The "Taboo" Franchise

[StevePulaski]

Taboo (1980)
Directed by: Kirdy Stevens


Rating: ★★★½

Taboo is a landmark in porn, not only still a part of the tailend of The Golden Age of Porn, but one that could very well be considered an early American, feature-length porn film focusing on a fetish, in this case, mother/son incest. Incest is always a curious subject, even moreso due to its lack of exploration on film, because of the fact that it's a largely forbidden, condemned act that still results in pleasure for both parties (if they are consenting, of course). Taboo tackles the subject in perhaps the most relaxed, classy, and sexiest manner, also catering to the "mature/MILF" subsector of porn before the two were even largely recognized as genres within pornography.

We focus on Barbara, played by the beautiful Kay Parker, who's husband walks out on her in the opening scene of the film following stiff sex and a continuing downward spiral in their marriage. This leaves Barbara crushed and without financial support, forcing her to go out in the working world to find a job. However, because she's approaching middle-age, she is immediately unattractive to a great deal of employers, yet still manages to land a secretary job with a perverted boss. Meanwhile, Barbara's only son Paul (Mike Ranger) spends most of his time with his girlfriend Sherrie (Dorothy LeMay), who loves having sex with him.

Ever since his father's departure, however, Paul sees himself growing more and more sexually attracted to his mother. One particularly arousing scene comes when Paul is staring at his mother while she showers and subsequently dresses in lingerie and stockings underneath her evening attire. Barbara is built beautifully, with a knockout figure complete with round hips and gorgeous brown hair. Parker is a universally appealing woman here, as not only is she a believable screen presence, but she can turn on the horny teenage boy and the seasoned porn veteran with just a few winks and a hip thrust. Her character's conservative attitude and mannerisms throughout the film only work to assist this attractiveness.

One day, Barbara comes home from an orgy she was taken to by a date. Despite persistent encouragement, and even after being manhandled, she refused to participate and returns home unbelievably horny. She finds Paul sleeping in the nude and, overcome with hormones, prolonged feelings of loneliness, and inferiority, she gives him a fellatio, which leads into a passionate sex scene between the two for about five minutes. The two fall asleep together in ecstasy.

Amazingly, Taboo was written by a woman named Helene Terrie, which could very well explain the film's sensitive angle. One can easily look at the incest angle, view the mother/son sex scenes as deplorable, and find this film uncommonly offensive. However, one can look at this film as a sensitive portrayal of the desperate measures people can go to in order to combat their own loneliness. The film, at its core, shows how a woman is rejected from everything, society, employers, and even her husband for allegedly not being good enough, and the first time she finally does something she wants, she's overcome with guilt and shame. Who would've thought a pornographic film would ever go this deep (metaphorically speaking)?

The scenes here carry a terrific level of eroticism and hold weight as some of the sexiest I've seen in pornography yet. They are intimate, usually assisted by soft, soulful music choices rather than ones that hinder the scenes themselves, and are beautifully constructed to flow very naturally. It also helps that, again, Parker and Ranger are such talented performers, able to act, have sex, and get emotional all in a film that's very intelligently written, which only elevates the level of believability here.

Taboo was a film born to divide in a genre born to be embraced by some and lambasted by others. Yet, it proves that even pornography can tackle a subject with a strong level of thoughtfulness, so much so that perhaps there's another reason why mainstream cinema won't touch the topic of incest with a ten foot pole (again, metaphorically speaking).

Starring: Kay Parker, Mike Ranger, and Dorothy LeMay. Directed by: Kirdy Stevens.

[StevePulaski]

Taboo II (1982)
Directed by: Kirdy Stevens

Rating: ★★

Kirdy Stevens' original Taboo was a seriously unique pornographic film, coming at a time when pornography was still, itself, a taboo in American culture. To make a film concerned with mother/son incest during a time when an unrelated, unmarried male and female having sex was frowned upon was nothing but daring and Stevens did it with his original, 1980 masterpiece with complete class and conviction. If one approached the film with an open mind and a willingness to understand the characters and their motivations, there's no way somebody who doesn't regularly view pornography would find Taboo something to slam or condemn as a film. It was a serious pornographic film that dealt with loneliness and the risk of doing something that is so wrong, although it feels so right.

Stevens' followup to his unexpected success, Taboo II, unfortunately, is everything that would've had the original Taboo condemned and shoved to the side while genre classics like Deep Throat and The Opening of Misty Beethoven endured all the love. This is an overlong and repetitive stroll through pornographic conventions, less concerned with narrative and themes and more concerned with interchangeable characters and undeveloped situations that adhere towards the realm of basic masturbatory fantasies rather than anything worth remembering.

Our story, rather than focusing on Barbara (Kay Parker) from the original film, concerns the McBride's, a family where husband and wife Joyce and Greg Sr. (Honey Wilder and Eric Edwards) have reached a point where their sex life is at a standstill. Meanwhile, their son Greg Jr. (Kevin James) can't seem to control his sexual urges for his sister Sherrie (Dorothy LeMay), Paul's girlfriend from the original film, constantly trying to seduce her whenever the two are alone. The film focuses on Greg Jr.'s relentless pursuit for his sister, in addition to his sister's eventual pursuit for her father. Barbara's role in the film is largely shifted to being a secondary character, with her character being used to reflect on the time her and Paul had sex and had to conceal their fling from everyone they knew.

