Now that the HD format wars are well and truly over – how about a hand for the victor, Blu-Ray – you might think it’d be a cinch to release the unquestionably classic and culturally significant adult films that, throughout history, have closed to gap between niche hardcore porn and sexually-oriented mainstream acceptance. One such title, The Opening of Misty Beethoven, a hardcore adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, is on the verge of seeing a High Definition home video release, but it needs your help!
Produced and directed by adult cinema icon, Radley Metzger, The Opening of Misty Beethoven was one of the handful of hardcore films that approached mainstream acceptance in the sexually adventurous ’70s and now, thanks to the efforts of New Jersey-based film preservation and restoration company, 435 productions, Misty Beethoven is very nearly ready for her HD debut. Over at Kickstarter, the crowd funding website used by everyone from acclaimed musicians wishing to be free of record company restrictions and guidelines to aspiring cinema auteurs to robotics engineers intent on bringing the future to 2012, 435 productions is now asking for donations to the tune of $10,000 to realize their Misty Beethoven Blu-Ray project. Already more than halfway to their goal and with just 18 days to go, the future of this preservation project is completely in the hands of the fans.
With pledge packages ranging from $10 to $3,000-plus, donators can be intimately involved in the production process and receive anything from a woodblock print of Anthony Palumbo’s stellar artwork that adorns the DVD release to a Blu-Ray, DVD, poster, and soundtrack package to a framed replica of an award presented to Misty Beethoven after the film’s release in 1976 and even a producer credit! There’s also four DVDs worth of “raw, unfiltered” Misty Beethoven outtakes that have never before seen the light of day, t-shirts, and, absurd as it seems, martini glasses etched with Metzger’s nom de cinema, Henri Paris!
While it’d be pretty damn neat to be able to serve your friends cocktails in Henri Paris glasses as they stare in awe at your vintage posters from the Distribpix archive, it’s even cooler to be partially responsible for preserving a landmark production in the history of adult cinema. Hey, if film preservation is important enough to give Marty Scorsese a hard-on, it’s important enough for you to pay a mere $10 to ensure this vital project reaches fruition.
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