GOLDEN GODDESSES: 25 LEGENDARY WOMEN OF CLASSIC EROTIC CINEMA, 1968-1985

by Nelson, Jill C.

  SexWorld plays like a Magical Mystery Tour sexual adventure whereby the players on the bus are mystified as to what kind of erotic encounter to expect. They know only that a customized experience will unfold once the bus arrives on the grounds of Sex World. As each guest is interviewed privately by the Sex World consultants, they are encouraged to share their deepest and most intimate sexual desires without realizing they will soon find themselves in the middle of a fantasy-sexscape. Kay Parker portrays one of the weekenders whose fantasy is to have sex with an aggressive man possessing supersized equipment. She finds herself in a stark white room next to a three-tiered bed. After her male suitor (Joey Silvera), arrives, Parker informs him she is waiting for someone else and asks him to leave. He smacks her hard across the mouth and throws her on the bed — fulfilling her fantasy to be dominated as he roughly overtakes her amidst cries of ecstasy while her unassertive spouse watches through the window. The scene is powerful and lascivious. John Leslie and Desiree West are also most effective. They set the sheets on fire after some terrific verbal foreplay as West’s character (talking funky rap) teaches the “white boy” a thing or two about “black sugar.” Sharon Thorpe and Johnny Keyes put the finishing touches on this above average picture in a sensuous scene with Keyes reprising his role as the black stud in Behind the Green Door. Keyes is even dressed in the same white leotard he’d worn years before with the hole cut out in the front displaying his genitals.

  I got rave reviews from those around me. My co-actors all raved, so that was great. In those days, the reason we took so long to shoot is because they would usually cut an R-rated version of the film also for European distribution. They covered themselves so that they could distribute it in different markets.

  There were some films where the person I was working with was a good person, a nice person, and we were friends and the sex was sweet and we had a good connection. There were other times when it was very difficult because I couldn’t get a connection with my partner. Keeping in mind that I had just come out of a year of this acting class and what actors need to have is a connection. Otherwise, you end up being technical.

  For a fish out of water, Kay evidently was usually able to establish a connection with her co-actors and created some remarkably magical sexual moments on-screen following passionate overtures of foreplay with her leading men only too happy to oblige. To this day, she and former co-star Richard Pacheco (Howie Gordon) have remained friends. It is not surprising that Pacheco, along with intellectual and artistic peers John Leslie and Herschel Savage, was one of her favorite on-screen partners.

  There were some actors around who were good little actors. Richard Pacheco was kind of like me in a sense, because he was so above everybody else. I think he came from a theater background. He’s still a good person and we e-mail each other occasionally. Somebody, a friend of mine, who has always been a little bit of a groupie, sent me a picture from a movie that I did with Howie called The Seven Faces of Dr. Lau [aka The Seven Seductions, 1981]. It was a take-off on the Tony Randall film [7 Faces of Dr. Lao, 1964]. We had to shoot a love scene on a ski plane up the coast North of San Francisco on this little island in the middle of a lake. It was nice except for the mosquitoes! Recently, my friend sent me a picture from this love scene in the lake and there I’m sitting. We both look so pretty. My boobs, which I always thought looked way too big, were actually beautiful! I sent it to Howie and he said, “Oh my god. We were so young and so beautiful, and I still love those boobs of yours!”

  I said, “Yeah, well, they’re hanging a little lower these days!”

  Kay also enjoyed a palpable onscreen chemistry with Paul Thomas, the classic-trained actor that transitioned to adult performing in the mid-1970s, and later became one of Vivid Entertainment’s premier directors. 7Into Snowy (1978) is an adult film parody of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) produced by Dave Friedman and his partner William Allen Castleman. As the wicked step-mother Fedora, Kay and her assets are front and center while she envelops the role of the devious widow (her husband died while the two were on their honeymoon) commanding her lovers: the chauffeur/woodsman (played by Paul Thomas), and the secretary (Bonnie Holiday) to seduce her step-daughter portrayed by the lovely Abigail Clayton. Thomas and Parker partake in a rough and ready sexual interlude as a prelude to Thomas’s scenes with Clayton whom he ends up protecting from Fedora’s evil potions and maneuvers.

