Batman and Robin IN BED, or PORN PARODIES
Alice is a book lover. Rejecting her boyfriend’s advances, she immerses herself in reading the story of the girl who is her namesake – Alice in Wonderland. She falls asleep while reading. Under the influence of the novel she is reading, she dreams that she herself – chasing the White Rabbit – moves to a magical land. There, as a result of several events, she befriends local residents who offer her a new, skimpy dress. Walking through the woods, Alice takes off her clothes and starts masturbating. Soon after, he reaches the Mad Hatter, whom he orally pleases.
The above description is by no means my imagination, but part of the plot of Alice in Wonderland from 1976, a film that was one of the products of the golden age of porn in the seventies, and at the same time an early example of the phenomenon known in the film community as porn parodies. Their creators do not so much make fun of the titles they take on, but use their plot and characters to arrange their own versions of these stories, necessarily putting the sex scenes in the first place. So we have a feature film with well-known characters in the lead role, in which the plot is an excuse to show more spicy scenes with their participation. Porn parodies are a phenomenon on an extremely wide scale. It doesn’t matter if the original is a comedy, drama, series, cartoon or even real events – everything can be transferred to the pornographic world. Let’s take a closer look at selected, erm, positions.
Alice in Wonderland (1976) and Malice in Lalaland (2010)
Two films inspired by the work of Lewis Carroll. I already mentioned Alice… from the seventies in the introduction. Unlike mass-produced porn parodies now, this one made its way to the cinemas in its time. What’s more, it was a success, because the adult-only musical shot in ten days grossed ninety million dollars in theaters on a budget of four hundred thousand. Not only that, it received positive reviews from critics, including the famous Roger Ebert, and was made into a stage version ten years ago. The story itself presented in the film is a journey of the main character to discover her own sexuality, ending in sex with her partner (which she had previously avoided). Who could have thought that erotic dreams with the characters of Carroll’s book would help her?
The second of these films is also an adaptation of Alice, but less literal than the one from the seventies. Sasha Gray played the titular role of Malice. Although now a retired porn star, she has taken to starring in traditional films and writing books – while murdering the gray cells of her readers – it was her appearances in XXX films that made her name. Here, she was cast as a patient of a closed facility who moves to a mysterious land (Lalaland is dangerously associated with the musical loved by most, and we will probably see such a porn parody, too). Then, of course, there is a series of sex scenes with characters inspired by Carroll’s heroes, all to the rhythm of rock-punk music and bathed in an unreal atmosphere. The Hatter became a pimp. I wonder how crazy his tea meetings are now.
A Wet Dream on Elm Street (2011)
We had a Nightmare on Elm Street, and the porn industry gave the world a Wet Dream on Elm Street. I almost admire the creativity of the filmmakers in adapting the original plot to their needs – there Freddy Krueger was a serial killer of children who was burned alive by an enraged mob of parents. In the porn version, the same thing happens, except that Freddy is burned from the waist up (after all, you had to leave the acting tool), and not for murder, but for selling perishable erotic gadgets. The famous glove with knives is replaced with a glove with vibrators attached, and Freddy sneaks into the dreams of young people to have sex with them and put them into a coma. He is defeated by the main character, who removes the batteries from his vibrators and states that now the only thing Krueger can use is a burned face and a sweater from the eighties. So far, Freddy has not returned to recharge the vibrators.
Batman XXX: A Porn Parody (2010)
A delightfully subtle title. An unprecedented case, because the film is a pornographic adaptation of Batman’s adventures from the sixties, when the Dark Knight had the face of Adam West. Even the original is, to put it mildly, specific. A kitschy, exaggerated story, absurd dialogues and a whole arsenal of gadgets with the “bat” prefix are just some of the elements that make up a comical, joyful creation. Directed by a parody expert of sorts, Axel Braun, the porn version is very faithful to the original (except, of course, for Batman taking his pants down). The grotesque character of the dialogues has been preserved, as well as the general style of the whole (including even the famous onomatopoeias appearing in fight scenes). In one of the scenes, which is a direct quote from the original, Batman and Robin, climbing the wall, encounter Ron Jeremy, a legend of the porn industry, standing in the window. Impressive are the costumes that look like they were taken straight out of the sets of West movies, except for the small detail of replacing the bat symbol with XXX. Not only that, the Joker wears a mustache under his makeup, just like Cesar Romero, who played him fifty years ago. I don’t know if the creators’ idea was to draw the viewer’s attention to these technical aspects, but it’s definitely easier to write about them than about the triangle with Batman and Robin (or at least it’s easier to explain). This isn’t the only porn starring the man-bat – just last year, he and Superman appeared in an erotic version of Zack Snyder’s film.