The fact that the majority of Taboo concerns Paul's girlfriend's family is already a disappointment, given all the time Stevens and writer Helene Terrie spent setting up Barbara's story of being a widow and left to care for her son. With focusing on the McBride's, more characters are thrown in the mix, providing for less realism behind the original incestuous act, leading me to question that, if everyone in this film seems to be having sex with their relative, doesn't that make the act not so much taboo but normal?

With that, while the original film pioneered not only the incest taboo, but the notion of mature women and the widely used "MILF" acronym as acceptable terminology in pornography, thanks to the daring and beautiful Kay Parker, Taboo II cops out at being a pornographic film that's more-or-less ordinary in style and approach. Because development on all these characters is so thin, nothing separates sex between Dorothy LeMay and Eric Edwards as something other than normal intercourse because so little development is given to them as characters. When Parker and Mike Ranger had sex in the original Taboo, a chord was struck in the audience and a level of discomfort that slowly morphed into eroticism was achieved. Taboo II takes that spark and smothers it with convention and a tired approach to something that should pop on screen.

Then there's the film's score, about as unabashedly corny as it could be, creating another layer of annoyance in a sequel to a film that was anything but annoying or ordinary. Taboo II, in the end, provides a case of trying to capture lightning in a bottle twice in a row and proving that kind of energy can do nothing but cause a self-destructive blow to a perfectly solid film, especially one so daring in an already controversial genre.

Starring: Starring: Dorothy LeMay, Eric Edwards, Honey Wilder, Kevin James, Kay Parker, and Cara Lott. Directed by: Kirdy Stevens.

[StevePulaski]

Taboo III: The Final Chapter (1986)
Directed by: Kirdy Stevens

Rating: ★★★

Kirdy Stevens original Taboo sits as one of my favorite pornographic films of all time. Its eloquent and honest depiction of incest, in a way that's accessible and understandable to anyone willing to forgo judgment and willing to give it the time of day, is extraordinary, and, with the gorgeous Kay Parker at the center, the film helped pioneer the "MILF" and "mature" genres into mainstream pornography (it has taken many years, but now it there's a bigger interest in 'incest porn' as well). Stevens' sequel to the film, however, was a subpar example of a film that was never intended to exist, and the end result was a film so ordinary and lackluster that it stripped the taboo element away from the film, making it just another run-of-the-mill skinflick with little substance.

Taboo III: The Final Chapter, even with its gaping plothole (I'll reserve my dirty pun here), is a lot of fun and returns to capturing the spirit of the original Taboo. The familiar characters are back, the combination of humor and guilt is embedded into the screenplay once more, and the sex is as filthy and taboo as ever. After taking timeout from her to focus on an entirely different family in Taboo II, our focus returns to Barbara Scott (Kay Parker), who's loneliness returns when her son Paul suddenly moves out, to which her focus becomes on her younger son Jimmy (Jerry Butler). Barbara finds herself increasingly jealous of Jimmy's girlfriend, similar to when she found Brian's girlfriend a simple tart that took him away from his mother in the original Taboo.

Barbara can't take her mind off of Jimmy, so she confides in her friend Joyce (Honey Wilder), who is having sex with younger son Brian (Blake Palmer) since Gregory is away. Barbara, who still has Paul on her mind, wants to try and seduce her son Jimmy, but her better judgment tells her not to after her obsession for Paul grew deeper and deeper when she began having sex with him. It doesn't help that Jimmy and Brian are both involved in a band that is struggling to get the attention of record labels in the meantime their mothers are making attempts to have sex with them.

Hormones flare, sex occurs between different parties (Joyce and Brian, Joyce and Jimmy, Barbara and Jimmy, etc), and the ominous but inviting title is earned for this film. The aforementioned plothole comes from the fact that neither Jimmy nor Brian were ever mentioned in either of the previous Taboo films by any character, evident that Stevens and the production company couldn't foresee the longevity of this franchise.

The sex in Taboo II reminded me a lot of the sex in Mona: The Virgin Nymph because, despite the raw and unadulterated subject matter, the sex was messily filmed, depressingly tame, and wholly unremarkable. With Taboo III, the romanticism between the characters is restored due to the fact that the characters work to rekindle the heart and soul they possessed in the first film, through honest conversations about love and emotions, and Stevens decides to make the film as explicit as the original. Almost every sex scene, from the casual fellatio to the compromising position that's everyone's favorite number, has a tender, romantic side to its eroticism, giving the film that extra edge.

This is where I depart on the Taboo train, however, despite finding two-thirds of my ride successful. As of today, the Taboo franchise has extended itself to twenty-three films; maybe later on down the road I'll find myself perusing the other twenty films. The latter sequels, except for the fourth one, don't include Kay Parker, the heart and soul of the film, and after this particular endeavor, judging from stray clips I've seen of selected films, the focus becomes more on the sex than the themes of the story, as modern porno sequels usually do. There's a thinkpiece somewhere in all of this, and, like the twenty sequels I still have to get through, maybe one day I'll tackle it; I'll save that taboo for another day.

Starring: Kay Parker, Honey Wilder, Jerry Butler, and Blake Palmer. Directed by: Kirdy Stevens.