Lost Film Discovered: Pasqule Arico’s ‘The Session’ (1971), aka ‘3 on a Waterbed’
Or is it a 35 mm copy of Louis Garfinkle’s ‘Beautiful People’ (1971), aka ‘3 on a Waterbed’ in that canister?
In the context of researching the status of Elroy Schwartz’s lost paranormal documentary Death Is Not the End (1973), we also discussed the once-thought-lost-but-recently-found-and-restored Alfonso Brescia’s Beast In Space (1980), Ed Wood’s Necromania (1971), the Mickey Rooney-starring The Intruder (1975), the Harvard Film Archive-saved 35 mm print for The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds (1965), the recent reissue of Oliver Drake’s The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals (1969), and a recently saved, 35 mm copy of Willy and Scratch (1974) by Joe Rubin at Vinegar Syndrome — as well as my own discovery of privately-held (and not for sale) 35 mm copies of Elroy Schwartz’s film, as well Hubie Kerns’s International Center Productions’ distribution-related, Scream, Evelyn, Scream (1973).
Recalling the twisted, distribution mystery concerning Willy and Scratch, Scream, Evelyn Scream, and Death Is Not the End courtesy of Sol Fried’s Capital Productions’ and Lee Shout’s Cougar Productions’ synergies, another long-thought-lost set — also under their aegis — of four, 35 mm reels were discovered in September 2025 in a Montreal, Quebec, movie theater. Well, so we thought. . . .
Are these reels a copy of Pasqule Arico’s erotic-drama, The Session, from 1971? Are they the better-known and successful Louis Garfinkle’s counterculture-sex drama, Beautiful People, also released in 1971, the latter film distributed by the Capital and Cougar shingles?
Why the confusion, you ask?
Well, after their initial releases under their original titles, both films were redistributed in the adults-only marketplace until the late 1970s under the common title: 3 on a Waterbed — along with yet, another alternate retitling, “The Sexorcist” (sometimes used in the plural by distributors; this essay will use the singular) which also confusingly serves as a retitling on two more films, which we will discuss. Well, wait . . . while a few cinemaphiles believe The Sexorcist title was also used on Arico’s film in a third reissuing of The Session . . . it wasn’t . . . but wait, what’s the deal with mysterious ’70s adult-only film, The Sessions of Love Therapy?
We’ll begin this investigation by discussing the studio behind Arico’s The Session.
Charles Harder’s Gulf United Productions
Don’t worry, your rods and cones are operating at maximum capacity, as the below image is the best image available of the theatrical-one sheet adults-only reissue of Arico’s The Session as 3 on a Waterbed. If you’re wondering what’s hidden under the blur: “Eastman Color — Wide Screen — Rated X — Adults Only” and, most-importantly, the distributor’s name: “From Gulf United Productions.”
Gulf United was a distributor of adults-only films during the “Golden Age of P*rn,” aka “p*rn chic,” a 15-year period from 1969 to 1984 when sexually oriented adult fare of the singular “X” to “Triple X” variety were commercially advertised in daily newspapers (non-offensive adverts that will appear throughout this essay) and shown in mainstream theater venues. That celluloid era died courtesy of the advent of the home video VHS-era and the creation of “rooms” set behind green or beaded curtains in the brick and mortar, mom ’n pop world of mainstream video stores.
According to SunBiz.org, a division of corporations website operated by the state of Florida, Gulf United Productions was incorporated by adult-film purveyor Charles Harder in April 1968, the company dissolving in November 1987 in Cedar Key, Florida (a Gulf Coast, Lee County, Florida, island community west of Gainesville).
As is the case with a lot of the producers, writers, and directors of adults-only films, Charles Harder has a scant resume available online, with only the films Campus Confidential (1968), Sensation Generation (1969), and a comedic blaxploitation effort, Ain’t That Just Like a Honkey! (1976), to his credit — although he made over 100-plus films during his career.
Eve Productions marketing a variety of Russ Meyer’s adult-driven fare in the mainstream pages of ‘Box Office Magazine,’ in a May 3, 1971, issue.
The Mainstreaming of ‘Adults Only’ Films
The mainstreaming of adult films — such Pasqule Arico’s The Session under the tutelage of Charles Harder — was of a time and place when conservative, 1950s esthetics faded and mainstream Americans were now swingin’ out in the open to the once underground, hippie-sounds of the free-loving, Summer of Love-era of the late 1960s. Cinemaphiles continue their chicken vs. the egg debates of who started the “Golden Age of P*rn,” first . . . this writer sides with producer Bill Osco as the king of the “erotic art film,” by way of his film Mona (1970), considered the first adult film to receive a wide, national theatrical release in the U.S . . . yes, others would tell you Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie (1969) was the first film with that honor . . . oh, never mind. . . .
