When there’s a nice poster, and the movie is available, we must watch. This piece was painted by Chet Collum, sometimes known as Chester Collum, and it’s a top effort, similar to innumerable paperback covers, such as here, here, and here. Midnight Hustle was a porn film starring Marilyn Zukor, who also performed as Mimi Zuber and Yvonne Green, and Juliette Orwell, also known as Marsha Wolfe. Made during the halcyon days of plotted smut, and shot on film, the movie follows two bored suburban high schoolers who keep ditching their boyfriends for excitement in San Francisco. They encounter a sleazy filmmaker, a sleazy gynecologist, a sleazy BART conductor, and so forth.
There’s not much difference acting-wise between these early porns and low budget mainstream movies from the same era, except the insertion of sex scenes prevents anything resembling narrative flow. But that’s like complaining that dance music is repetitive—it’s a feature, not a bug. So are the forests of pubic hair. We’re sure the filmmakers and performers involved would never have predicted it, but today there’s a certain innocence to what they created—there’s no choking, no piston pounding, no silicone, no tattoos, and not a hint of cynicism. It never ceases to amaze us. Midnight Hustle premiered this month in 1977.
