Girls in
Rabid (1977)

A Tender Moment

“A new star graces that firmament we can’t quite reach,” porn star Georgina Spelvin wrote in response to the news of her friend, 56-year-old porn legend Marilyn Chambers, nude in dozens of movies, who died Easter Sunday.

It takes a special kind of lady to make a box of soap dirty. And that lady was the one and only Golden Age porn star Marilyn Chambers, formerly the face of Ivory Soap and later the star of the X-rated classic Behind the Green Door and David Cronenberg’s fright flick Rabid.

When the wholesome, spokesmodel-esque Marilyn walked into the audition for the 1972 flesh-flick Behind the Green Door, she had already acted in the Barbara Streisand comedy The Owl and the Pussycat and the skin-filled 1971 hippie movie Together, directed by Friday the 13th’s Sean S. Cunningham.

Originally, she was to have a non-sex role in Green Door, but the Mitchell Brothers, who directed the movie and were later the subject of the biopic Rated X, talked her into doing her first hardcore scenes, leading to a career of sizzling, taboo-busting, on-screen sex acts.

And she never looked back (unless it was to reach for more lube).

Read more after the jump.

If You Can’t Masturbate, Decapitate!

Ah my friends, welcome back to Castle Rackula. I wasn’t expecting you this early!

You’ve caught me watching one of my old favorites, Dracula Exotica with Vanessa del Rio and my dear friend Randy West. But that actually brings me to the point of this week’s visit.

When I was a young boy in pre-Christian Mamsylvania, my friends and I used to steal the erotic etchings of Messalina getting gang-banged by the senate that the Roman soldiers carried and hide them under our straw mattresses to look at by candlelight when everyone else was asleep.

Incidentally, the real Messalina was never as hot as Anneka Di Lorenzo (AKA Marjorie Lee Thoreson) was in Caligula. But then, the real Messalina would never have sued Bob Guccione for sexual harassment.

Pornography has come a long way since the days of the Roman Empire. And today’s porn stars, while they may not have the political pull that Messalina did, do have more star power.

And sometimes they use that star power to make the jump from creamed teens to scream queens. Here are few of my favorites.

Read more after the bite.

Aside from being Earth Day, today also happens to be the birthday of some of the Earth's most notable skin-habitants. Some of them, like V.I. Lenin (father of the Soviet Union), J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atomic bomb) and Flora Disney (mother of Walt Disney) are important because of the newsworthy place they occupy in history. Other are significant for reasons that are far more nudes-worthy. Here are my six skinstant celebrity birthdays for today.

Marilyn Chambers went from being the smiling woman on the cover of the Ivory Soap box to getting a face full of soapy scum in the seminal seventies porno flick Behind the Green Door (1972). Five years later, Chambers appeared in Canadian sci-fi auteur David Cronenberg's vampire flick Rabid (1977), where she sucks down a different type of body fluid.

Baltimore's favorite son John Waters' early work, especially his undisputed masterpiece Pink Flamingos (1972), was enormously influential in the development of underground cinema, midnight movie culture, and generally bad taste in entertainment. Waters shocked the world in the 90s when he came out as a gay man and today he continues to make twisted movies. And I love him for it.

Chicago native Jack Nitzsche died in 2000, but not before filling out an incredibly impressive resume. He famously worked and had subsequent falling-outs with Phil Spector and Neil Young in the 60s and 70s, but I especially appreciate the soundtracks he produced for skinematic classics like Performance (1970), Hardcore (1979), Cruising (1980) Personal Best (1982), 9 ½ Weeks (1986) and The Hot Spot (1990). Jack, we need you back!

One of Hollywood's most enduring talents, Jack Nicholson's career is the stuff of legend. But if anyone needs a reminder why we all a debt of gratitude to the 71-year old Lakers fanatic who famously banged Lara Flynn Boyle from 1999 to 2001, here are a few: He made out with a naked Lia Beldam before she turned into a naked Billie Gibson in The Shining (1980); he plowed his face into Jessica Lange's muff in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981); and he got into a hot tub with a bare Kathy Bates in About Schmidt (2002).

Recording and TV star Glen Campbell produced a string of hits, including "Gentle On My Mind," "Wichita Lineman," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix." But it was "Rhinestone Cowboy" that inspired Porky's director Bob Clark's 1984 flop Rhinestone starring Sylvester Stallone and country star/act-chest Dolly Parton.

50s fetish and pin-up model Bettie Page's recent resurgence in popularity has made her rack, rump and distinctive haircut nearly ubiquitous. She has even inspired a film about her life called The Notorious Bettie Page (2005). Still, despite all the imitators, there's only one fetish model that really makes the pages stick together.

Aaron Spelling is a man who built a TV production dynasty like no other. He is also the man, perhaps not coincidentally, who produced Dynasty. Spelling's many series credits include Beverly Hills, 90210, Models Inc., Melrose Place, and that "Jiggle TV" classic Charlie's Angels. We lost Spelling in 2006, but he will always have a place of honor in the hallowed halls of skinstory.