Anyway, the A-List studios of Hollywood answered the cinema challenge as Paul Mazursky and Mike Nichols’ achieved critical and box office acclaim with their respective, sexually-mature films Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) and Carnal Knowledge (1971). Nichols previously pushed once taboo sexual boundaries with The Graduate (1967), while British filmmaker John Schlesinger told us a then “shocking” tale of a Texas to New York City-aspiring male prostitute in Midnight Cowboy (1969) — the only X-rated film to win “Best Picture” and to ever to win an Academy Award.
Based on the box office of those films: It was obvious Americans wanted racier films. So, the studios produced films such as Love Is Catching and The Joy of Love . . . neither of which were as “racy” as their “Golden Age of P*rn” makeover marketing implied.
Orlando, Florida, and Tuscon, Arizona, showings.
The Joy of Love undercards:
‘Love Times Three’ is an adult-redress of a West German drama, ‘Wilder S*x junger Mädchen’ (1972; Wild s*x of young girls), concerned with a mother and daughter sharing a lover. Co-director Antonio Casale is best known for his work on the essential spaghetti western, ‘The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly’ (1966).
‘Sensuous Dolls” is an adult-only redress of an Italian-Turkish co-production originally titled, ‘La rossa dalla pelle che scotta’ (1972; The redhead with the burning skin), concerned with a man obsessed with two women — one of which may be a spirit. It received a clean re-edit and dual-distribution as a mainstream horror film, ‘The Red Headed Corpse.’
The first example, Love Is Catching (1972), produced by Allied Artists (an outgrowth of the low-budget “poverty row” studio Monogram Pictures; a library now owned-split among Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayor, and Paramount) was a remake of La Ronde (1950): a 1900s-era, spicy-romantic, French-language comedy by German-born director Max Ophüls. The film, which earned a 1952 “Best Screenplay” Oscar nod, was considered so “offensive” by conservative American studios, that it took four years before U.S film sensors approved the film — sans cuts — for theater showings in 1954. For all the hoopla: La Ronde landed in the U.S marketplace not with a bang, nor a whimper . . . but a shrug. The “racy,” non-award lauded “counterculture” flicks Skidoo (1968), Angel, Angel, Down We Go (1969), and Myra Breckinridge (1970) are better remembered — and those are best-forgotten box-office flops.
In their remake — carrying the title Calliope (1971, the prints now owned by Warner) — Allied sanitized Ophüls by changing out the main protagonist from a soldier-on-leave to a hippie musician who finds love, not with a prostitute, but with a band groupie. In both versions: he receives “the gift that goes on giving,” aka a sexually-transmitted disease, i.e., venereal disease, since this was the fun-loving ’70s and not the AIDS ’80s. The “calliope” reference encapsulates the film’s cast of ten people “in various episodes in the endless waltz of love” (they go “round and round,” thus the titles), as they each hop from one sexual encounter to encounter.
By 1972, when Allied’s suggestive soft-sex romp failed to create a Mazursky-Nichols-Schlesinger analogous success, the studio gave Calliope a “Golden Age of P*rn” relaunch under the Love Is Catching title. Of course, when men enter theaters to self-pleasure to the frames as they much on popcorn: They’re not interested in a spoof on sex: they want actually “sex” on the screen. So, the ballyhooed, Americanized remake of the French film La Ronde bombed, again.
When German director Eberhard Schröder’s Sybil Danning-starring, Girls In Trouble (1971), an omnibus of seven tales on the dangers and horrors of abortion, made it to U.S drive-ins and grindhouses that same year: it did so under the “p*rn chic” makeover of The Joy of Love. Once again, male audiences wanted a “sex” film — not a lecture on the dangers of abortion. So, the film bombed. Not even marketing the film in grindhouse and adult cinemas alongside Devil in the Flesh (1969) — Massimo Dallamono’s artful Italian-German adaptation of Leopold Sacher-Masoch’s 1870 novella Venus in Furs — itself under an adults-only relaunch as Fire in the Flesh (1971) — improved the box office of either film. So, how “sexual” is Devil in the Flesh? Well, in 2025, it’s available on the Tubi streaming platform.
