Original subtitles

- Advertising,

headquartered on New York's Madison Avenue,

is a multi-billion dollar industry.

The TV commercial, designed to entice you to buy

a 59-cent can of hairspray,

may have cost $60,000 to produce,

and a million dollars in fees to broadcast.

However,

due to the liberalization of pornography laws,

a new group of publications have sprung up,

and their market is sex advertising.

The sex-by-advertisement market operates far

from the posh executive suites on Madison and Fifth.

Their locale, a garbage-ridden side street.

Their masterminds,

cruel, anything-for-a-buck businessmen,

fresh from the sewer, fiscal degenerates.

[music]

Dr. Joanne Ridgefield, a brilliant scholar and research specialist.

- Prior to the recent sexual revolution,

the common, almost universal public acceptance of deviation,

advertising for sexual outlets was done undercover.

It was limited to bulletin boards

in certain stores, restaurants, and neighborhoods

frequented by degenerates.

These could be found in almost every major city of the world.

But still,

they were hidden in coded language,

worded so that only the knowing would reply.

“Model available."

A simple cover for the common prostitute,

male or female.

"Babysitter for difficult children."

A lure for obedience fetish fanciers.

[belt slapping]

Others catered to the gay sex,

the lonely couple,

strangers in the city,

a hint of family fun,

which really means an invitation to an orgy.

Some ads were for less active participation,

clubs for the exchange of pornography.

- And so-called “bird-watching societies," which

were a haven for voyeurs.

Their usual method was to exchange peeping tom posts

as collectors trade stamps.

However,

these ads were harmless in the fact that they appealed to consenting adults

and almost never affected the general public.

The worst type of sex advertisements

were entirely evil in intent, however,

and designed to corrupt the naive person who replied

and defraud him of money.

These are the lonely heart clubs and so-called "marriage brokers."

A sure way to make a quick buck on loneliness,

physical misfortune.

[phone ringing]

- Oh. Oh, Miss Lifford.

My dearest and prettiest client.

How are you today, dear child?

I'm so sorry that your date last night didn't go too well.

He happens to be a wealthy businessman.

Yes, darling, he may have false teeth,

but you didn't have to tell him that you lost all your hair

when you were a little girl.

- The “marriage broker" deals in misery

and waits for the big score.

- You can't be a potential client.

You're much too handsome!

- I, I want to find wife, young girl.

- Not so fast now.

You'll have to fill out an application.

That's standard procedure.

- (Dr. Ridgefield) The first rule of any good con man,

find out what the client can be milked for.

- From accident settlement, I have plenty money.

- I will have to pay somebody to check out your financial standing.

If you had $50,000,

you could have your pick of "young girl".

- I have got money,

plenty money,

right in bank.

- This certainly looks authentic.

I think I have an 18-year-old blonde who would be perfect for you.

She's just your type.

Registration fee is $150

and the introduction fee is $100.

- I pay, I pay.

- Does she seem suitable?

I think I can arrange a match.

- She is the one I want.

- In that case,

you'll have to set up a joint bank account.

I can arrange that for you.

You bring all your funds to me,

cash.

- The subject quickly weakens.

The victim is usually too embarrassed to go to the police

and the marriage broker enjoys an extended vacation

on his funds.

Another common cover for sex advertisers

is the employment ad seeking young models

or would-be starlets.

One such adventurer

has been operating in Manhattan for years

without attracting the attention of the authorities.

Working out of this East Side office building,

this panderer has destroyed

hundreds of young girls with the promise of a career.

[phone rings]

- Listen, I told you not to call anymore.

You have to cooperate in this business.

When I tell you to be nice to a date,

listen.

Now that wasn't a smart girl.

I'm one of the most important people in show business.

None of the big studios or producers make a move without Hogar's okay.

If you wanna be a star,

I just gotta say the word.

I've made fifty girls stars in my time.

I've got power,

I can make you or break you.

- How can I be sure?

