from Skinflicks magazine
Jaguar Studios, founded in 1971, was one of the first porn producers to move from the short “loop film” (usually single-scene sex scenes with no dialog or pretense of plot) and into the true “movie making” genre.
According to two of the studio’s directors at the time, Jaguar came about almost by accident.
“The founder was operating a chain of heterosexual adult theaters called the Continental Theaters,” said director Russell Moore. “He had a theater in downtown LA where he consistently couldn’t fill the house. So he decided to run early gay films—ones with no sex, but lots of nudity. The birth of the Park Theater in the late 60s resulted in the birth of Jaguar Studios.”
Moore said that gay films which showed only nudity and kissing were very popular at the Park Theater, so why not take it one step further? Jaguar Studios was created because there was no place to get hardcore product. Back then, you had to make your own.”
Jaguar’s movie was released in October, 1971” adds Moore’s partner of 16 years, director Barry Knight. “We had seen soft core movies made by a filmmaker named Pat Rocco, which showed guys kissing for the first time openly, but with no hardcore sex. So we searched for Pat Rocco, and finally found him. But he didn’t want any part of hardcore pornography—Pat loved hearts and flowers and syrupy love stories.”
Nonetheless, Rocco was enticed to do a movie for Jaguar, their first, in July of 1971. But despite bringing aboard a talented director, things didn’t go smoothly.
“Pat really had trouble with the dick sucking and all that because it just wasn’t his bag,” Knight said. “I was the sound man on the first production The film was called ‘Come of Age’.”
“We used the Park Theater in L.A. to showcase the new Jaguar films, but most of them premiered at the Park Miller Theater in New York City,” Knight said, indicating their sister venue on the east coast. “It cost about 20 dollars to see a male film at the Park Miller Theater in those days,” Knight recollects.
The idea of creating a company to do hardcore theatrical productions was a “very novel” one, according to Moore.
“Adult bookstores were still showing 8mm loops,” Moore said, “But we had moved into full theatrical productions, with acting and dialog. Since they were going to play to the public, there were lots of other issues now coming into it, legal and social issues,” he said.
“According to the law, pictures had to have social redeeming value,” Moore remembers. “The X rating was just coming into use and penetrative sex was something that was only just beginning to be shown. So this whole genre of male cinema was new.”
After the Park Miller played ‘Come of Age’ in November of ’71, the manager called us,” Knight said. “He had only one complaint with ‘Come of Age’ there was no fucking in the first five minutes! It’s something we still laugh about today, but that was it pretty characteristic of Pat Rocco’s hearts and flowers style. It was wonderful, it was very romantic and nice.”
After “Come of Age” premiered, Jaguar knew they needed to make more movies to “feed the monster we had created.”
“Immediately we went out and got a guy named Lou Alton to make the next movie,” Knight said “It was called ‘Baredevils’. Lou was an old-timer pro from Fox Studios who had worked with Marilyn Monroe.”
“While ‘Baredevil’ was being filmed near Victorville, in the California desert, we were also shooting ‘Get That Sailor’ on the fourth floor of the Hastings Hotel across from the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Pat Rocco was again the cameraman, and I was the soundman, and we shot the bulk of it in 11 hours.”
“So we had two movies filming the same weekend. We had a whole crew out in the desert doing ‘Baredevils’—which someday we hope to restore—it has water damage from the fire that destroyed the Century Theater in 1992, so we may not be able to save it all,” Knight laments.
“The movie ‘Get That Sailor’ hinged around waiting for this sex-starved Sarge to show up. Well, the actor who played the Sarge never showed up and we had to find a new one at the last minute,” Knight says. “We had to settle with what we could find, and when you look at the Sarge in the movie, he really is a neanderthal ape! Thank god he’s only in it for about a minute and 12 seconds!”
By their fourth or fifth movie, Jaguar’s reputation had grown and more theaters nationwide were opening to showcase their films, including venues in New York, L.A., Chicago, Washington, D.C., San Francisco.
“We had done only four films, but we getting to the point where we always had our eyes open for potential models. Sometimes we’d come out of a supermarket and see someone in the parking lot and say ‘Hey, do you want to be in a movie?’ Remember, this was all new, and there were no casting agents or anything like that,” said Moore.
Knight recalls one such spur-of-the-moment example. “The star of ‘Blue Summer Breeze’ was a blond guy named Jim Mayer, and we found him feeding his dog at 2 a.m. at a grocery store on Sunset Boulevard. I said. “Gee, it looks like you need a place to way for the night.’ Then I told him about movie-making,” Knight said. “When Jim gets screwed in ‘Blue Summer Breeze’ that was literally the first time he had been fucked! When he gets it form the huge Burt Edwards, and he starts making those noises, he is really making those noises! It’s not acting! You will swear it is real, and I guarantee it is!”
That’s one thing you’ll notice about the Jaguar films. The sex is genuinely real, it is not put on. “The camera simply observes what happens,” Knight says. “Study the genuineness here! Anyone who has half a brain can see this stuff is real and is not put on. That’s the genuineness of those old movies.”
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