New York City showings distributed by producer/exhibitor Howard Mahler Films, responsible for numerous drive-in and grindhouse cinema titles across horror, blaxploitation, and martial arts genres, as well as adult fare, throughout the ’70s and ’80s. Mahler also distributed another, early Louis Garfinkle piece of adult-erotica, The Love Doctors (1972).
In 1975, adult purveyor Jim Sotos gave an R-rated, proto-slasher makeover to Shaun Costello’s X-rated Forced Entry (1973), under the title The Last Victim, the latter film — sans the obvious, rough scenes of the original — found a new life in the home video ’80s courtesy of star Tanya Roberts’s post-Charlie’s Angels fame.
Meanwhile, in England, pornographer David Grant jumped on the stag film bandwagon along the yellow brick road to the “Golden Age of P*rn” halcyon days initiated by Gerard Damiano’s box office bonanza known as Deep Throat (1972). Grant’s first film, Love Variations (1969), was followed by a quick succession of foreign adult film acquisitions for U.S distribution, along with his own feature-length “sex comedies,” such as Girls Come First, The Office Party, and Under the Bed. He rose through the Golden Age-ranks to rake in the green with Snow White and the Seven Perverts (1973) and P*ssy Talk (1975). Using a British taxation loophole, his films became wildly known for their inclusion as the undercard on numerous drive-in and grindhouse theater double bills across the U.K and U.S. As result of his distributing the films of others, complete with gaudy, overselling one-sheets and newsprint ads, Grant consistently broke break box office records — such as his 1977 reissue of Emmanuelle (1974).
More mainstreaming of adult-only films with Chris Warfield’s Lima Productions’ ‘Little Miss Innocence,’ aka ‘Teenage Innocence’ (1973), and ‘Pretty Wet Lips’ (1974) — both distributed by Ron Libert International Films’ adult/softcore shingle, Penelope Films (and were are back to ‘Death Is Not the End’).
Let’s not forget Lee Frost and Bob Cresse’s sexualized Naziploitation affair, Love Camp 7 (1969), kicking off a genre in of itself during a time when the major studio mainstream films Valley of the Dolls (1967), Midnight Cowboy (1969), and Shampoo (1975) were slapped with X-ratings for their content about drug-pushing housewives, New York hustlers, and sexually-aggressive hairdressers. The same holds true for Russ Meyer’s Peter Carpenter-starring vehicle Vixen! (1968), an adult-film forgotten in the annals of X-rated films as the first film to be given the rating due to its overly-amorous scenes.
As with Love Camp 7, Meyer and Carpenter’s sexual venture was a huge box office success, grossing $8 million against a $73,000 production budget. It not only inspired (bamboozled) 20th Century Fox to green-light Meyer’s next film, the sexless musical-comedy bomb, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), it also triggered the Golden Age-triumvirate of the equally successful Behind the Green Door (1972), Deep Throat (1972), and The Devil in Miss Jones (1973). Then, there’s Howard Avedis’s dive into the golden showers with his take on the trend with The Teacher (1974; starring a grown-up Jay North of TV’s Dennis the Menace fame), as well as Earl Barton’s Russ Meyer-exploitation wannabe, Trip with the Teacher (1975) — both so harmless and sexless, they owe more to The Graduate than they do to Behind the Green Door — and they are commercially available on smart TV streaming platforms.
Okay, let’s get back to what’s inside that mysterious film canister discovered in Montreal, Quebec, in September 2025.
The Catcher in the Raw
So, there’s a caveat hiding on those reels as result of distributors repurposing the title The Sexorcist for the redistribution of a couple of different films. Thus, the film in that canister may not be the Louis Garfinkle film myself and Canadian-based cinemaphile Conorr Norquay — who, after reading my essay on the lost status of Elroy Schwartz’s Death Is Not the End, advised me of his discovery of the 35 mm print of The Session, aka 3 On a Waterbed — initially thought it to be.
So, what’s the story behind this film Beautiful People you’ve never heard of — until stumbling into this writer’s corner of the Medium world?
The film served as the lone directing effort by screenwriter Louis Garfinkle — who can hardly be considered a purveyor of p*rn: in either the hard or soft-core varieties. The pinnacle of Garfinkle’s writing career was his Academy Award nomination for “Best Original Screenplay”— with four others — for Micheal Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978). Starting his career working as a screenwriter for Charles Band’s filmmaking-directing father Albert Band on several films in the ’50s and ’60s, he initially left a mark in the annals of classic horror films with his best-known work, I Bury the Living (1958), starring Richard Boone — a film that writer Stephen King later classified as “the scariest ever made.”