Edward Penishands (1991)
There is no need to explain what kind of film Edward Penishands is a parody of. In Tim Burton’s story, the story began when the cosmetics saleswoman visited the castle inhabited by the title character, and then took him home with her. The parody’s starting point is similar, except that the woman tries to sell a dildo instead of cosmetics, and Edward himself has no hands but two penises (looking like chicken legs). As in the original, he is taken to the saleswoman’s house, though she first tries out his, um, genetic alteration on herself. The rest can be guessed. The film was so popular that it spawned two sequels (the entire trilogy was released in one year). Burton himself saw it, and you could say he was impressed. Perhaps he was intrigued by the scene where Edward eats spaghetti with two penises sticking out of his sleeves. A rather unusual sight.
Pirates (2005)
A big budget pornographic film, shot for over a million dollars, with special effects, high picture quality and Dolby Digital sound. You can’t deny the momentum. The plot of Pirates draws from the first part of Pirates of the Caribbean, which was created two years earlier. We’ve got a crew of skeletons, we’ve got Inca treasures, sea battles and magical rituals. Some scenes were filmed on a replica of the HMS Bounty in St. Petersburg, however, concealing the actual nature of the film and talking about it as a family adventure for the whole family (I can imagine the faces of the people managing the ship when the film was released). Pirates gained great popularity and won a series of film awards awarded in the porn industry. In 2007, there was a sequel called Stagnetti’s Revenge, shot on a budget of eight million dollars (!) and so far the most expensive porn film in history.
Hung Wankenstein (2001)
An interesting thing, because it is a porn parody of a film that is a parody per se, Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. How meta! Probably for this reason, Hung … does not shy away from meta-jokes, including dialogues that directly mock, for example, the fact that there has been no sex scene in the plot for too long. After all, these are sometimes interrupted to serve some gag to the viewers, and one of the threads in the film is the problem of Wankenstein’s monster in the form of a too small penis (well, in porn it is an insurmountable problem). The characters are looking for a suitable replacement organ, which was eventually “played” by the real penis of the actor playing the role of the monster. As if implying that porn stars’ sex organs are the only proper ones. Someone can get a complex.
Super Hornio Brothers (1993)
A porn parody that came out the same year as the widely disliked film adaptation starring Bob Hoskins. Mario and Luigi here are called Ornio and Squeegie. The role of the latter is played by the aforementioned Ron Jeremy, whose appearance fits extremely well with the image of a plumber from a porn movie. Super Hornio Brothers is called the holy grail of porn parody because, according to Jeremy, Nintendo bought the rights to it shortly after the film’s release to stop the spread of more copies. The same goes for the sequel. However, there are those who have seen the sexual adventures of the Hornio brothers. According to them, it’s a better adaptation than the official Hoskins movie. Perhaps Nintendo stopped selling the wrong movie.
This Ain’t Ghostbusters: XXX Parody (2011)
Directed by the already mentioned Axel Braun, this parody is one of the This Ain’t series produced by Hustler, which also includes porn versions of, for example, Avatar or Game of Thrones. You can see that more money was put into it, because apart from the fact that the whole thing is in 3D, the creators treat us with CGI-ghosts with CGI-penises (really!). Dread to think what the ectoplasm emitted by them is in this version. There is also sex with ghosts here, after all, any way to be their slayer is good. One of the actors featured here is, of course, Ron Jeremy, who also appeared in the original 1984 film. This is not the only parody of Ghostbusters, because the controversial remake with a female cast not so long ago also had a porn version, in addition divided into episodes.
Titles
An essential part of the porn parody phenomenon is their titles. While many of them are simply the original name with the added subtitle XXX Parody, some are examples of exceptional creativity. The Texas Vibrator Massacre is a porn version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Pulp Fiction differs from the title of the parody literally by one letter, because it is called Pulp Friction. The first part of Harry Potter – in the original Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and in the porn world – Whorrey Potter and the Sorcerer’s Balls. The Terminator became The Penetrator. The first part of the series with Matt Damon is The Bourne Identity, unless we are talking about the XXX version, which is called The Porn Identity. Even Twin Peaks, which in porn is called Twin Cheeks did not escape parodying.
This is only a fraction of great examples, both in terms of puns in the titles (I gave these “gentle” examples) and the number of porn parodies in general. Their multitude is surprising as well as a certain professionalism of their preparation, because, as I have read, for example, voices saying that the costumes of heroes in parodies of the superhero genre are a better transfer of comic costumes to the screen than in the case of mainstream films. Of course, we are talking about purely technical issues here, because the acting and dialogues evoke a rather pitying smile. The funniest thing about the phenomenon of porn parody, however, is that their creators have zero barriers in terms of subject matter – Batman is just as good material for a porn movie as Smurfs or Pokémon. Apparently sex fits everywhere and everything revolves around sex. Freud would be proud.
Lukasz Budnik