The Hottest Show in Town was originally released in Sweden in 1974 as Sex-Cirkusse, and just as promised by the Japanese poster art above, you get a circus, a hot one, populated by assorted acrobats, aerialists, and clowns, some nude, some not. You also see people hook up, explicitly, which is really the entire point of this production. These bits earned the film an x rating, as well as some controversy caused by a sex sequence involving a very small man and a very small woman—aka dwarves. This isn't particularly shocking today. Or is it? Certainly dwarves are more mainstream now. Game of Thrones even features the horniest little person in entertainment history, so we're guessing Sex-Cirkusse's dwarf sex won't bother you. We could be wrong. But dwarves, clowns, and aerialists are all a sideshow. The real star of the movie is Danish actress Anne Bie Warburg, seen below in her bushy altogether, a bold image we couldn't resist sharing. We guess the general thrust of the film is that all the world's a circus and all its denizens merely players. Really horny ones. The Hottest Show in Town premiered in Japan today in 1976.

Neon Nights, 1981, with Veronica Hart.

High School Memories, 1980, with Annette Haven.

Above is a very cool photo of French adult performer Marilyn Jess, who you may remember was one of the main attractions of the film Emmanuelle IV. We talked about the movie at length last month and thought Jess needed a return engagement. She appeared in Emmanuelle IV as Dominique Troyes, but used her Jess persona during her extensive x-rated career, which began in 1977 and lasted through the ’80s and beyond. She was famed for having an enormous bush, which she's trimmed by orders of magnitude for this photo. It dates from around 1982

We dug into our pile of adult film posters and found this eye-catching promo for the film Peeping Tom. It starred Jerry Butler, Kimberly Carson, Nina Hartley, Shanna McCullough, and others. The poster star is Leslie Winston, who probably never looked better in a photo than she does here. We're curious whether the promo was made to push a cinematic release of the film, but we doubt it. As far as what happens in the movie, it's self-explanatory, no? Jerry Butler is a peeping tom. Not much in the way of subplots, though Carson plays his conscience, egging him on in his dubious pursuit of thrills as he spies on couples, ludicrously, from behind columns and potted ferns. The film's end card, aiming for a veneer of the scientific, informs viewers that, “At present there are 15 million peeping toms and 1,000 being created every day.” To which we say the U.S.'s rapidly growing Sex Offender Registry has a lot of catching up to do. Of course, since you can end up on it for flashing your boobs or urinating in public, maybe catching up is only a matter of time. Peeping Tom first appeared in 1986 and premiered—or became available for purchase on videocassette—in Japan today in 1988. We have more of these Japanese promos scattered around the site, most easily found by clicking the keyword “xxx” just below, and we've put together a collection of ten we'll be uploading later this month.

This Japanese poster promoting a double bill of 1974’s Gosh! (aka Alice Goodbody) and 1975’s The Fireworks Woman features softcore/hardcore actress Sharon Kelly/Colleen Brennan front and center, but she appeared in only one of the films. The other starred Jennifer Jordan, aka Sarah Nicholson, who also appears on the poster, though in the background. Gosh! is a softcore comedy directed by Tom Scheuer featuring Kelly/Brennan as a waitress/wide-eyed ingénue trying to survive/succeed as an actress in Hollywood, while The Fireworks Woman is a fully hardcore tale about a man who joins the priesthood to escape an incestuous relationship with his sister. Spoiler alert—it doesn’t work. It was helmed by Wes Craven—yes, that Wes Craven—under the pseudonym Abe Snake. Porn, whether softcore or hardcore, just makes people want to hide in fake personas, doesn’t it? Scheuer was the only one who didn’t bother and he never worked in cinema again, so the incognitos had it right. But the beauty of the internet is that everyone gets outed in the end. Schwarzeneggar, Stallone, Cameron Diaz, everyone. Happy New Year.

Above is a rare Japanese poster for the French film Luxure, which was known in the U.S. as Sweet Taste of Honey and in Britain by the curious title Everybodys, with no apostrophe. Basically, director Max Pécas tells the story of a jilted woman—played by Karine Gambier—who checks into a luxury hotel possibly planning to commit suicide, but whose desire to live is rekindled due to hearing the honeymooning couple in the next room constantly humping. From that basic premise Pecas manages to get Gambier into all sorts of situations, including the obligatory orgy, but done with style of course, because the French take their erotica very seriously. Luxure had its Japanese premiere—in edited form—today in 1976. Gambier appears unedited below.