Then, in 1969 — around the time he wrote another piece of adult-erotica, The Love Doctors (1970), released across the U.S through Howard Mahler Films (1972) — Garfinkle wrote another adult-erotica screenplay. Under the title, The Catcher in the Raw (1969), that script became the basis for what was eventually filmed and released as the counterculture-marketed, Beautiful People.
Wait a minute: Louis Garfinkle — before co-writing The Deer Hunter — scripted a soft-core version of J.D Salinger’s seminal work?
Uh, it’s a stretch . . . if one accepts Garfinkle implies that the youthful “beautiful people” attending the Southern California health clinic are suffering disillusionment and alienation — of a sexual variety. Is the clinic’s therapist, Dr. Voxuber, then a faux-Holden Caulfield “catching” his patients before they fall into the corruption of (a sexless) adult life?
No, this is not the version of ‘The Sexorict’ you believe it to be. Well, maybe it is. No, it’s not. Is it? Damn those plurals.
What’s the Deal with ‘The Sexorict’ Title?
Well, in the wake of The Exorcist marketing craze of 1973 to 1974 (the essay, “Damien Thorn: Cinema’s First Antichrist Compels You to Watch 20 ‘Antichrist’ Movies,” examines the genre), “Sexorcist” sounds a lot like “Exorcist” (“. . . just add an “S” in the front and we have a new film!” reasons the distributor) — and distributors will do anything, without shame, to trick you, the film goer, into the drive-in, the grindhouse, or renting that VHS tape off the shelf.
So, without watching the reels and with no other identifying information on the canister besides the title and year: I believe the reels in question, (pictured at the top of this essay) are Pasquale Arico’s soft-core film, The Session (1971).
The now sort-of-defunct retro-reissue shingle Something Weird Video — which closed their in-house DVD-r manufacturing and distribution arm in 2024 — once offered Arico’s film as a per-order DVD-r (likely from a limited-run, ’80s home video VHS copy) with the title 3 on a Waterbed that, as previously discussed, was a retitle used by Charles Harder’s Gulf United Productions on the film.
So, what’s the plot . . . or lack thereof? Not much, really. . . .
The Session concerns a famous actor hiring a prostitute for three days of love-making and twisted games — peppered with verbal and physical abuses and “artful” shots of actress Regina Williams’s body — in a locked hotel room as a “rehearsal,” aka “a session,” for an upcoming film role.
As is the case with most of the previously mentioned adults-only films: Arico’s proceedings are hardly “adult” or “hardcore” in the Deep Throat variety and more akin to the Love Is Catching (boring) softcore variety . . . and there’s only two people in the entire film . . . and there’s no waterbed, either. Maybe if there was an actual waterbed prop and the film was titled 3 Days on a Waterbed . . . we’d be onto something. Again, as I discussed and researched this film with fellow cinemaphiles for this essay . . . they also advised that Arico’s film aka’d under The Sexorcist title in drive-ins until the late ’70s— although this writer can find no newsprint advertisements under “The Sexorcist” title — with the name “Regina Williams” and nary a mention of Gulf United Productions in the copy: the copy always comes back with Capital Productions credited. So, yeah, there’s no “devil” inserts cut into Arico’s film, trust me . . . you’re thinking of Garfinkle’s film.
The 1973-plural relaunch by Capital Productions in a post-Linda Blair world (image right) of ‘Beautiful People.’
The 1971-undercard to ‘Beautiful People,’ ‘A Nice Girl Like Me’ (1969), is a wholly innocuous, British-made “mature PG” drama of a proper boarding school girl dealing with a teenage pregnancy — a popular theme of many counterculture, teen-driven films at the time (and adult films about abortion can be passed off as “educational” and skirt censors). Director Desmond Davis hit a career high point with the swords and sorcery adventure ‘Clash of the Titans’ (1981) starring Sir Lawrence Olivier.
The Salt Lake City-shot Beautiful People (1971) aka’d as The Sexorcist(s) (1973), as well as 3 on a Waterbed (1977) under the auspices of both Sol Fried’s Capital Productions and Lee Shrout’s Cougar Productions. Why? Well, a film can be anything the distributor wants it to be, in this case: a “counterculture” film (as Beautiful People) to appeal to the hippies, then a “horror film” (it’s not) to those who desire bare flesh with their demons, and an “adults only” film . . . where there’s more than three people in the film and there’s no waterbed . . . as 3 on a Waterbed.
Ironically, it wasn’t the 3 on a Waterbed title that gave U.S newspapers running adult-only advertisements, pause. As result of the publishing policies of some U.S newspapers: the word “sexorcist” was deemed offensive. So the “x” was changed out with a “k” for some advertisements — although the sanitized title never appeared on any film prints.
