The Classic Porn

The navigation of the site is pretty straightforward; a horizontal bar across the top of the page being the go to spot for any quick page changes. This has links to home, DVD/films — where you can search by newest, top rated or most viewed — movie stars, an FAQ and a highly-active discussion forum. Once you get a page of DVDs up, you'll find each title conveniently partnered with a miniaturized version of the cover, cast-list, user-rating, and a one to two paragraph synopsis of the flick — not to mention plenty of juicy screen caps to wet your imagination.

You'll also find user-polls, an elaborate system for sorting by niche, the ability to favorite films and stars and themes, and a handy dandy search engine. On a side note, I just had to comment on how much I love the site's logo. The bubbly '80s font and rainbow pastels combine to make for quite the convincing forgery.

Judging by the recent updates section in the top-hand side of the page, they update damn-near daily, and sometimes even add digitally remastered reissues of older releases. In addition, they release trivia and star history, as well as updates and news relating to golden-age porn stars. You can tell this isn't just a money-making scheme for these guys, it's a labor of love.

As a kid I managed to amass a considerable number of baseball cards. My collection was magical, a catalogue of well-worn cardboard heroes. Reminiscing back to the 80s I wonder why there wasn't something similar for the great porn stars of the era? Surely they set as much of an example to future generations as the sporting Goliaths of yesteryear. Seeing some of the titles on the site, movies featuring porn giants like John Holmes and Nina Hartley, I can't help but feel I'm looking at my old Reggie Jackson or Nolan Ryan rookie card, freshly removed from its time capsule. Because seeing these movies again instantly transports me back some 30-odd years, pants down around in my ankles in the bedroom of my parents house. Trying my best to keep the noise down while I jerk off to a pilfered stagg film.

As we speak there are just under 2176 titles at The Classic Porn. They have a lot of the "big ones," too. Series like Tattoo, Deep Throat, and Debbie Does Dallas. But not only that, they've managed to secure tons of obscure, under-the-radar masterpieces. Shit I never thought I'd see again.

One of my favorites was the old 'Ruick Quick, Private Dick' adventure serial. A highlight of the scenes I checked out had to be R Bolla aptly cast as a depraved and sex starved detective. The scene kicks off with him interviewing a number of "suspects," call girls who were unlucky enough to be picked up close by the scene of a murder. As it turns out, there's only one way for them to prove their innocence. You guessed it. Doing the nasty with a certain private — ahem — dick. The scene is well shot, sliding almost seamlessly from dialogue to action, and features a stellar supporting cast.

The movies are split into a series of scenes, usually about 13 minutes in length, and can be downloaded or streamed in an YouTube-level embedded flash player. The clips come in the MPEG and Flash format. They have a of decent resolution size, with dimensions of 640x480 and a bit-rate of over 2800. Downloads were super-fast, too, topping out at just under 1-meg-per-second.

Some of the videos were quite grainy, with classic signs of age and deterioration. You can't really fault them, though, because many of these are probably quite half-ass VHS transfers. But that's a small price to pay for authenticity. Let's face it, sometimes you just have the urge to see a girl with a full bush and that huge 80s hair. These are the greats in their glory days, and the scratchy film and hammier-than-usual porno acting make it all the more special.