RIP Zalman King

RIP to the king of soft-core.

I'll admit it, I hated his movies. He's the Rush of movie directors. Beloved for reasons that completely escape me.

I can't decide what about his movies/TV show (Red Shoe Diaries) irked me most:

-- They were definitely bad on merit, sex or not. Some of the most convoluted terrible plots ever put on celluloid.

-- It takes a special kind a stupid to make a sex film boring, especially ones with such lavish production values and locales, to say nothing of some serious hot trim, but that's what King's movies did. Yeah, you might get Mickey Rourke and Carre Otis fucking like a couple of zoo animals for a minute or two, but you have to sit through 60 minutes of asinine bullshit to get there. And the sex scenes? Never really lived up to the hype that surrounded them in this man's humble opinion.

I defy you to watch Wild Orchid start-to-finish without falling asleep or changing the channel. I double dare to avoid falling asleep after you masturbated, if you choose to do so. Vapid horseshit with occasional nudity. Vapid nudity with occasional horseshit is far more preferable.

Anyway, cancer is a bitch and I wouldn't wish that on anyone, so RIP to the man who made watching sex scenes OK for the sheepish girlfriend/wife and who also launched the killing of a million cats for bored dudes watching Skinamax back at their crib.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/03/idUS269222422620120203

 

Bubbler, my man, you actually sat through those movies WAITING for the sex? You obviously didn't watch enough of them. You could set your watch by it.
In a typical 90-minute "Cinemax After Dark" feature, there were two or three sex scenes.
The first came between the 15 and 20-minute mark, right about the time the mysterious stranger is first meeting up with the hot, bored housewife at the palatial estate (or, alternately, when the hot, bored housewife stumbles upon an artist and his girlfriend having sex and stops to watch whilst touching herself).
The best Cinemax movies had another scene around the 35-40 minute mark, plus perhaps a strip club scene. This is when the hot, bored housewife is tempted by the mysterious stranger/artist. It might end up being a three-way, but it's cut short because the housewife has a sudden pang of regret right before she's penetrated.
Also, if you get to the 30-35 minute mark without a sex scene you've obviously blundered into a "bikini" movie. This is a subgenre of spank movies that include plenty of gratuitous titty shots, but no actual sex. This is also known as "Blue Ball Cinema."
Finally, the last sex scene comes around the 52-minute mark. This is when the hot, bored housewife finally gives in to temptation and is plowed by the mysterious stranger -- who's then revealed to be either the town serial killer/rapist/pimp/extortionist, or the hero of the story who saves the housewife from the town serial killer/rapist/pimp extortionist.
Remember the rule of 15s -- a Skinemax movie should have a sex scene at 15-minute intervals (or thereabouts) and you'll never waste time fluffing yourself again.

 

I remember the first time I saw a Zalman King movie. I was at a friend's house for a sleepover. We were 12. He didn't actually subscribe to Cinemax. It came in black-and-white on the downstairs TV. No sound, not that we could have listened to it anyway. His mother was asleep upstairs. We were terrified to wake her.

I had only recently begun to explore myself at that age. I had seen the titty magazines of the day. I had never seen a movie, though. My father was pretty conservative, and I had no uncles, older brothers or close cousins to show me the ropes of the porn industry. I distinctly recall my first time masturbating because I had no idea what the hell was wrong with me. I was terrified. But I liked this kind of fear.

That soft-core pornography was something completely different than the magazines. It was real, and women were much sexier when gyrating their hips on top of a man than they were while posing awkwardly for Playboy or the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. After 15 minutes or so, I told my friend I needed to use the bathroom. I masturbated while thinking about that movie, cleaned up and returned to enjoy the rest of the film. He was none the wiser. The film was terrible.

It became a tradition of ours. We would watch dirty movies and steal swigs of his mom's crappy Canadian whiskey. I didn't always masturbate. After the movies got clean again and there was no purpose for watching the black-and-white, mute Cinemax channel, we'd play some video games, get a few hours of sleep and have his mom take us out for pancakes the next morning. It's how good friends become best friends.

I don't watch soft-core porn these days. I can't tell you the last time I saw a Zalman King movie. There's really no reason to shell out for Cinemax, and even if I did, the hard-core stuff has jaded me to the lighter fare. It doesn't help that, now that I have a better understanding of the female anatomy, I'm more alert to the fact that the woman usually tend to hump bellybutton in those films. But in a way, those soft-core movies made by Zalman King (and, presumably, others) pushed me into adulthood and fortified a friendship that remains strong to this day.

Rest in peace, Zalman King.

 

An aside: I'm pretty damned sure he was 69, not 70. Every porn king should die at 69. It's cliché, sure. So are the movies.

 

This is the most gloriously TMI post in the history of the Intertubes. Holy shit, did this make me laugh. "We would watch dirty movies and steal swigs of his mom's crappy Canadian whiskey. I didn't always masturbate." Goddamn that is funny.

 

Of course:

 

Anybody remember who the narrator was for Red Shoe Diaries?

 

David Duchovny? I admit, loved The Red Shoe Diaries.

 

I guess that now we know where the handle "versatile" comes from. Ambidextrous.
In the way of too much information this is right up there with Jones talking about rubbing one out in sink as cure for writers block.

 

Indeed.

 

and sometimes you think you know everything about someone.

 

Whoa. I am so glad I started the RIP thread so this post exists. It reads like a deleted scene from Superbad.

Nothin' like getting together with your best buddy, getting drunk and maybe masturbating. Did he jerk it too?