Adult Empire: 25 Years, 25 Movies
Adult Empire wouldn’t have much of a history at all if it weren’t for the remarkable movies we sell. There’s an undeniable thrill when you see the logo of your favorite studio and know that you’re about to witness something truly special. This month, we’re marking our silver anniversary with a series of retrospectives. To kick things off, we look back at a quarter century of memorable porn movies, year by year. These movies topped the charts in their respective years!
Watch:
1997: Bad Wives
In 1997, wall-to-wall sex extravaganzas were not porn’s default mode. Instead, the industry’s prestige movies focused on big-budget, plot-driven concepts that could appeal to a wide audience. (The local adult bookstore or mom-and-pop video rental shop was still the most likely spot to be browsing porn vids.) In Bad Wives, the eminently relatable scenario of sexual angst in bored suburbanites powered the movie to AVN’s Best Film award for 1998. Interestingly, the movie’s DVD edition spotlighted a variety of interactive features, then a huge selling point of the nascent format. (Director Paul Thomas had also helmed Bobby Sox, which has its place in Empire history as the first adult movie the company ever sold.) In a testament to the movie’s enduring appeal, Adam Christopher mounted his own take on Bad Wives, over 20 years later.
1998: Ancient Secrets of the Kama Sutra
It’s not uncommon for older pornstars to transition to non-sex supporting roles later in their careers. (The late Kyle Stone, for instance, had a memorable second career act embodying such parts.) Veronica Hart made it her stock in trade for many years, stretching all the way back to this 1998 classic. She plays a mysterious guide who shepherds a curious couple toward the fabled Kama Sutra! While the original Kama Sutra is famous for its twisting, unusual sex positions, the movie itself plots a more sexually conventional — if quite satisfying — sexual route.
1999: Flashpoint
Perhaps it’s no surprise that Flashpoint comes from the same cultural milieu that brought us Baywatch. Indeed, both properties hinge on the fantasy of being rescued by beautiful, intensely sexualized guardians. Whereas Baywatch focused on lifeguards, Flashpoint takes us into the lives of firefighters. (We once described it as “Backdraft with boobs.”) Its star-spangled power both behind and in front of the camera has helped it become Adult Empire’s all-time bestselling movie. It even spawned a revised anniversary version 10 years after its first release.
2000: Dream Quest
Porn has always had an alluring overlap with the world of fantasy and adventure. (Just look at all the envelope-pushing of HBO’s Game of Thrones!) Unfortunately, budgetary concerns have always limited the degree to which these themes could be explored. Brad Armstrong‘s bestseller resourcefully sidesteps such concerns, though, capturing most of its fantasy vibe through the performance of Jenna Jameson. (The movie is a throwback to the 1980s classic Labyrinth.)
2001: All Star
All Star is notable for several reasons: it helped spearhead the idea of making “first anal” a big part of a movie’s marketing pitch, and it was the first movie created exclusively for DVD. (Yes, as strange as it may seem, VHS had a diminishing but still sizable slice of home video market share in Adult Empire’s early days.) The DVD-specific aspects center mostly on the now-forgotten multi-angle features that were one of the format’s original gimmicks. Though you won’t be able to toggle from angle to angle in the existing VOD version, you can revel in Rocki Roads‘s rollicking first anal scene.
2002: Flesh Hunter
Few stars and directors have been so marvelously matched as Jules Jordan and Jenna Haze. Their go-for-broke, gloriously dirty embrace of all things hardcore has defined both their careers. And in this, an all-time classic of Jules Jordan’s early days, they join together to create a definitive record of their shared aesthetic. With startling closeups and a trendsetting embodiment of the famous gonzo style, Flesh Hunter is everything you want in true hardcore. It helped chart a course of Jules Jordan success that continues unbated to this day.
2003: The Fashionistas
Fashionistas is the crowning directorial achievement of John Stagliano, Evil Angel’s founder. The storyline, a four-hour epic involving a fashion designer (Rocco Siffredi), is not the conventional porn narrative by any stretch. Porn innovator that he is, though, Stagliano pulled it off, to the tune of a record-setting number of adult awards. Visually, the movie is also a throwback in that it was shot on 35mm film. This lends the entire a grain and texture that digital photography has never quite been able to match. The movie also became a template for much of the BDSM-flavored content to follow over the ensuing decades.
