Adam Film World (1970) – A Profile of S.M.U.T.

Several years after its inception, Adam Film World was continuing to erase the boundaries between mainstream and adult films, American and European films. From Fellini to Russ Meyer, film reviews were plentiful, star-studded – and just plain studded.

Among those profiled in 1970 was Marv Lincoln, the magazine publisher who pre-dated Adam Film World and was making his foray into filmmaking with his first feature adult films, S.M.U.T. The Rialto Report previously interviewed Marv about his life in magazines and touched on his film career. To complement that profile, we’ve pulled out his Adult Film World interview below which delves deeper into his movie making adventures.

In the re-published 1970 issues that follow, you’ll also find profiles of directors including Luis Bunuel, stars including Peter Sellers and features on films including The Affairs of Aphrodite, Melissa the Total Female and Love Thy Neighbor and His Wife.

You can find The Rialto Report’s growing collection of digitized resources by choosing Library in our site menu. Check back for more digitized adult film magazines soon.

Click on the covers below to access the full magazines. Due to the fact that the magazines are scanned in high definition, allow time for each page to load. If you are viewing on a phone, view in landscape orientation.

Magazines are fully searchable; use the icon displayed in each magazine to search by keyword.

Publications are being shared here purely for the purpose of research. They should not to be used or reproduced for any commercial gain.

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Lincoln’s Hollywood Address (Marv, That Is)

-Robert Bruno, Adult Film World, December 1970

Why did you decide to make S.M.U.T. — the first feature film you’ve ever made, right? 

With the exception of a short I made about two years ago that hasn’t been released as yet. Why this picture? It’s an idea that’s been popping around in my head for a couple of years. I didn’t want to make a nudie per se – I wanted to do something different, that hadn’t been done before.

The germ idea actually was from a serial involving a heroine-villain conflict, a throwback to the Perils of Pauline chapter ploy. We were going to try to do this for the nudie market. Each episode would end with a “cliff-hanger,” where the heroine is in very bad trouble. It was to be farcical and slapstick.

Why did you change from serial to feature? 

We found from talking to theater owners and distributors that it would’t be practical unless we had an established character. So we would have had to make the entire ten segments before release, not just a pilot.

What about S.M.U.T. – how did you develop it?

It evolved and it involved a lot of people’s thinking. At one time the lead actor, Doctor Depravity, was my partner, then I brought in George Rubine who helped me direct it. He wrote the screen play, and he brought all the different ideas together and synthesized them into one plot – an excellent script bringing in some new ideas. Our original intention was to make a high-camp nudie type of film, a satire, a put-on, but primarily for the nudie market. It was only an eight-day shooting schedule, but after the eight days we looked at a rough cut and weren’t very happy with what we saw.

But we did know that we had something more than a nudie, so George and I decided to take the plunge and go for something beyond the skinflick and sexploitotion market. We scraped together more money, and we increased the time to 80 or 90 minutes, to shoot a couple of new scenes that would explain things that were lost on people, things that were too hazy.

For these new scenes we had a different cameraman, and he made all the difference in the world. The film became a high-camp satire on sexual hypocrisy and on the pornography business as a whole. We’re about to test whether it come off at a special screening for a big audience at a theater.

Marv Lincoln

You have scenes of nudity and scenes of sex? How are they motivated? 

Most of them are there as a part of the plot and not for the sake of sheer nudity or sex, except for one which we decided to leave in because it was a beautiful scene. It is really in there just for the sake of sex, but it is nice in the way it’s done. It just seemed to us to work well with the music and  everything.

How did you cast the girls and fellows – for experience in nudies? 

Most of the leads, the four or five main leads, were experienced actors and actresses. Our lead girl “Beaverella” and/or “Ella Prim,” had very limited experience. We talked to and looked at a lot of girls for the part, and lead, Mary Jane Saint, we changed her name from Jane Tsentas, since it seemed to fit in with our whole format. She just come in the office – she heard that we were looking for girls. But most of the people are experienced.

And the girls are willing to be looked at?

Yes.

Are they from a pool of nudie actresses?

Some were and some weren’t. Some people called us and we called some people we thought might fit the part.

Now, in view of the Screen Actors Guild brouhaha about nude interviews, who auditioned the girls?

George and I, but we didn’t go through the Screen Actors Guild. The part of Beaverella called for quite a bit of nudity so we went to agents who handled nude models, but the Screen Actors Guild actresses that we did interview were uptight about some of the nudity. That was in February of 1970 and SAG wasn’t quite as lenient as they are willing to be now.

Now they just want to regulate it and not prohibit it? 