  Where’s the Porno Star?

  Like many of the women of her class, Kay Parker completely defies the stereotypical “Porn Star” stigma which is made even more obvious when you meet her in person. As a spiritual educator and counselor, Kay’s training as a guest speaker while touring the college circuit during her days as an adult film star, fostered a confidence and wisdom that beautifully tempers her edgier persona as a rebel. As the saying goes, you don’t know a person until you’ve walked in her shoes. On-the-job training is sometimes the optimum life coach.

  I was specific about what I’d do and what I wouldn’t do in films. The one girl-girl scene that I did is set apart from all the others. It’s in a movie called Health Spa (1978) which Cass [Paley] produced. It might have been 1979 or the late 1970s. It’s a quality little film with a young actress by the name of Abigail Clayton. Abigail was nursing her baby at the time so she had some boobs. Anyway, it was set at the health spa and I ended up having a girl-girl scene with Abigail, and it was so sweet. It was directed by Emily Smith who was also an actress. It was a beautiful love scene. There was nothing that hard about it at all. Of course, the music was very dramatic and we did have a premiere for that movie. I always remember being in the theatre that was full of paparazzi, and that scene got a standing ovation. I was very proud of it because it was my first girl-girl scene. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and I’m not naturally inclined towards women, but Abigail was so sweet. I looked at her and said, “Abigail, I don’t know what I’m doing,” and she said “don’t worry about it, leave it up to me,” and it just turned out beautifully. Even today, it’s still very effective because it was a lot of eyeshots. That was another of the pieces that I would show in my presentation because it was directed by a woman.

  It’s interesting, when I was lecturing, I’d walk in the room and people would say, “Where’s the porno star?” Particularly, the women who came out of that era, we had an opportunity to do things differently. It is true that I think we were a whole different ilk than the people who are in the business today. My absolute truth is this: Individuals that would use any of the negative terms about us are usually speaking from their own personal experience and the women that they are seeing or observing, are mirrors of themselves or of their own issues. That’s how humans are. Most definitely, some of us are from dysfunctional families, and at some point, have been exploited or objectified. I’m not going to say that’s not true, but I have found that those individuals that have the most heat on it — and I’ve met them — the placard holders — I look at them and I say, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry for your pain.”

  This is a wonderful little story that comes to mind and it is in my book. The very first TV talk show that I was on was a show in San Francisco called Front Line Video. The producers were all very young and very hyper and made it sound very appealing for me to be on the show. My intention was always to just share because I’ve always come from a place of wanting to share my experiences for the purposes of healing. This was my first time on a show like this so I was naïve, but I listened to the producers and didn’t ask too many questions. Once I was there, it was just me center stage with the audience and the interviewer or the moderator. I didn’t know there was a group of individuals in the audience who were so full of rage and so hurt. All of a sudden, that was all focused on me. I looked at them, and I thought, “Oh my goodness. What’s going on here that you would direct all of your rage at me as if I’m responsible for everything that happened to you in your life?” The producers wanted a show and they wanted it to be lively and interactive. The good
news was that after I was bombarded with all of this rage which made me feel like shit — it was very hurtful — suddenly, there was another person in the audience who stood up and acknowledged me and my work and said, “We’re aware of Kay’s body of work”. Even by that time, my work had become known. It was so great. The person who had stood up was a strikingly beautiful woman with long blonde hair by the name of Kat Sunlove. Kat was a well-known dominatrix, who has since gone on to be a very outspoken lobbyist for the Free Speech Movement. I’ve said in my book that everybody should be grateful to Kat because she has done an amazing amount of work for the Free Speech Movement, and I think, continues to unto this day.