2004: Space Nuts
The original Adult Empire in-house review describes Space Nuts as a “new adult feature from Wicked Pictures that very well may be the funniest adult movie ever made.” Space Nuts plays in the broad tradition of Mel Brooks’s Spaceballs, taking humorous potshots at all the major sci-fi franchises. (Prepare for an onslaught of zany, groan-inducing puns like the “Clitorian System.”) Much of the humor emerges from its energetic performances, particularly the aforementioned Kyle Stone as the ostensible villain of the piece. The movie’s success augured the later strong performance of more specific sci-fi parodies, including Star Wars XXX. (It also made a cameo appearance in 2005’s 40-Year-Old Virgin when the title character’s friends lend him a porn movie.)
2005: Island Fever 3
Most porn movies find themselves trapped in a series of familiar locations in and around Los Angeles. (If you watch as much porn as we do as part of our jobs at Adult Empire, you’ll begin to see the same houses, pools, and vistas crop up again and again.) Well, the Island Fever series is like porn’s summer vacation! With busty pornstars in tow, you jet off to exotic locations like Tahiti and Bora Bora for adult fun that combines travelogue and titillation. Though the series had other successful incarnations, this third edition accrued the most impressive sales figures of the bunch.
2006: Pirates
Pirates is the rare porn spoof that transcends its mainstream origins. Ostensibly a porn varnish on the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, it has taken on a life of its own quite distinct from that popular franchise. The epic production value, sprawling story, remarkable cast, and trove of awards make this one of porn’s most notable pop culture touchstones. It may well represent Digital Playground‘s best-ever balance of humor, sex, and story. An equally popular sequel a few years later firmed up the movie’s place in history. Sadly, due to a variety of changes in the industry, this kind of uber-expensive feature is unlikely to appear again. Shiver me timbers! (Hey, pirate-speak in any text referring to the movie is practically required.)
2007: Interactive Sex with Jenna Haze
These days, interactivity comes very directly in the form of cam shows, content requests, and social media platforms. It wasn’t so long ago, though, that interactive DVDs were the closest approximation to your own personal dalliance with a favorite star. With a click of a few buttons, you could tell Jenna exactly what to do next! (Well, at least within the limitations of the technology of the time.) Many of the tropes of interactive porn have been refined and repackaged in the burgeoning virtual reality genre.
2008: Babysitters
Babysitters are one of porn’s most popular themes. In its heyday, Digital Playground had a remarkable knack for taking evergreen porn genres and expanding them into memorable, plot-driven all-star showcases. Babysitters is also notable for being one of the first major Blu-ray releases. While the Blu-ray format has faded in importance, the emphasis on high-definition photography that it helped create remains standard.
2009: Nurses
Nurses is a perfect companion movie to Babysitters! Like its predecessor, it focuses on a can’t-miss porn theme (sexy nurses) brought to life by a superstar cast. (Such were the benefits of Digital Playground’s large contingent of contract stars!) Though at times corny by contemporary standards, the movie benefits from HD photography capturing some of porn’s most iconic performers in a single feature.
2010: Tori Black Is Pretty Filthy
Elegant Angel did much of the ground work for the high-class glam erotica genre that now dominates a large swath of Adult Empire’s bestseller lists. This style was reaching its apex around the release of Tori Black Is Pretty Filthy, a movie that helped power its title star to two consecutive AVN Performer of the Year awards. When Black returned to the business after a hiatus, it was in a glam showcase not dissimilar from Pretty Filthy, albeit for a different studio (LesbianX).
2011: Top Guns
“Too close for missiles! I’m switching to guns” suddenly has an entirely different meaning. Top Guns became newly relevant this summer when the original Top Gun received a smashingly successful sequel, Top Gun: Maverick. Digital Playground’s high-flying spoof of the original rounded out its spate of top-sellers from the 2006 to 2011 period.
2012: Star Wars XXX: A Porn Parody
Many porn parodies make only fitful efforts to imitate the material they’re lampooning. Such half-cocked attempts are anathema to director Axel Braun, who works to show every last penny of his budget onscreen. Star Wars XXX is arguably the definitive example, soaring past all other 2012 releases with its impressive impersonation of the George Lucas classic. Is there anything more irresistible, hilarious, and sexy than Allie Haze in Princess Leia’s famous double-bun hairstyle? The movie also boasts a strong link to porno past thanks to its memorable performance by vet star Tom Byron as Obi-Wan.
2013: Farrah Abraham: Backdoor Teen Mom
What’s the only sex tape to rank as a top yearly bestseller on Adult Empire? If you guessed Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton, well, guess again! Farrah Abraham‘s moment as a pop-culture fixture has long since passed, but she’ll always hold a slice of Empire history thanks to this 2013 overall bestseller. The former Teen Mom star scored tabloid headlines when word of a “private” boudoir sex tape emerged. The hoopla surrounding this announcement helped broaden her fame, and it wasn’t long before Vivid brought the escapade to DVD. To date, it is the last sex tape release to capture such high sales rankings on Adult Empire.