Right, with most of the union people out of work they’ve finally seen the light. Since they didn’t encourage it, we didn’t bother to see too many SAG actresses – or saggy, either!

Anything funny or bizarre or interesting in the casting? 

No – from my past experience in the smut industry I knew that the girls come in and take off their clothes and there’s really no ceremonial things that go on — it’s just an accepted practice. It was kind of a kick to have girls come in and take off their clothes for you and parade around and to scrutinize them very carefully. Some of the girls were very uptight and, of course, that wasn’t much fun. They were either embarrassed or made us feel embarrassed because of their nudity, but most of the girls were very natural.

What were your criteria for selecting? 

We wanted a girl who was primarily athletic looking and could move athletically. The part of Beaverella called for a girl who didn’t have to say too much, didn’t have too many lines, but could move well. We wanted a girl with long legs, preferably. Then into our office walked Mary Jane Saint, with long beautiful legs and blonde hair and an innocent look.

It is kind of a special part – she’s two people, Beaverella and Ella Prim, and they ore opposites. Ella Prim wears long dresses to her ankles, wears her hair in a bun, and granny glasses, and is very, very square and puritanical about sex, while Beaverella is a beautiful, free chick – so this girl had to be two  people.

When we met Mary Jane she looked very exotic and sexual, but we had her come bock the next day with her hair up in a bun and no makeup, and looking very prim and proper and we saw right away that she was our girl. She had been in a couple of nudie features, very little experience.

How about the male actors? Did you have to have them strip too? 

No, we didn’t have to do that. We have a mixed group of five people in the film which I called my “Nudie Repertory Company,” and they are very animalistic and actually commit a couple of acts of cannibalism. I think it’s the first time in the history of the silver screen that cannibalism is consummated on it. These were nude models, very loose and free people, and they easily got into the role that we wanted them to play.

How did they behave between takes? 

They were very affectionate toward each other. They’re very unusual people. Most of them are nude models who have been in all kinds of sexploitation films and they were probably the most open people that we dealt with, very natural in their nakedness. But they were also very good, and they got into their role very well.

You said you were in a state of shock most of the time?

It was my very first feature film and I went into it thinking that I knew more than I did. I really wasn’t prepared for what was to come. I thought I knew something about directing, but I knew a lot less than I thought and I had to learn very, very quickly. In fact, at one point I was so lost that my partner George had to bail me out, and he didn’t know much more than I did.

So we sort of helped each other through the thing as co-directors. The cameraman and crew were a bit hostile, and not very helpful, because we weren’t controlling the situation as directors. We were bluffing half the time, and they knew it. They would get very surly and hostile, especially around four or five o’clock.

Was it because as pros they resented you not being pros, or did you make if difficult for them? 

We made it difficult for them only because we were wishy-washy. There has to be one boss on the set. I’m convinced now, one man who knows what he’s doing and exactly why he’s doing it. Our picture in the first eight days of shooting lacked that, but we grew and learned a lot, and when we shot the additional scenes we knew a lot more than when we started out. It was a long education capsulized into a few weeks.

Would you prepare for it another way if you had it to do over? 

Yes, I would probably study and read books on filmmaking and talk to a lot of film people.

And go on a lot of sets? 

Well, I’ve been on a lot of sets and it doesn’t work that way. I picked up on a lot of things but not really on the fine points. It helps to watch other directors in action, especially good directors, but there are a lot of things that you just don’t learn by watching other people, things like one person must control things at all times.

But you say you and your co-director helped each other – apparently having two directors wasn’t bad if they were both inexperienced?

We were sort of at the same level and we bluffed and ad-libbed our way through

But you wouldn’t want two experienced directors? You’d feel they’d clash with each other? Their vision of the film would not be identical? 

Very rarely do you see a film co-directed, but it happened to work in this case because we were there to help each other. Because our lack of knowledge was about equal, we didn’t have any ego problems on the set, and so it worked.

How did the people on the crew relate to the nude scenes?

The crew, which I really admire for their technical proficiency, went through about four or five days of shooting before they had seen a nude body. Now they knew up front that this was either a nudie film or was going to contain a lot of nudity. After about four or five days, they started asking us, “When are we going to see Beaverella nude?”

They were anxious?

Very – everybody in the crew and the other people in the cost. None of them had seen Ella Prim — Mary Jane Saint — nude, and when it finally happened it was about three o’clock in the morning after one of these sixteen or eighteen-hour days where you just keep driving on and everyone is exhausted. Finally she took off her clothes and did this scene and it was really anti-climactic.