- Everybody sends me their plays and movies for casting approval.

If Hogar doesn't give the word,

nobody works.

- (Dr. Ridgefield) Nobody sends Hogar scripts.

He buys them for a quarter

when they have been discarded by the major companies.

- Okay,

I got one for you.

- (Dr. Ridgefield) Hogar isn't too well paid.

He sends the girls out on dates

with men he describes as producers and directors.

They are actually just his clients.

Hogar receives $9.50 per introduction.

Since he doesn't make his expenses that way,

he spends four days a week working as a sorter of cardboard

in the city dump.

Many of the females he deals with are masochistic,

are too blinded by thoughts of a career to care.

- Come on, give me a little kiss, kid.

- Please.

I'm sorry, I can't do it.

- But you've gotta, for your career.

[phone rings]

Yeah, BJ.

Linda's here but she's not cooperating.

We'll have to get another girl to fly to Europe for your picture instead.

- Is there really a film?

- You can take my word for it.

- When?

- You get your contract in two weeks,

but from now on, you take orders from me.

Listen, BJ,

Linda is acting smarter.

I'll send her over to your hotel tonight.

- (Dr. Ridgefield) Believe it or not,

Hogar has an assistant.

The assistant hangs out in bus terminals and airports,

picks up girls, and takes them to Hogar's office for a $2 fee.

They've been working together for twelve years.

- (Narrator) Dr. Ridgefield discovered that many seemingly harmless ads

for household servants, maids,

and other domestics

were covers for twisted employers

seeking sexual gratification through the abuse of employees.

[water splashing]

[Linda screams]

- (Man) You're in this country illegally.

If you open your mouth about this, both of us will be locked up.

Behave from now on, and you'll enjoy your job much more.

- (Narrator) Sometimes the so-called employer is acting as a front

for an interstate white slavery ring.

Girls lured to the United States with the promise of a new

and glorious future are blackmailed

into a life of prostitution via pornographic pictures.

One such case,

which has been recently presented to a grand jury,

involved a girl who was recruited in a Portuguese fishing village

and flown to the United States on a work visa.

She expected a job as a governess for three young children.

- Her prospective employer takes her back to his apartment.

She accepts a friendly drink,

which turns out to be drugged.

She is misused horribly.

She is held prisoner for days.

She is soon confronted with the photographs.

Rather than have them sent to her friends and family,

she agrees to anything.

Her first assignment is a suburban motel

sewing businessmen during their lunch hour.

[phone rings]

- I'm sending another customer over right away.

I'll be over myself tonight for my cut of the dough.

- (Dr. Ridgefield) She is kept alive on pills and drugs.

They milk every cent they can out of her body.

Professor Kogman, a leading expert on the new sexual mores,

has joined me today to add his views

to the investigation of sex by advertisement.

- The examples shown today are fairly rare, but they do reoccur occasionally.

Those who advertise for sexual frauds

usually make one fatal mistake.

They may misjudge a victim

or prey on a teenage girl with alert parents.

In the case of Mr. Hogar,

well, he made the gross error of involving a girl

a mafia Chieftain was interested in.

- You guys stay away from me.

I got plenty of connections.

[indistinct]

[siren wailing]

- (Kogman) He was severely mutilated and left for dead.

He spent the rest of his years in a charity hospital,

a human vegetable.

- These cases are not common, doctor.

- They still occur,

but they're not a part of the new fad for open sexual advertisements.

Every sort of sexual device

arrangement and service is sold above-board today.

It's one expression of the new freedom of thought.

- (Dr. Ridgefield) The more timid would rather watch than touch.

- Or the more esoteric.

- (Dr. Ridgefield) Some studios specialize in

action painting with colored mud.

The studios charge their customers $20 an hour for the model's time

and $5 per bucket.

- The girl is basically

an exhibitionist with latent nymphomania.

- You would agree that this trait is advancing itself

in a greater percentage of the female population?