  Since the early 1980s, Kat Sunlove has been involved in the adult industry as a performer, journalist, educator, publisher of Spectator, and a lobbyist for the Free Speech Coalition since 1997. With a Masters in Political Science, a year of law school, and many years of political activism, Kat is well suited for the challenges of advocating for the interests of the adult industry. Better known as “Mistress Kat,” Sunlove wrote a weekly advice column on erotic dominance and submission in the early eighties for Spectator and later for the national magazine Chic, earning her the label of “the Dear Abby of S/M”. Along with her life partner, Layne Winklebleck, Kat designed and taught a popular workshop series: S/M for Loving Couples, the first-ever serious educational workshops pertaining to this sensational and misunderstood topic. Today, Sunlove spends most of the year in Costa Rica, but was recently in New York City in June 2012 to join friends for the wedding of Veronica Vera and Club 90 reunion.

  Anyway, these individuals in the audience were seeing me, as a reason somehow for their life’s pain and issues which I thought was very interesting. After the show, I went back to my hotel room and I cried, but I cried for their pain not my own because I realized how many of those individuals are out in the world and I wanted to help them. Their issues were fundamentally sexual having come from abuse and their own shame which is taken on from parents by the way. They had no idea that they were, in fact, objectifying me.

  One girl stood up and said, “I’m from New York, and I am so horrified.” I think this was before the Rudy Giuliani reign when he had a lot of the peep shows and theaters around New York closed. She said that when she walked down the street to her work or wherever she had to go, that she would have to walk past the theatres and that it made her feel dirty and so on. When she said that, I thought, “Okay, so you’ve got the shame. It’s not the theatres that are making you feel dirty, you already have that.” This was just rubbing salt in that wound. I looked at her and I said, “I know this is probably going to offend you, but why don’t you walk another direction so that you don’t subject yourself to that?” To me that was a logical response because I don’t enjoy that part of the adult entertainment world either quite honestly. That response just tended to make the small group that she was with even angrier. I thought if you don’t already have that pain scar or whatever you want to call it—I call it “the shame bug”—if you don’t already have that, it doesn’t push your buttons.

  I had a phrase or response with some of my friends that I used up until a few years ago. I don’t do it so much anymore, but if they would lament or start to talk about somebody who had rubbed them the wrong way or that they had an issue with, I would look at them and say, “Who in you?” I have one friend that I dearly love and he looked at me once when I said that to him and he said to me, “I hate it when you do that, but I love it when you do that.” I had to do that because I couldn’t condone blaming someone else for something that exists within us. Blame the shame.

  This is all of the different stages of the work that I do to help people to free themselves. When you truly reach the point of spiritual maturity, then the emotions which are God-given and are red flags become flat and they can’t hurt you anymore because the buttons are no longer there to be pushed. In my mentoring, I help people to get to that point.

  Taboo

  In 1981 Parker’s movie career and personal journey reached an apex when she was invited to star in the first of a series of films titled Taboo directed by one of the early pioneers in the business on the west coast, Kirdy Stevens, and written by his wife and long time partner Helene Terrie. Stevens and Terrie started producing Nudist films (primitive, innocent shorts) in the mid-1960s prior to the couple’s conversion to the mail order business with the advent of hardcore loops in 1967. Stevens was frequently arrested on obscenity charges and defended by the late Stanley Fleishman, a constitutional lawyer specializing in First Amendment Rights.

  True to its namesake, Taboo (1980), the launching pad that became part of an innovative series of pictures dramatizing volatile sexual scenarios, examined the subject of incest between a mother and her grown son. This was not the first time Parker had appeared in a role depicting incest. One year earlier, Kay and John Leslie engaged in a sexual encounter as sibling physicians overseeing an institution for the criminally insane in Lust at First Bite (aka Dracula Sucks, the softcore version), the 1979 adult film variation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula.