Also take notice of the below-posted, distribution schedules for the Louis Garfinkle film from the booking guides in Box Office: Capital distributed the film in 1971 as Beautiful People, then tweaked the film with “devil inserts” post-1973 as The Sexorcists; by 1977 Cougar took over distribution and relaunched the film with dual distribution as The Sexorcist (in the singular at 92 mins; mainstream) and 3 on a Waterbed (85 mins; the adult version).
The less publishing-offensive “K” version of the print advertisements issued by Sol Fried’s Capital Productions. The “K” and the plural “S” were dropped by Cougar Productions in later reissues.
As for the plot of Garfinkle’s film: In its original Beautiful People form at 96 minutes released in 1971: it concerns a Southern California therapist selecting eight people (out of a pool of 50 “beautiful people” applicants) to participate in a series of “love making experiments” to expand their minds as well as their bodies — for his own nefarious purpose. While Garfinkle was certainly shooting for the fervor of the cultural revolution depicted in Mazursky’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and Nichols’s Carnal Knowledge, the film nevertheless failed at the box office.
Then, in 1974, Capital Productions — to ride the wave of films glorifying the Devil in the wake of The Exorcist (1973) — redressed the film at 92 minutes as The Sexorcists — by removing several minutes of dialog and tacking on an all-new prologue and epilogue of the devil himself advising the audience that the people under his “therapy” are really his “victims” — via slipping them some LSD-laced brandy (think of Sir Ralph Richardson’s robed monk in the omnibus Tales from the Crypt (1972) serving a hellish comeuppance to his own group of narcissistic beautiful people).
Then, once Cougar took over the distribution of The Sexorcists print in 1977, they created a third edit (singular-title version) of the film at 85 minutes — sans the devil tomfoolery, making the film 11 minutes shorter than the Beautiful People-original cut from 1971 — reissuing it to adult-only theaters as 3 on a Waterbed. Unfortunately, there’s no theatrical one-sheets of Cougar’s 3 on the Waterbed, with the above booking guide images as the only proof as to the existence of the 3 on the Waterbed-version.
The Ray Dennis Steckler Connection
Well, there’s no doubt the reels in question are not the hour-long, 1974 X-rated cheapy shot in Las Vegas as directed by Ray Dennis Steckler — which also made the drive-in undercard rounds into the late ’70s as The Sexorcist (singular), then appearing on home video a decade later as Undressed to Kill (1984), so as to trick renters into thinking they’re checking out the Brian DePalma film . . . as if anyone would confuse a Steckler joint with a DePalma one. While the home video title ended up behind the beaded curtain in video stores — where it belonged — because of the DePalma kerfuffle, it was sometimes mistakenly filed on the main floor in the “horror” section — where it shouldn’t have been, alongside the also-shouldn’t-have-been-there Justin Simonds bondage-fetish/slasher hybrid, Spine (1986), and Micheal Findlay’s “horror” roughie, Snuff (1975).
In a twist to The Sexorcist retitling of Steckler’s film: It was co-billed in the 1970s in Midwest theaters under its original title, The Sexorcist’s Devil — according to a newsprint showing in Gallipolis, Ohio — with Sessions of Love Therapy.
So, is this mysterious undercard a repack of Arico’s The Session, aka 3 on Waterbed? Considering the plot of Beautiful People concerns a psychiatrist conducting a series of “love sessions,” could the undercard be a repack of Garfinkle’s film? Arico’s film— since its the more “X” of the two films —certainly invites additional, even rough scenes, to be edited in to validate those extra “Xs” in the advertisement.
Nope. It’s a wholly different film.
Sessions of Love Therapy (1971) — a “white coater” (an adult-genre in of itself) where the presence of a “doctor” passes off the film as “educational,” thus skirting censors — stars ubiquitous ’80s television actor John Dullaghan. Prior to his mainstream television career, the Brooklyn, New York-bred actor transitioned between drive-in exploitation films and adults-only films during the ’70s. He stars in a non-sexual role as a therapist helping four couples in “love making” sessions — which sounds exactly like the plot of Louis Garfinkle’s mainstream work. The cast of ten features adult-film mainstays Billy Lane, Sandi Carey, and Sandy Dempsey. This film survives in a digital world courtesy of the retro-restoration shingle, Vinegar Syndrome.
