bondage – The History of BDSM

Red Shoe Diaries S01E03 “You Have the Right to Remain Silent”: The Celluloid Dungeon

Sep 162025

Red Shoe Diaries S01E03 “You Have the Right to Remain Silent”, Aired July 14, 1992 IMDB

Zalman King, a former actor who produced Nine and a Half Weeks and a few other softcore mainstream films, created the anthology series Red Shoe Diaries which became the flagship of 1990s direct-to-cable-TV softcore erotica, free from the constraints of both the MPAA and Broadcast Standards and Practices. The framing device is that Jake (pre-X-Files David Duchovny) is haunted by the suicide of his fiancée. He found her diary and learned she was having an affair with another man. He places ads in newspapers asking women to tell him their stories of desire. The confessional mode, as an inquiry into the “truth” of female sexuality, is built into the series’ premise.

The Marburger list: BDSM in film and television, pre-1975

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Jul 242025

Linda Evans is a damsel-in-distress in *Beach Blanket Bingo* (1965)

My most intriguing find in the Kinsey Archives was a 51-page mimeograph of a typewritten document from 1975, Bondage Fantasies in Popular Entertainment, attributed to “G. Allen Marburger.” It’s an idiosyncratic list of bondage scenes in mainstream film and television, possibly an unpublished magazine article, as there are references to kink-media company HOM (House of Milan).

Strangeland (1998): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Sep 172024

Strangeland is a 1998 thriller/horror film written by and starring Dee Snider (of 80s glam metal band Twisted Sister) and directed by John Pieplow. Amazon

The Libertine (1968): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Sep 142024

The Libertine, also know as La Matriarca, is a 1968 film directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile and starring Catherine Spaak. IMDB

A wealthy man, Franco, suddenly dies and leaves everything to his young, beautiful wife, Margherita (aka Mimi). She finds that he had been seeing a string of mistresses, and sets out on a journey of sexual exploration.

Police Woman S03E21 “Bondage”: The Celluloid Dungeon

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Jan 152024

Police Woman S03E21 “Bondage”, aired March 1, 1977, dir. Arnold Laven, wri. Irv Pearlberg & Frank Telford

Police Woman was a 1974-1978 cop show that starred Angie Dickinson as Sgt. “Pepper” Anderson, set in Los Angeles. Episode “Bondage” involved Pepper infiltrating the porn industry.

The opening scene is set in an old-timey looking room, with a woman tied up by the wrists, standing. A maid (in a completely ahistorical uniform) comes in to help her “Countess”. (The background sound of a camera whirring betrays that this is a performance.) A man in period-ish wig comes in, dismisses the maid, and rips the back of the Countess’ nighgown. (No actual nudity, of course.)

Manny the Director: “And cut!”

Dead Ringers (1988): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Jan 142024

Dead Ringers (1988), directed by David Cronenberg, starring Jeremy Irons and Genevieve Bujold. Amazon

The film is based on a true story of a pair of identical twin gynecologists who died in a murder-suicide. Irons plays both Doctors Beverly and Elliot Mantle, and Bujold plays actress Claire Niveau, who catalyzes their disintegration.

In the story, Beverly does most of the work that makes them wealthy and famous in their field, while Elliot does the glad-handing and schmoozing. Beverly is fascinated by the “trifurcated uterus” of Claire, a troubled actress searching for a cure for her infertility. As they have done before, the confident Elliot seduces Claire and then passes her on to the shy Beverly, who claims to be Elliot. However, Beverly develops deeper feelings for Claire, and that reveals a hairline fracture in the partnership of the Mantle twins.

Verfolgt, aka Punish Me (2006): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Aug 282023

Verfolgt, also released as Hounded or Punish Me, is a 2006 German drama directed by Angelina Maccarone. Amazon

As I’ve pointed out before, female dominants who aren’t sex workers are almost invisible in popular culture. Verfolgt is one of the rare examples of a dominant woman who is not in part motivated by money. Elsa, a youth probation officer, has an obsessive, sadomasochistic affair with Jan, a young offender fresh out of juvenile detention.

Elsa Siefert (Maren Kroymann) is in her 50s, and looks like it. You can see her wrinkles and soft belly. She does wear a black leather coat and shoes, which hint at her interests. Early in the film, her daughter moves away, and her relationship with her husband, Raimar, has begun to sour. She resents his past infidelity. The loss of her roles as wife and mother has left her adrift.

Easy S03E02 “Private Eyes”: The Celluloid Dungeon

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Apr 062023

Marika Engelhardt as Lindsay and Nicky Excitement as Hugh

Easy is a 2016 dramedy series about modern sex and romance. It’s loosely an anthology: most of the stories are self-contained, but certain character recur.

“Private Eyes” (season 3, episode 2, aired 10 May 2019) follows Hugh (Nicky Excitement) a technician who works for a private security company. Hugh is a kind of awkward guy, like an overgrown teenager with a fixation on martial arts. He goes on two dates, which end with polite but firm rejections by the women.

Exit to Eden (1994): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Sep 272022

Exit to Eden (IMDB) is a 1994 romance/comedy/thriller movie, based on the sadomasochistic novel by Anne Rice.

Exit was the first feature film released based on an Anne Rice novel, mainly because Interview with the Vampire was tied up in development hell for a long time. I suspect this was a case of the author selling the film rights on the assumption that it would never actually get made into a film. Rice wrote and published Exit to Eden between the second and third books in her original Sleeping Beauty trilogy, and it’s full of hardcore sex, hetero and otherwise.

Even more bizarre, the film was directed by Garry Marshall, a guy with a long background in American sitcoms. Why would the guy who created Happy Days direct a movie about BDSM? The Bad Gay Movies podcast suggest it was because of the commercial success of Marshall’s film Pretty Woman (1990), which managed to be a sweet rom-com about LA street prostitution.

Marshall had his work cut out for him. Exit is about Elliot, a war photographer, who travels to the Club, an elite BDSM club on a tropical island, on a quest for self-knowledge. There he meets and falls for Lisa, the head trainer.