of the internet.