And she wasn’t what they expected, or they were jaded by then? 

They were tired of working by then and it didn’t really matter. Even though she has an exceptional figure, it wasn’t as explosive as it might have been at the outset. We were into the thing five days before we had a nude scene.

Is that a premium for the crew, to see nudity, since I imagine they work at a minimum rate?

No, if you want technically proficient people you have to pay their price, and it’s not cheap.

Is it more proportionately than the acting?

Yes.

Because of the great proficiency that you want? 

It’s super-important to have an expert camera crew.

Even so, they expect the premium of nudity and they make no bones about it – or they do make bones about it? 

I don’t really know about that. There are some cameramen who claim that working in the nude films makes them impotent and jaded, but I doubt it unless they are that way to begin with. They were anxious to see this particular girl nude because she is, after all, the heroine, and she played a dual role, and they had seen her only as prim and proper Ella Prim for several days.

There were other aspects to the nudity, also. The “Nudie Repertory Company” somehow became very close on the set. They were only on a couple of days, but they had a kind of closeness that was very real. We had one sex scene with them where they’re all doing it together – a sort of “togetherness” thing. I was directing if and I can’t be sure but I think a couple of them were actually doing it. It didn’t seem to matter at the time, anyway, and no one got excited about it. It seemed part of the whole scene, anyway. I barely had to direct them because they just got into those beautiful positions in a very natural way.

In our additional shooting there was a fantasy scene between Beaverella and Captain Climax – sort of the hero of the film, the man most people will identify with. He is secretly in love with Ella Prim but can never admit if to her. We shot the scene in a remote port of Griffith Park, up in the mountains away from the more popular and populous parts. We were shooting Captain Climax chasing Beaverella through the woods, and we soon discovered that we had several spectators, even in this remote area — middle-aged types in business suits and ties — a whole set of voyeurs, including one man who walked right through our set and asked what kind of film are you shooting? After we got rid of him he went off and hid somewhere and watched us. It was incredible. As we were shooting the film it was like a Fellini picture, it was so unreal with these people creeping around in the bushes watching us.

We even turned the camera on one guy who was vonly about twenty feet from us when we shot a beautiful love scene between Captain Climax and Beaverella on a bed of grass and among the trees. He had been following us all afternoon, and he was so close to us we had a whole conversation with him. It was really unbelievable. And one of our voyeurs was a member of the Fire Department. We saw a flash of his badge and got very upset, but it turned out that he just wanted to watch and cause no trouble.

We had a lot of fun shooting later scenes, especially with this new cameraman. Up to that time it had pretty much been agony. His name is Gary Graver and he’s getting equal credit with our other cameraman who was proficient but difficult. Gary was very cooperative and would do whatever crazy thing we wanted. It was during these four or five days of the second shooting that I began to realize that I was right in my crazy ideas. Before, I was told that you can’t do this or shouldn’t do this – it’s against the rules, but the new stuff we shot is much further out. The first time around is very conventional shooting, but the second port is very unconventional.

In what sense – camera movement?

Well, in the first eight days we didn’t even use a zoom lens. I was talked out of it by people who really didn’t know what they were talking about. We had no zoom, and we had medium shots and long shots and semi-closeups – very conventional photography. Nothing original or unique about it. But the second time around we tried a lot of different things and most of them worked. We tried some very complicated things that I thought worked out very well.

Are these cut through the picture so there is no sudden shift? 

The new parts are scattered throughout the picture, and most people have told me that they had no idea there were two cameramen or even two directors on the picture. My fear was that the thing would appear to be irregular.

Or that they would say there was no director?

There was that possibility too!

What about Monica Gayle in your film? She’s been exposed in many a skinflick, and a critic described her as having a girl-next-door quality – what do you think about that?

She is a girl who started out as a nudie player and actually became a pretty good actress and she’s landed a couple of very good parts. She’s very good in S.M.U.T. – she was spanked very thoroughly by Max Birch.

Was that red genuine that showed up on her, uh, skin?

The red was very genuine. I told Max Birch before he soaked her with his patriotic paddle to make it real and not to hold back and fake it, because most movie spankings I’ve seen have looked and have been faked. So the screaming and the red marks were very, very real, and when she fell to the floor off his lap whimpering and crying, that was also very real. She told me after the scene was over, “You son of a bitch!” But I think it looks very authentic.

Was she really sore about it – emotionally, I mean? Was it unexpected to her?

It was completely unexpected. She thought it would be faked or soft-pedaled as is usually done, but I think the scene was legitimate.

Was she happy about it for that reason?

Yes, because she’s sort of a”method” actress.

