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Man of Taste

The Erotic Cinema of Radley Metzger

ebook
2 of 2 copies available
2 of 2 copies available

Radley Metzger was one of the foremost directors of adult film in America, with credits including softcore titles like The Lickerish Quartet and the hardcore classic The Opening of Misty Beethoven. After getting his start making arthouse trailers for Janus Films, Metzger would go on to become among the most feted directors of the "porno chic" era of the 1970s, working under the pseudonym Henry Paris. In the process, he produced a body of work that exposed the porous boundaries separating art cinema from adult film, softcore from hardcore, and good taste from bad.
Rob King uses Metzger's work to explore what taste means and how it works, tracing the evolution of the adult film industry and the changing frontiers of cultural acceptability. Man of Taste spans Metzger's entire life: his early years in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood, his attempt to bring arthouse aesthetics to adult film in the 1960s, his turn to pseudonymously directed hardcore movies in the 1970s, and his final years, which included making videos on homeopathic medicine. Metzger's career, King argues, sheds light on how the distinction between the erotic and the pornographic is drawn, and it offers an uncanny reflection of the ways American film culture transformed during these decades.
Lavishly illustrated with rare photos and publicity images, this book paints a vivid picture of a filmmaker who channeled his artistic aspirations into some of the most disreputable movie genres of his day.

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    • Library Journal

      March 1, 2025

      Early in his film career, Radley Metzger (1929-2017) learned that sex sells. Foreign films had the dual perception of being artistic (highbrow) and erotic (lowbrow). Cofounding Audubon Films with Ava Leighton, Metzger began importing foreign films, re-editing them with steamier content he directed, and distributing them to art houses and less-esteemed markets. Soon, he directed feature films emphasizing aesthetics with a Borscht Belt sense of humor. This style distinguished his softcore films and was retained in his later hardcore films (where he used the pseudonym Henry Paris), such as The Opening of Misty Beethoven, an explicit reimagining of Pygmalion. King (Hokum!: The Early Sound Slapstick Short and Depression-Era Mass Culture) calls Metzger an auteur in this film survey, analyzing distinct periods in the director's career. King documents a Golden Age of adult cinema, where directors like Metzger elevated films previously shown in private viewing booths. This era ended with the rise of video rental stores and their dimly lit back rooms. VERDICT King brings erudition to sexploitation, grounding this work in film theory and exploring the subjectivity of taste. Less subjective are the movie stills used to illustrate his points.--Terry Bosky

      Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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  • English

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