The Mario Gariazzo Connection
There’s obviously a lot going on with these two newsprint ads we previously teased — screening in Toronto, Ontario, 1975: First, there’s Mario Gariazzo’s The Exorcist rip-off L’ossessa (1974) — which went through the redistribution grinders as Enter the Devil, The Eerie Midnight Horror Show, and, you guessed it: The Sexorcist. So, is the main feature Gariazzo’s, or the repack of Garfinkle’s Beautiful People? Well, there’s no way any Ray Dennis Steckler film would receive top-billing in any drive-in package, that we know for sure!
Then, there’s the undercard film: The Demons. That’s more than likely Jess Franco’s 1973 Italian-French “nunsploitation” effort regarding a group of sisters possessed by demons, then tortured in a dungeon during the Spanish Inquisition. That Franco guess is fueled by the fact that the third feature on the bill, The Erotic Adventures of Frankenstein, is a repack of his The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, also from 1973.
As with the confusion over the multiple titles of The Sexorcist: Which Naked Witch is it? Yes, there’s more than one of those: four, in fact.
Is it a reissue of the inept Larry Buchanan cheapy from 1960 where a college kid upsets a German-ancestral witch in central Texas? Is it Staten Island’s golden boy of drive-in schlock Andy Milligan’s 1967 tale of yet another college student awakening an 1800s-era witch? Is it Austrian filmmaker Franz Josef’s Gottlieb’s Hänsel und Gretel verliefen sich im Wald (1970; Hänsel and Gretel got lost in the forest) — his adult-version of the Grimm Brothers’ Hänsel and Gretel, which aka’d on U.S drive-in screens as The Naked Wytche and The Erotic Adventures of Hänsel and Gretel (1970) and, finally, as the mainstream, R-rated, The Naked Witch? Is it William O. Brown’s The Witchmaker (1969) that reappeared in a post-1975 Exorcist-world as The Naked Witch (1975)?
In this writer’s opinion: Based on the two Jess Franco films on the bill, The Sexorcist in this drive-in package is fellow Italian filmmaker Mario Gariazzo with his The Exorcist cash-in — because Garfinkle’s Beautiful People repack simply doesn’t fit with the Franco films. As for the Buchanan vs. Milligan vs. etc., this writer places the chips on Brown’s repurposed 1969 film — starring the familiar Mr. Kimble from U.S television’s Green Acres: Alvy Moore.
Also of note: The Grand (the advert on the right; faintly under the word “tomorrow”) switched out The Naked Witch with the previously mentioned, Jay North-starring skin flick, The Teacher (1974). Two Francos, a Gariazzo, and an Avedis film starring Dennis the Menace in one showing? So goes the sprockets in the drive-in speaker-cracklin’ ’70s.
Mario Gariazzo’s L’ossessa (1974) released as part of a British film repack with Ruggero Deodato’s erotic-adventure, Waves of Lust (1975).
The Final Word: It’s Pasqule Arico’s “The Session” in that Film Canister
This conclusion results by way of Canadian cinemaphile Conorr Norquay conducting his own research, cultivating the below series of four Ontario-based newspaper advertisements for the X-rated film, 3 on a Waterbed. Again, in this writer’s opinion: Arico’s is the far rougher film — once compared to “devil-added” repack of Garfinkel’s 1971 Beautiful People, and even more so when compared to the other adult films on these co-bills (which this writer will dig into deeper with each newsprint image; because you know you want to see seek out each film, now that you’re aware they exist).
As we review these four newsprint ads, notice Arico’s 3 on a Waterbed was distributed in the adults-only marketplace from 1973 until 1981 — at which time the puritanical purveyors of filth closed down adult theaters across the U.S and Canada, as the films the sticky-seat venues once exhibited transitioned to the home video mail order catalog marketplace, as well as the backrooms behind the beaded curtains in mom ’n pop video stores.
From the pages of ‘The Vancouver Sun,’ Friday, March, 9, 1973, p. 18, for screenings at The Blaine.
‘Lady Zazu’s Daughter’ is a triple-X redress of Eduardo Cemano’s $3,200 shot-in-one-day, single-X romp, ‘Millie’s Homecoming’ (1971), initially distributed by Aquarius Releasing (known for the infamous ‘Faces of Death’ series and so many other drive-in and home video horror favorites).
‘Blue Sextet’ (1971) is an adult-reboot of a David E. Durston film; he’s best known for the poverty-row horror, ‘I Drink Your Blood’ (1971), and the not-so-erotic romps ‘Felicia’ (1964) and ‘The Love Statue’ (1965). He closed out his career with the infamously lost, ‘Boy ‘Napped’ (1975), starring one of the hardest working men in adult films, Jamie Gillis (of ‘Gamma 693,’ Joel M. Reed’s dumb German zombie romp from 1981).