Is Monica going to break into the legits also? 

She very well could. There have been a few girls who have bridged the gap between the nudies and the quote legit unquote films, non-nude films. A few have done it, and Monica could very easily do it.

Is she sustaining herself now as an actress full time? 

I doubt it, because she doesn’t want to accept the 16mm roles any more where they fake intercourse or even do it now. So she’s probably having trouble sustaining herself while waiting for that break.

Is she completely free with her nudity by now? 

Yes. You can always tell when a girl is at ease doing one of these nude scenes. They don’t try to cover themselves up, hide their pubic area or cover up their nipples – some girls do that.

Anybody on your set do that?

No, and the lead girl Beaverella was very, very free and very, very open – in a couple of scenes quite literally.

What about this fat and naked routine – is that a put-on? 

Oh, we had a couple of fat ladies in the picture. It’s always good for a few laughs because it’s totally unexpected. You just don’t see nude fat people every day, so it’s quite a surprise to the audience when these two grossly fat naked gals come bursting through the door and attack Doctor Depravity.

Had they worked nudity before?

They both had, yes. They were very, very strange people, all the fat people we talked to – these were really fat girls weighing between two hundred and fifty and four hundred pounds. There is a group of them in Los Angeles who do nudity, and to me that sort of thing is very weird.

Is there a market for real fat nude girls?

For a while the smut magazine producers were doing “fat girl” magazines, but eventually the fad wore off. I’d call it an “odd taste.”

How was their behavior strange?

Well, by definition for a fat girl to do a nude scene is weird.

They thought they were exciting to look at? 

We had two girls. One was very nice and cooperative and would do whatever we asked. The other girl would take her top off but she wouldn’t take her skirt off, and she was very strange because she was coming on, making open propositions to every man on the set. But she wouldn’t take off everything. The other girl would, very gladly and with no problems.

Apparently this type that you wouldn’t think would be sexually attractive gets sex all right?

They seem to. There are a lot of men apparently who like a very, very fat girl, and they are not necessarily fat men. I personally used to have a hunger for a fat woman maybe once a year or every two years.

Out of curiosity?

Out of some bizarre need I really couldn’t define.

Did you satisfy it?

Yes, yes. It was very enjoyable, the last one I had.

Shall we put that in?

Oh sure, sure.

Then what about the last one?

The last one – which was two or three years ago, before I married, of course – was quite enjoyable.

Was it a regular date?

It was through an ad in one of the underground newspapers, believe it or not.

She advertised that she was fat?

No, I had run an ad for somebody else who was afraid to run his phone number and I got several calls and one of them was this very, very fat girl, who I went over to visit, because she was very sexual over the phone, very provocative – but she weighed about 250 pounds, which I didn’t know before I went over there.

But a lot of these fat girls that I interviewed are overly proactive – it’s some sort of compensation.

We also had two very fat men who are the arch-villains. Their method of violence, the way they punished or hurt people, was by bouncing them between their stomachs – which was my concept. We have one scene in which a girl is bounced between their bellies back and forth and then they finally rape her. Their names are Glans and Smegma.

Fake names, apparently?

Well, I mean in the script. And the fat men were interviewed were also quite interesting.

They were sexy? Did they try to make it with the fat dames?

No, they were just characters, in a very odd sort of way. But their behavior was very different from most unusual characters that you meet. They were sort of in a different category. They had a need to brag about sexual conquests.

You say one of the fat girls kept offering herself?

Yes.

Was she taken up?

Not by anybody that I know of. It was too much. Because we had such unusual characters in the script we ran into a lot of unusual people casting for it.

Did any of them relate to each other, like the fat men to the fat ladies? 

No, they really didn’t. The only people that got involved with each other were the five nudies.

Did you have any lesbian scenes?

No, it just wasn’t part of it, although I dig lesbian scenes.

What’s operative there, on the man’s part watching it?

I just dig the sight of two good-looking women doing each other. Aesthetically I like it, and it also happens to turn me on. I don’t know what’s operating there. I sort of missed it in this film but there was no reason for it.

With S.M.U.T. in the can, you feel pretty good about it?

Showing the film to the distributors is probably the roughest part of the whole journey that began six months ago, because now my thing, my creation, my baby, is on the line – and so is my ego.

Now, you wanted to make something different, which was an aesthetic, an artistic, a socially conscious difference? 

A social statement.

And it would have been easier to invent an exploitable picture? 

It would have been very easy for us to do a nudie film based on the successful nudie formula. I am pretty familiar with the market and we could have made a money-making sexploitation adult film, but that was no challenge. I wanted to do some different – which is now our problem. We’ve done something different which doesn’t fit into a mold.

