Jan 20, 2014

10 Animated Sexploitation features from the 60s and 70s (NSFW)

For a brief decade-long period in animation history, between the late-1960s and late-1970s, feature animation filmmakers cast aside their inhibitions and created films that aimed to titillate and shock audiences with the novelty of sexual cartoon imagery.

Some of the films incorporated sexual content tastefully as part of a broader narrative, such as the Swedish animation/live-action combo Out of an Old Man's Head (1968), while others like Once Upon a Girl treated their erotic contents as might be expected of a pimply fourteen-year-old hornball. The diversity of graphic approaches was impressive: some of the films made pretensions to high art (Belladonna of Sadness) while others aspired to match the energy of underground comix (Dirty Duck, Shame of the Jungle).

By the early-Eighties, the West disavowed their experiments with this type of content and returned its focus to producing safe family-oriented fare. Japanese filmmakers, on the other hand, were just getting started, and they have continued to explore mature subject matter and themes to this day. The chasm between Western and Japanese animation has never been more evident than in the feature animation category of this year's Academy Awards: the four Western nominees are unmistakably geared towards children, whereas the sole Japanese contender, Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises, tackles challenging subject matter that acknowledges the intelligence of adult viewers.

The films in this post remind us that there was once a time when Western and Japanese filmmakers shared a common taste for pushing boundaries and exploring the boundless possibilities of animation as a narrative medium. Below you'll find clips, trailers, and in some cases, embeds of the entire films. Plenty more can be said about each of these films, and others from the period such as the works of Ralph Bakshi, but perhaps the first step is to simply acknowledge the existence of this period in animation history.