Another common form of advertising

is for the so-called "exploitation movie".

After viewing dozens, I have come to the conclusion

that they are semi-fraudulent

in the fact that there is more sex in the title and the ads than the film.

- That's not true.

My films deal with actuality.

We show all we have to show.

Art is art.

You shouldn't use me in your survey.

I do the same stuff they do in Hollywood, only better.

- At a lower budget, my stuff is superior to anything

that's done in Europe by the so-called greats.

This is one of my directorial touches.

It moves. It works.

The passionate rendering of flesh by fingernail is my trademark.

Everybody is stealing it today.

After I originated this shot,

it was in fifteen French films.

- (Dr. Ridgefield) If you feel so strongly about art,

why do you make sex films?

- I reach more of the masses this way.

The majors don't know how to deal with a talent

like mine today.

- (Dr. Ridgefield) What was your last film?

- PASSION ON FREAK ISLAND.

A story of a homosexual, a lesbian, two West Point cadets,

and four high school girls thrown together during a storm.

It has everything in it but necrophilia.

- (Dr. Ridgefield) How does the story-line go?

- Story?

Story?

You don't understand.

Nobody understands.

- Then you think sex advertisements are harmless?

- When they are not fraudulent.

- I kept my objective viewpoint by

avoiding the participating advertisers at first,

and speaking only with the vendors of erotic devices, pictures, lists.

My first interview was with a young man who made

torture instruments.

His factory was in a small loft directly opposite New York's Lincoln Center.

- It's a strict business with me.

It's a lot more interesting than my former work

as a computer programmer, and many times more lucrative.

My father makes leather handbags,

and boy, wow, I never thought I'd end up in

practically the same business.

I estimate that I use 45,000 hides a year in my business.

Nothing close to the old man's volume.

I have a higher markup though.

The plain old leather punishment strap is my biggest seller.

I do a big business in leather corsets and underwear,

bondage stuff.

Although my most expensive items are masks and elaborate devices

which are all made to order.

I have a low price line of whips,

but there's quite a demand for my custom made ones.

One of my biggest customers, a famous movie director,

buys only those of the best leather and made to his specifications.

A big surprise in this day and age is the demand for chastity belts.

This is a pilot model.

I plan to produce and sell them for $125 each.

I went into it for money.

Two years in business

and I've already bought a townhouse and a 45 foot yacht.

How I got into it?

It was an accident.

I was in Central Park one afternoon.

I saw this weird old geezer in the park.

He came over to me and started a conversation.

I at first thought he was a fag.

He asked me if I belonged to his organization.

What club? I didn't know.

Then he asked me where I got my leather belt.

I told him,

"I made it myself."

He wanted to buy it.

I turned him down.

I wasn't in the belt business at that time.

He didn't get nasty.

He thanked me for my time and left.

I saw him later necking with a girl behind some bushes.

It was kind of weird.

I figured I'd leave them alone and let him do his thing.

- A little later, the old man came down that hill like hell on fire.

He insisted on borrowing the belt.

I refused.

He then offered to buy it.

I changed my mind quick enough when he gave me $100.

The belt only cost me a buck to make.

- The whole thing got the best of me.

I just had to find out what was going on.

- I decided to sneak up and take a look.

- I was flipped out of my head.

It was the freakiest, and happening in Central Park

right in broad daylight.

[slapping sound]

It went on for over an hour.

Then they balled.

I was entranced by the whole scene.

- The guy knew I was watching all the time.

It took a lot of nerve, but I walked over.

The old man thanked me profusely for the belt.

He said it was one of the best he had ever used.

His date agreed.

She said, "It hurt like something wonderful."

He went to get beer after I promised not to leave.

I was left alone with the girl.

As soon as he was gone,

she came on strong.

I told her I didn't want to get her boyfriend jealous.

She said that he liked her to have other men.

She begged me to make love to her.

She insisted that I whip her.

I was tempted.

- The old man's arrival gave me a great deal of relief.

