Tyler's Style

"This nadir of decadence...this feast of carrion and squalor...this Sodom and Gomorrah gone wild before the fire... this is one throat that deserves to be cut." With that, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Joel Tyler ruled: "I readily perform the operation in finding the defendant guilty as charged."

The defendant was Mature Enterprises Inc., operator of the World, a Manhattan skin-flick theater charged with promoting obscenity by showing the highly publicized Deep Throat (TIME, Jan. 15). Tyler's decision may not make legal history--it may well be overturned on appeal to a higher court --but it was certainly noteworthy for its literary style. Although the judge found the film had "no idea worthy of protection," he did feel it to be worth 35 pages of outraged opinion, salted with quotes from Margaret Mead, D.H. Lawrence and Dr. Benjamin Spock, condemning in detail each one of the film's 62 minutes. The film's heroine, he noted, demonstrated a "swordswal-lower's fascinating faculty for fellatio," and camera angles were "directed toward maximum exposure...during the gymnastics, gyrations, bobbing, trundling, surging, ebb and flowing, eddying, moaning, groaning and sighing, all with ebullience and gusto."

Clearly chosen by the district attorney as a test case, Deep Throat has explicit sex scenes that differ little from those in dozens of other hard-core porno films. It is unusual only in its unexpected popularity. The film has grossed an estimated $1,000,000 at the World since it opened last June, and another $4,000,000 in 70 other theaters across the country, making it the most successful pornographic film ever shown. In the World's case, however, success may possibly backfire; New York's obscenity law allows a fine to be set up to double the amount gained by the offense.

Meanwhile, the film continues to play before large audiences at theaters elsewhere, and Judge Tyler may find his emphatic "review" enthusiastically quoted in ads.

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