  In Taboo Kay Parker’s starring turn as a newly single woman embarking upon the controversial act of sexual relations with her own offspring (played by All-American Mike Ranger), resulted in Taboo becoming one of the highest grossing adult movies to date. The picture is included in Volumes 1-6 — recently released as a set. There are twenty-three films in all within the Taboo series extending from 1980-2007. Kay also appeared in the second and third sequels released in 1985 and 1986 with Juliet Anderson and Dorothy LeMay. Parker explained the significance of selecting the role that transformed her life.

  Taboo is the one film I am best known for which makes it ironic that it was an incestuous role. Again, obviously, I pondered deeply and looked at the prospect of playing that character from many different facets, and I had to deeply reckon within myself when I took the role because I had known women who had experienced incest. I knew how prevalent it was and that it is a very sensitive issue. We should make the statement— the feedback that I have received from many individuals is that people don’t take the storylines of these films seriously. However, for me it was a serious issue, and I looked inside and I talked to my guides and I said, “Why would I even consider this?” Then I realized that somebody was going to do it so why not me? I could at least bring some consciousness and sensitivity to it. Now a lot of individuals who have an issue and who have the scars would say, “That’s a fine excuse.” All I would say is that I was guided to do it, and because of that I have an even bigger platform today to do my spiritual work and healing, so that was just a path that my destiny took me down. I’m totally responsible for it, and yet, that movie was a very defining point in time for a lot of reasons. I wrote about it in a chapter of my own book.

  Beautiful and endearing, Kay delicately handled Taboo’s frowned upon (and in some countries outlawed) subject of incest in her taut portrayal of Barbara Scott, the mother of a teenage son, cast aside by her husband of several years for a younger woman. Lost and disillusioned, Barbara seeks comfort from her best girlfriend Gina (played by Juliet Anderson), and hooks herself up as a receptionist in the office of a male friend that happens to be secretly in lust with her. Concurrently, Barbara goes on a blind date with a friend of Gina’s and winds up at a swing party, much to her dismay. Angrily, Barbara shuns the advances of her date and others, but her libido is awakened. Upon returning home and seeing her handsome, strapping son Paul (Mike Ranger) naked and asleep in his bed, she enters his room and begins to perform fellatio. Startled from his slumber, Paul isn’t certain at first if he is dreaming or awake, but he welcomes his mother’s advances as he had fantasized earlier about making love with her (and peeked in on her while she undressed) on previous occasions. The Parker/Ranger session is passionate and hot, making one temporarily forget the two are supposed to be related by blood. Juliet Anderson (she keeps two playmates on standby throughout, Don Fernando and Miko Yana) supplies comic relief as B
arbara’s friend who, rather than offering any kind of real advice to her distraught girlfriend, gets turned on and masturbates when Barbara privately confides her indiscretion with a heavy heart. Adeptly, Parker expresses the emotions of a woman torn between doing what she believes is right, but ultimately responds helplessly to her physical urges. It is understandable why this performance has become the focal piece of Kay’s body of work.

  Helen [Terrie] wrote the storyline. The husband and wife team, she wrote it. It was around the time when films were starting to present the female perspective. That was her justification for it. They’re a very nice Jewish couple in the Valley and what is always so fascinating, you know, is the fact they were married and had two children. In fact, a few years ago they had won back the rights to Taboo when they went through numerous lawsuits to retain rights of the movie. They had sold them and finally won the films back later from VCX. I had gotten a call from Steven their son one day who said that they’d digitally re-mastered the film and were going to release it on to DVD. They wanted to know if I’d be interested in doing a commentary. We did and we worked out the finances. I’ve never seen it by the way, except on YouTube. They didn’t send me a copy. I just let it go. It was no big deal. Anyway, I said to Steven, “Now that you’re a grown man and you’re doing this is this the path that you chose for yourself?” He had sort of this attitude that Taboo had impacted his life in a huge way and I said, “Yeah, we had actually shot the pivotal seduction sex scene in your bedroom.” I think he was a fifteen-year old boy at the time. I had this conversation with him and I got the impression that this was not necessarily his choice. Well, of course, it was his choice, but there was reticence there. It was interesting that he was going along with this, but I guess he was helping his father out.