She complained to him of my lack of interest.

He ordered her to apologize.

She got down on her knees and begged.

The way she did it didn't suit him,

so he had her repeat the action at his command.

He suggested that we have some beer

while he explained his forms of enjoyment.

He belonged to a society

that demanded exact obedience from their women.

- His date explained all the girls she knew participated

because that was the only way they could enjoy sex.

When she was a virgin, she had urges she didn't quite understand.

She engaged in auto-eroticism.

- Her father beat her severely.

[slapping sound]

- The old man explained that he owned her completely.

She was a functional piece of equipment to use as he pleased.

Play with, torture, or ignore, depending on his mood.

He demonstrated.

I declined to participate,

but I watched the ritual.

[slapping sound]

- It went on until they were both too exhausted to continue.

I then joined them for a walk.

He tried to sell me on the pleasures of total obedience,

as if they were mutual funds.

He had the girl demonstrate further.

- He had her crawl around to pretend she was a sheep eating grass.

- He didn't stop at grass.

He invited me to his club.

He said there was the possibility

of me becoming their official whipmaker,

and that could mean money.

I didn't take him seriously.

I got started late.

- I didn't bother to look at the address at first,

thinking it was sure to be located down in the East Village

where the hippies live.

I had gone twenty blocks before checking myself

and discovering that the address was on Gracie Square,

a very posh street.

The host for the night was a prominent Realtor,

noted for his charitable contributions.

I made up some samples to show the old man's friends.

As I arrived late, I imagined the meeting was already in progress.

- Come in, my boy.

Don't mind the mask.

It's truly your friend from the park.

[footsteps]

I see you brought some samples.

I hope you'll allow us to experiment.

The club meets in this room.

It's soundproof.

I suggest that you put this on before you enter.

Regulations, you know.

The sounds and smells of ecstasy.

Pure pleasure.

I, I, I just can't live without it.

[cheering]

[laughter]

[dog barking]

This all seems strange now,

but you'll love it after a while.

[slapping sound]

This is beauty.

This is the way you should live, Malcolm.

Malcolm,

you should become one of us.

A real fun group.

Many notables are present.

[laughter]

[dog barking]

[cheering]

Now that one.

She's a well-known actress,

and he's coming along as a politician.

A future senator.

[laughter]

[cheering]

[dog barking]

And that fellow,

why,

A brilliant biochemist.

She's last year's leading debutante.

A brain surgeon.

The dean of a major university and his kid sister.

- Up, doggie. Big, big.

Bark, bark, doggie.

That's nice. Bark. Big.

Good, good.

Here, here, here.

Big, big.

Good. Nice.

[dog barking]

[cheering]

[dog barking]

- A cleric of no mean reputation.

[cheering]

[dog barking]

The others aren't so successful in public life,

but good people all.

Our president, why,

he's a plumber.

[cheering]

[laughter]

[dog barking]

We get together twice a month.

Come, come. You must meet our other friends.

[cheering] [laughter]

[claps] Gentlemen and slaves,

quiet.

We have a visitor.

I'd like to introduce.

Would you please all stop for a minute?

Come on over.

I want you to meet somebody.

Our friend here, Malcolm, is a craftsman.

A craftsman in leather of the finest caliber.

There is no longer any need to order our equipment from Europe.

He brought some samples with him.

[cheering] [laughter]

- I received $1,500 in orders that night.

All cash.

I gave up my regular job.

[cheering] [laughter]

- Malcolm was the only cooperative manufacturer.

The others refused to be interviewed.

One actually even threatened to shoot me.

I did, however, under a cover name,

order products from other mail-order houses.

Most of them were shoddily made,

impractical, and priced about 5,000 times

what it would cost to produce them.

More and more newspapers, including those of the

so-called New Left,

are being published with their want ad columns crammed

with sex advertisements.

I went out into the field and talked to the people

behind these advertisements.

The homosexuals were most cooperative.