From the pages of ‘The Montreal Star,’ Tuesday, December, 4, 1974, p. G-6, for screenings at The Beaver.
Bud Irwin’s West German-made ‘Room 11’ (1971) serves as the main feature, with the undercards of Roberta Findlay’s soft-X romp, ‘Clamdigger’s Daughter’ (1974), and Massimo Francios’s Udo Keir and Laura Belli-starring ‘Season of the Senses’ (1969) — then screening in adult-only U.S theaters as ‘Sensuous Suzanne’ (1974).
From the pages of ‘The Hamilton Spectator,’ Tuesday, January 25, 1977, p. 18, for screenings at The Tivoli.
‘Touch Me’ is the Americanized adult-reboot of Günter Schlesinger’s German erotic art-film ‘Ich spüre deine Haut’ (1969, ‘I Feel Your Skin’). Starring Solvi Stubing, she’s best known for the nazisploitioner ‘Deported Women of the SS Special Section’ (1976), and Andrea Bianchi’s Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975).
‘I Love You, I Love You Not’ (1974) is a James Bryan soft-core romp that takes its cues from the ‘Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,’ ‘Carnal Knowledge,’ and ‘Shampoo’ bandwagons. The Texas-bred filmmaker hit a career high point in home video horror circles with the popular renters, ‘Don’t Go In the Woods’ (1981) and ‘Hell Riders’ (1984), while knocking out such adult fare as ‘High School Fantasies’ (1974), ‘Beach Blanket Bango’ (1975), and ‘Sex Aliens’ (1986) under various celluloid aliases.
From the ‘The Hamilton Spectator,’ Thursday, October, 15, 1981, p. 35, for screenings at The Playhouse.
‘Heavenly Bodies’ is either an early Russ Meyer effort from 1963 — featuring a bunch of naked models on a magazine shoot jiggling about poolside as they play volleyball, etc., or . . . no, this writer places bets that it’s a redress of French-Canadian Gilles Carle’s ‘Les corps célestes’ (1973), aka ‘The Celestial Bodies,’ aka ‘The Heavenly Bodies,’ in a tale about a pimp and his girls conducting business in a remote Quebec mining town.
The sleazy, exploitive ‘The Takers’ (1971) is the second feature film by Carl Monson — best remembered by the schlock cinema hordes for his raunchy-rip on Roger Corman’s ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ ‘Please Don’t Eat My Mother’ (1973) — as a couple of scuzzy bikers manhandle a housewife and her best friend.
The Italian-made ‘Bang Bang’ (1971) is an adult redress of the Andrea Tonacci erotica retaining its original title.
‘Only in My Dreams’ (1971), from writer, director and cinemtographer Victor Petrashevic, stars noted porn-queen Linda Boyce.
‘Kiss me Mate’ (1969) is an hour-long quickie starring Kim Lewd, aka Kim LeWise — of a couple dozen skin flicks, such as ‘A Thousand Pleasures’ (1968), and ‘The Filth Shop’ (1969) — in what reads as an earlier, scuzzier version of the Micheal Douglas-starring ’90s erotic thriller, ‘Fatal Attraction.’
While the distributor isn’t noted in the above Canadian newsprint ads, the distribution of 3 on a Waterbed — according to an April 16, 1973, booking guide in the back pages of Box Office Magazine — was handled by Horizon Films, which began their distribution of the 80-minute version in November 1972. Other films on Horizon’s booking schedule include: Joseph G. Prieto’s R-rated “folk horror” Miss Leslie’s Dolls (1972), and The Stepdaughter (1973; aka Winter Love) starring Monie Elllis — both redressed for the adults-only market, along with a re-distribution of the abysmal, bargain-basement horror, Zaat (1971; but not for the adult market). Also of note: Lima Productions’ booking schedule appearing in these same pages indicates they would begin distribution of their adult fare Little Miss Innocence and Wet Lips, in June 1973 (scroll back to see those ads, posted earlier in this essay).
