History of Early Adult Film

This chapter traces a century-long history of adults-only cinema, stretching from the 1870s precinematic exhibition of human locomotion studies until the 1970s emergence of hardcore narrative features. Focusing on the US context, the chapter explores the major varieties of adult cinema that were produced and circulated as twentieth-century censorship standards gradually eroded. These varieties range from the early, illicit market in sexually explicit stag films, continuing through an array of less explicit forms (e.g. art studies, sex hygiene films, physique films, avant-garde films, sexploitation films, peepshow loops) that often justified their existence via appeals to art, education, and socio-political visibility, prior to the legalization of unsimulated on-screen sex.