They delighted in their deviation from the norm.

- Sure, I'm a fag,

but it's the in thing to be today.

However, I like to keep it away from business.

I'm with the truckers' union, and they wouldn't understand.

Basically, I think that free expression in advertising

is a wonderful thing for homosexuals.

It keeps them out of trouble.

Of course, I personally never cruise the streets.

I suppose the lovely things come to the city all alone

and can't make connections.

If they have any class at all,

you won't find them working 42nd Street.

Yunno,

I wasn't always like this.

I must tell you about my introduction to the gay world.

I like variety.

I put the ads in regularly,

and I meet some very interesting boys that way.

I must tell you about my introduction to the gay world.

- (Dr. Ridgefield) This isn't a personal interview.

- It's only related to-- - But I want to talk about Sydney.

Nobody ever listens when I talk about Sydney.

The only thing I have against ads

is that they attract a lot of male prostitutes.

I abhor paying for it.

I want to do it for love.

- Most of the homosexuals gloried in their illness,

and they all acted like gentlemen.

If you are not too attractive, please call.

I shall make you happy.

I'll do anything to please.

This ad was placed by a wealthy manufacturer.

His was a fetish for extremely ugly women.

He consented only to a guarded interview.

- I like things that are ratty-looking, dirty, and smelly.

It's an obsession.

I'll keep on advertising,

but I waste a lot of time on the high-class ones.

- The ads satisfy your needs?

- Those ads are okay,

but most of the girls that come up here are too highfalutin.

They're clean.

I walked every bit of New York looking for kicks,

but times have changed.

Once in a while, I'll find an appealing chick,

but it isn't the same anymore.

They cleaned up a lot of neighborhoods.

I used to get a kick out of visiting my regular spots.

I had a rigid schedule.

It was okay, but I had to stop.

- Why?

- I got arrested.

It almost cost me my job.

- Hello, stranger. Do you want to sit and talk with me for a while?

- I was let off with a fine and a warning, and I won't do it again

because my job is too important.

- Then you engage in homosexual practices in addition to the--

- I'm no fag.

I just like dirty things.

- He was an unusual case.

However, many of the pleas

for normal heterosexual relationships are authentic.

They are placed by sincere people seeking a long-lasting relationship.

[street noise]

- [Woman] I always had a lot of bad luck with men.

My first husband was a big mistake.

I wrote my folks every day.

They were the only friends I had.

My social life is limited to the library and,

well, an occasional movie.

I just don't know how to meet nice guys.

I finally broke down and put an ad in the Village paper.

Well,

I had to have my phone number changed.

I got nothing but a bunch of nuts.

Lesbians, perverts,

and college boys out for a good time.

I think it could work as a practical way of meeting somebody nice,

but those ads,

they're a playground for sickies, and I'm through with them.

- (Dr. Ridgefield) The sick group of advertisers,

including many otherwise respectable married couples.

The husband is a certified public accountant.

The wife, a schoolteacher.

They are childless.

Their hobby,

exchanging lewd color photographs by mail

with other couples.

The photographs are taken by remote control.

They never meet the other couples they correspond with,

nor do they exchange in sex with other partners.

Their erotic outlet is the US Mail.

Another couple,

in a higher income bracket.

They advertise regularly for other couples to share

in married fun.

A friendly evening of cards turns into an orgy

when they are all sure of each other.

Sometimes their games take on a criminal theme.

- We usually play ball the babysitter.

I tell them that I got home a little early and my husband went

out on a call.

He's a doctor.

I get chummy with her and ask her about her schoolwork.

I talk her into a drink.

I really sock in the vodka.

It's no trick at all to get the kids out here stoned.

When she doesn't know what she's doing anymore,

I con her into stripping,

and I put her into bed.

The research on sex by advertisement continues.

When my book is published, it's sure to reach a wide audience.

It is not in my realm to speculate

if any one of the governmental agencies or authorities

will act on it.

[music]