Story-wise, would you do any differently from this experience? 

The next film I do I hope will be a sequel to S.M.U.T. – it depends on the success of this one. But this time I will write my own script and I will listen to my own instincts, and I will be as crazy as I really want to be, because now I know that craziness – at least, my craziness – is acceptable, and my crazy ideas really weren’t too far out.

I didn’t do a lot of things I wanted to because I listened to people I thought knew what they were talking about. Everybody in this business or even remotely related to it is an expert – nothing personal! People who haven’t seen it have told me what I’ve done wrong, but what they are talking about is how they would have done it.

Everybody has a movie in his head, you know.

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Adam Film World: The Complete 1970 Issues

January 1970 (No. 12)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-American film reviews including The Scavengers, Lady Godiva Rides and Medium Cool -International film reviews including Satyricon, Sexy Susan Sins Again and Justine –Robert Forster profile -Nude Goddess of Film Alley

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February 1970 (Vol. 2 No. 1)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-American film reviews including The Notorious Cleopatra, Caged Desires and The Affairs of Aphrodite -International film reviews including Lust, Captive, Isle of the Swedes and What Did Stalin do to Women -The eroticism of Luis Bunuel -The director Luchino Visconti -Portrait of Sondra Locke

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March 1970 (Vol. 2 No. 2)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-American film reviews including Diamond Stud, Trader Hornee and Fairy Tales for Adults -International film reviews including Fellini’s Satyricon, A Pill for Eva and Leo the Last -A wildflower afternoon with Stella and Sam –Brando the Pro and Evaristo the Proletariat -Always on the scene: on a Roman film set

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April 1970 (Vol. 2 No. 3)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-American film reviews including Private Arrangement, Hot Cargo and Bloody Mama -International film reviews including Sexy Susan Sins Again and Again, White Angel/Black Angel and The Labyrinth of Sex -The Maugham story Of Human Bondage –Don Siegel, Working Director -Blonde Italienne –Russ Meyer, Rod Serling and Rex Reed give their viewpoints on permissive pictures -Always on the scene: a London movie set

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May 1970 (Vol. 2 No. 4)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-American film reviews including Marsha the Erotic Housewife and I Am Sandra -International film reviews including Dirty Angels, Pussycat Pussycat I Love You and Una Storia D’Amore -The last American hobo filmmaker -Floyd and Susanne make “The Scene” -A legacy of horror films by the late Michael Reeves -Politics in I Am Curious Yellow

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June 1970 (Vol. 2 No. 5)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-American film reviews including Love is a Four-Letter Word, Nobody Loves a Drunken Indian and The Reckoning -International film reviews including The Rape of a Nympho in “He and She” and The Love Robots -How Hollywood director Irving Lerner saw the action in Madrid –Ringo Starr & Peter Sellers vs the paparazzi –Ian McShane on the rise of the British superstar of the 1970s -There’s Peter and Jane, but first there had to be Papa Fonda

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August 1970 (Vol. 2 No. 6)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-American film reviews including Melissa the Total Female, Viva Max! and Age of Consent -International film reviews including Hell’s Tattooers, Projekt Apollo Sex and The Unknown Sex -The return of Budd Boetticher -New filmmaker Floyd Mutrux -Blue movies boom in forbidden film festivals -Director Noel Black -Stars in drag -Yasha Gabor Italian starlet

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September 1970 (Vol. 2 No. 7)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

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October 1970 (Vol. 2 No. 8)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-American film reviews including Start the Revolution Without Me and Matinee Wives -International film reviews including The Battle of Neretva and Massacre of Pleasure -A probe into whether nudie stars swing offscreen too –Roger Corman: Mr. ‘B Movies’ moving up -Marie Donald tells how it feels to sell movie tickets topless

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November 1970 (Vol. 2 No. 9)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-American film reviews including Tropic of Cancer, How to Succeed with the Opposite Sex and Love Thy Neighbor and His Wife -International film reviews including The Season of the Senses, Heat of Midnight and Forbidden Technique -The film odyssey of Joseph Strick –Bert Gordon‘s new success with sex -Breckinridge brouhaha

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December 1970 (Vol. 2 No. 10)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-American film reviews including S.M.U.T., Angel Unchained and S.L.I.P. -International film reviews including Cosi Dolce, Cosi Perversa, The Female, The Sex Promoters and Danish Blue –Marvin Lincoln tells how he made S.M.U.T. into a movie –Chris Warfield‘s zoom from sex to art -Film World’s guide to the movies

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