Then, two years later, according to July 7, 1975, October 20, 1975, and November 10, 1975, Box Office Magazine booking guides: a new distributor, Rex Hansen Films (aka Rex Hansen & Associates, Ltd.), distributed 3 on a Waterbed — beginning in February 1975. Other films on Hansen’s schedule during this period include: Joe Wiezycki’s lost blaxploitationer, Willy’s Gone, (1972; Ghetto Rat), as well as an October 1974 relaunch of the long-lost Barbara Laine/June Sundae-starring and Gulf United Productions-produced — yes, the studio behind Pasqule Arico’s The Session redress as 3 on a Waterbed — Campus Confidential (1968). Also appearing on the schedules is Satan’s Children (1975) — but not the British-shot, writing-directing effort from Easy Rider (1969) art director Jeremy Kay, originally-titled Satan’s Castle (1975) — it’s the Tampa, Florida-shot, h*mo-erotic effort by the previously-mentioned Joe Wiezycki made for the adult marketplace (1975).
And We Wait for the Digital Restoration
Now, we cinema junkies will sit back with hope the 35 mm print of Pasqule Arico’s The Session is in its original, uncut state from 1971— before its 3 on a Waterbed re-editing in 1973 — and that the print’s copyright provenance is easily, legally deciphered — unlike the celluloid quagmire befallen the once-lost-and-found 2025 copies of Willy and Scratch, Death Is Not the End, and Scream, Evelyn, Scream — none of which will see a restoration-release, as result.
In conclusion: While the many cinemaphiles believed there was only one film carrying the 3 on a Waterbed title, it is the few, more discriminating film buffs who, correctly, realized there are two distinct films with the title.
The Session: Charles Harder’s Florida-based Gulf United Production produced and initially distributed Pasqule Arico’s The Session — under the more adult-only provocative 3 on a Waterbed title — beginning in 1971. By late 1972 and into 1973, Horizon Films assumed distribution, which was then relinquished to Rex Hansen & Associates, Ltd., beginning in early 1975 to the fall of that year. Then, the Canadian-based, adult-film shingle Marden Film retained distribution in 1976 (across their 100-plus titles, they carried hard-R to X-rated titles, such as 1968’s Lonesome Cowboy, 1971’s The Big Snatch, and Micheal Findlay’s infamous, popular VHS-renter, the 1975-aforementioned Snuff).
Then, the film— possibly using an ’80s-era adult-marketed VHS tape carrying the Waterbed title, as a source — returned to the marketplace in the early naughts as a burn-per-order DVD-r issued by Something Weird Video. Upon the 2014 death of the shingle’s founder Mike Vraney, along with the 2024 demise of SWV’s in-house DVD-r manufacturing and digital download platform (at the time of this writing: it is unclear if the film was available as an additional download), the film disappeared from the marketplace.
Additionally, while an SWV mail-order VHS version appeared in 1996, the shingle also retained the film’s original trailer — under the 1971 title, The Session — featured as part of the two-hour retrospective, Bucky’s ’70s Triple X Movie House Trailers: Vol. 2, issued in 1994; this second volume — part of an 18-volume series (1994–2002) — also includes trailers for two films noted in this essay: Felicia (1969) and The Devil in Miss Jones (1973).
Beautiful People: The lone, dual writing and directing effort by Louis Garfinkle was distributed by Sol Fried’s Capital Production under the Beautiful People title — as a “counterculture” flick — beginning in the summer of 1971. Fried then reedited the film as The Sexorcists in 1974. By the summer of 1977, Lee Shrout’s Cougar Productions edited and reissued the film with two titles: The Sexorcist (singular) for the mainstream markets and 3 on a Waterbed for the adult-only markets.
The alternate titling of The Sekorcists — during its initial 1974 and later runs — was to satisfy U.S newspaper publishers: the title itself never appeared on film prints. The film never screened under its cleverer, initial title, The Catcher in the Raw.
It is this writer’s guess Cougar’s usage of the Waterbed title for their Beautiful People redistribution resulted from the shingle acquiring (free or on-the-cheap) ad slicks, press packets, and stacks of unused theatrical one-sheets from Gulf United — and Cougar’s art department cut-and-pasted accordingly, as an economical venture, as the title’s usage makes no sense.
Interested parties for the 35 mm reels can reach the owner/seller on the Facebook Marketplace platform. Those interested in the original screenplay for Louis Garfinkle’s Beautiful People — under its initial The Catcher in the Raw title — can contact Royal Books, Inc.
END
All research sources and image credits noted within the above essay.
All images, unless otherwise noted, cultivated by R.D Francis via ‘Box Office Magazine’ issues available at Yumpu.com, and newspapers available at Newspapers.com.
© 2025 R.D Francis. All rights reserved. This essay is protected by copyright and none of its content can be copied, distributed, or reproduced in any form without the author’s prior written consent. Citations and footnotes must be used when referencing this published essay on other articles/essays and hyperlink to this copyrighted source.
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