Steven Morowitz of Video-X-Pix on the First Classic HD Porn Transfer“New porn!” I exclaimed rather jubilantly.
Moments earlier, my co-worker Robert, an experienced filmmaker and Video Production Specialist here at AEBN, had wandered into my office to discuss some of the details surrounding an upcoming project. Almost immediately, his eyes drifted to the non-descript white box sitting on my desk. The flaps of the reinforced cardboard container pointed skyward, its jagged edges and severed strands of still-attached packing tape the remnants of an epic struggle.
“What is it?” he replied curiously, inching closer to grab a quick peek at the contents.
Without hesitation, I reached inside, carefully wedging my fingers between the box and the merchandise, and pulled out a stack of classic DVDs. On top was the Joe Sarno-directed
Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle. Underneath sat the Amero Brothers’ wonderfully crafted
Blonde Ambition. In the center, bookended by both films, was Radley Metzger’s Sexploitation masterpiece Maraschino Cherry. Having seen Annie assume the bottom position so many times throughout her film career the image of her smiling face and large, bare breasts on top of anything, even a diminutive pile of DVDs, was a pleasant irony not lost on either of us.
All three movies were part of a care package that had arrived the previous day, a very generous ‘thank you’ from Steven Morowitz, Head of Production for Video-X-Pix. Steven had graciously agreed to an interview a few days earlier to discuss his company’s latest undertaking: a High Definition DVD transfer of the XXX classic,
Inside Little Oral Annie. The
first HD transfer of its kind, he and his current staff of two were feverishly putting the final touches on the project when I caught up with him. Somehow I didn’t feel as if my hour-and-a-half intrusion into his tight schedule merited any kind of reward, let alone a gift of this magnitude. After all, it was he who should be thanked for spearheading the preservation of an important legacy, one seemingly glossed over and forgotten by all but the most cliquish legion of die-hard retro porn fans and film historians. But, somewhere down the line, Steven had discovered that I shared his affinity for history and he insisted that I see first-hand some of the amazing reissues that his company had already released.
The company’s own history stretches back to 1965 when Steven’s father, Arthur Morowitz, a pioneer in both the video rental and home video markets, started Video-X-Pix. Originally called Distribpix, the company produced and distributed adult-themed features to premier movie houses coast-to-coast, during the height of the Exploitation and Sexploitation film eras. At the time, their roll call boasted a who’s who of future porn royalty. Ron Jeremy, Vanessa Del Rio, John Holmes, Seka and others called the label home. Their stable of pre-eminent filmmakers was no less formidable, housing such directorial visionaries as Joe Sarno, Ron Sullivan, Radley Metzger and The Amero Brothers. It was a neatly assembled entertainment collective unlike anything anyone had ever seen. Together, their vast output of films pushed the boundaries of good taste and irreversibly altered society’s perceptions of sex during the decade of free love. Their early forays into implicit soft-core skin flicks and well-timed bouts of pre-meditated rebellion also laid the foundation for the Golden Age of porn, clearing the way for movies like
Deep Throat nearly a decade later.
The Good, The Bad and the Beautiful
