1. Hardcore Porn - Deep Throat (1972)
Pornography is as old as cinema itself, but it was always pushed below the surface and it consisted of loops with no story. Sexploitation came to prominence in the 1960s - it tackled sexy subjects in an increasingly explicit way and eventually somewhere along the line, hardcore porn put sexploitation effectively out of business. In the 1970s, attitudes as to what is acceptable in cinema were undergoing revolutionary changes. Deep Throat is a 1972 hardcore porn film. It was notable in that it was pornography with a semblance of a plot. It was a paper thin plot with Linda Lovelace (whom the film catapulted to household name status) as a woman whose clitoris is situated in the back or her throat. Cue impressive scenes of fellatio. The film premiered in New York and it pioneered a group of films called 'Porno Chic'. These include Debbie Does Dallas, Behind the Green Door and The Devil in Miss Jones. Middle class bourgeois people shed their inhibitions and queued around the block to watch these films and Deep Throat was the cheerleader of this social phenomenon. Eventually porn films disappeared out of public trends and became a minority sport again. But looking at mainstream films' tendency to have hardcore porn inserts in this day and age (Baise Moi, Intimacy, Romance) - it isn't very shocking to be honest as we witnessed it all before with Lovelace's extraordinary throat capacity. Deep Throat actually looks innocent compared to torture porn movies like Human Centipede.