2014: Threesome Fantasies Fulfilled
Open AdultEmpire.com and click into the DVD bestsellers link on the first tab. Somewhere in the first 25 movies, you will likely spot Threesome Fantasies Fulfilled. A full eight years after its release, this Pure Passion classic continues to rank as a consistent bestseller. As with anything so successful, it’s difficult pinpoint the exact reasons, but there’s little doubting it’s a memorable exploration of the threesome theme, crafted with care, attention, and a shrewdly broad-based appeal.
2015: The Submission of Emma Marx: Boundaries
Like Pirates, Submission of Emma Marx represents porn responding to and then one-upping a mainstream franchise. Marx is a response to E.J. James’s 50 Shades of Grey, but director Jacky St. James was intent upon improving upon this inspiration. “When my boss Scott Taylor at New Sensations asked me to do a 50 Shades of Grey type story, I didn’t know anything about BDSM. I hated 50 Shades of Grey – I thought it was the worst book ever written,” St. James told Adult Empire in a 2014 interview. Though the first movie’s production history included significant casting changes and moments of creative turmoil, it emerged as an instant classic. St. James had even more success with this first sequel, which became 2015’s overall bestseller.
2016: Cum Inside Me Vol. 2
After Blacked debuted on Adult Empire in 2014, the company’s bestseller lists would never look the same again! The company’s classy erotica, soon joined by other labels to form Vixen Media Group, captured audience imaginations quickly and forcefully. Cum Inside Me Vol. 2 is a cross-section of Blacked’s most appealing traits: superb filmmaking, explicit themes, and trending cast members. The year 2016 represented the first time a Vixen Media movie would be the year’s overall bestseller, but it would be far from the last.
2017: Kendra’s Obsession
Like Farrah Abraham, Kendra Sunderland is a star who gained her first fame in tabloid controversy, when she was busted for indecent exposure in a university library. Unlike Abraham, however, Sunderland has been able to sustain that initial burst of interest into a full-fledged porn career. Her first stop was at Blacked, where she wowed the world with her first outright hardcore performances. Kendra’s Obsession finds her playing the role of a woman insatiably curious about big dicks. Viewers, meanwhile, can satisfy their own insatiable curiosity about Sunderland herself!
2018: Interracial Icon Vol. 6
After audiences saw Kendra Sunderland go hardcore in 2017’s top movie, they were thirsty for more. A simple boy/girl scene wasn’t enough! Sunderland obligingly delivered in Interracial Icon Vol. 6, a movie highlighted by her interracial gangbang. Its success mirrored that of Blacked itself, which started in spectacular fashion and just grew bolder and bigger from there. Even after a change in company structure passed the creative reins from Greg Lansky to filmmakers like Laurent Sky, the studio and its associated brands continued to thrive. Though now a Brazzers contract player, some of Sunderland’s most memorable work, including this bestseller from 2018, has come with Vixen Media and Blacked.
2019: Unfolding
Unfolding is proof that Adult Empire audiences value plot, character, and romance just as surely as they do hardcore sex. When we asked star Cherie DeVille about the secret of this Kay Brandt-directed movie’s success, she didn’t hesitate. “The plot and the fantastically realistic characters as well as the beautiful love story that [my character] Charlie and her husband have! You can be sexually adventurous and committed and in love! That seems way more realistic to me than 99% of adult film plots. To me this movie is like you are looking at someone’s real life not a outrageous fantasy,” DeVille said. Unfolding has embarked on several lengthy streaks as Adult Empire’s weekly top VOD movie.
2020: 40 Years Old, Comes to Life
Cherie DeVille and Kay Brandt reunite, in territory broadly similar to Unfolding but for a different studio: Marc Dorcel. Like the 2019 bestseller, Comes to Life focuses on the sexual awakening of a mature woman (Cherie DeVille). Brandt praised DeVille’s performance in a 2020 interview, noting, “Cherie is fantastic as the lead character and embodies the sexy maturity that I wanted for the movie. She’s vulnerable yet unafraid to step up into her personal power and demand that her fantasies be lived out. That’s true female empowerment.”
2021: Natural Beauty Vol. 3
Natural Beauty Vol. 3 has come the closest to replicating the sterling success of Threesome Fantasies Fulfilled. Like that prior hit, it’s a classy take on hardcore material that’s malleable enough to have an appeal to many audiences. While more tangential and vignette-based than Unfolding and 40 Years Old, Comes to Life, the movie continues a trend of bestsellers in a vein of high-key erotica. Its two follow-ups have also seen considerable success.
