Michael Raso: The Mr. Skin Interview

How'd you start Seduction Cinema?
The emphasis was always on horror. I started the parent company, which is EI Independent Cinema, in '94, with the initial intention of producing low-budget horror features. But then two years later in '96 a friend and I decided to shoot an erotic vampire film. It's been coined as Lesbian Vampires from Space, it was called Caress of the Vampire (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3), and it was the first Seduction Cinema film.

The actual brand of Seduction Cinema was coined not too long after Caress of the Vampire and, at the time, we were doing very small numbers in traditional video distribution. When we'd get a purchase order for fifty units back then that was a big deal to us. When we released Caress of the Vampire, all of a sudden it just struck a nerve with some of the retail outlets.

This was early on in DVD, we're talking '97, and DVD was so new that retailers, dot-coms, and catalogues were very excited about anything coming out in the DVD format. So here we come along with this super-low-budget lesbian vampire film and the first venue it took off in was the Playboy catalogue. The purchase orders started rolling in for fifty units, a hundred units, it just kept going. For us, being a very small label at the time, it was a big deal. That is what launched Seduction Cinema.

The idea of sexual content is of great interest to me, especially with us now working with some of the pioneers of erotic cinema, guys like Joe Sarno, who just shot a feature for us [Lust for Laura (2004)]. I have no problem with sexual content; it wasn't our original intention to launch it, but once we did it's a cool thing to do.

You're responsible for bringing back the lost genre of quickie, exploitative sends-ups of current blockbusters, such as The Lord of the G-Strings: Femaleship of the Ring (2002) (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3). Where'd the parody angle come from?
The next step was when Titanic and Blair Witch came out, my partners and I brainstormed and came up with the idea of doing erotic spoofs, comedy spoofs of major Hollywood films. They're all tongue-in-cheek and light, very similar to the softcore features of the early '70s, the West German releases. They were very loose, very light, and the sex never crossed the line into hardcore.

In my opinion, late-'70s/'80s hardcore was king. I think DVDs have allowed the whole softcore market to come back into fashion.

It's the new drive-in.
Yeah. A majority of what we do is on our Seduction Cinema label, and that content is hugely popular and has even launched our underground talent, people like Misty Mundae now have Yahoo! fan groups and quite a following. It's all because of the DVD market, there being a fan base to really snack up.

Before I delve into all things Misty, what's the next parody coming from you guys?
In October we release The Sexy Adventures of Van Helsing (Picture: 1 - 2). In pre-production we have Beneath the Play-Mate of the Apes and Spider-Babe 2. Sequels don't really thrill me, but it got to a point where our label and the various companies we deal with, some of them being broadcast, you know like HBO, Showtime, etc., some of our agents are requesting like, "Hey, wow, Play-Mate of the Apes (Picture: 1 - 2) was very successful for us, can you do a sequel?" Why not? The market dictates.

I generally talk a lot about market because I think nothing has changed. People I look up to, producers like Sam Sherman, who had Independent International in the '70s, put Naughty Stewardesses (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3) into the theaters and then did Blazing Stewardesses. Did he want to do Blazing Stewardesses? No, he didn't, but he did it and he had to twist [director] Al Adamson's arm to do it. But nevertheless, the market wanted it and you needed to fill some screens back then, so they did it.

Do you have an old-guard exploitation filmmaker mentor?
Yeah, we're actually doing work with Sam Sherman and his company Independent International; we license some of his older erotic films that he shot with Al Adamson. His model of what he was doing in the '70s is so parallel to what we're doing now, so I really use Sam as sort of a mentor, someone I look up to. He's very enthusiastic about what he's doing. He enjoys what he does, and that's what makes our label work.

We're not just cranking out a Seduction Cinema film to meet a deadline for a market that we have. Certainly, it's a job and we need to generate revenue to keep our studio open and keep everyone paid. But there is a love for what we do, and that is the fuel that makes us successful. Numerous fans on Internet sites in their reviews have stated that when they watch the behind-the-scenes to a Seduction Cinema film it's quite obvious that everyone is having a good time, and they are. It's a little bit more of a fraternity or sorority [laughs].

You hear horror stories about sets being difficult and directors being grouchy, it's a tense atmosphere. We are the complete opposite of that. It's very important that our sets are very relaxed and there's a sense of a community. And it really is because we tend to work with an ensemble and I think that helps it all work as well.

The other thing, of course, is that we're East Coast, which is a bit strange for an erotic label. It seems to me everything is out in L.A. We do have a bit of a New York flavor, not only in our attitude, but also in our talent. If you look at one of our films you can tell it's not shot in L.A.

Do you have a favorite film that you've produced?
I would lean towards some of the productions I've done with John Fedele, he produced Titanic 2000 (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3), which was our first spoof. For me it's a personal favorite because I think it really worked. I think it's a good film.

From the startup of Seduction Cinema until now there was a curve with quality. I think we started out really strong producing our features on film, really concerned about quality. The startup was a little rough, because a number of our features were shot on video, and early on some of the quality from a technical perspective wasn't up to speed of what I'd be satisfied with. It didn't really affect the fans. They're still seeing their favorite stars in very sexy movies. But it's been a progression to make sure that the films are quality, that they're written well, and that's always been a challenge because we're low budget and we have to meet deadlines.

In the case of something like Van Helsing, there's a window of opportunity where it's a hot property. After the buzz is gone in spoofing a film you're kind of out of luck, the interest isn't as peaked. Something like The Erotic Witch Project, which I consider our biggest spoof, and I think it was our biggest spoof because when Blair Witch hit we went out and shot it, edited it, and released it, catching the wave of popularity. And it really hit. Although there were numerous parodies and numerous erotic parodies, ours was the first to hit home video and it did tremendous. We have our fans that we cater to, but when we release a spoof it gives us the opportunity to find new fans, someone who stumbled upon it and goes, "What the fuck is this?"

OK, let's cut to the chase, certainly not the chaste. How'd you hook up with Misty Mundae?
She's always been part of the family. Early on, EI Cinema had a fan catalogue called Alternative Cinema. That catalogue featured Misty in movies from the company Factory 2000, which were produced by Bill Hellfire. I would call those early productions "underground fetish films." Alternative Cinema provided the distribution for getting those movies to the fans on VHS tapes.

Before I even met Misty she was producing films that were being distributed through our office. It was a natural, unexpected progression when we launched Seduction Cinema and we were looking for talent. It was a matter of who do we know that would be in these movies?

Misty Mundae is your superstar performer. Are you surprised by the audience response?
She was available and didn't have a problem with the content and enjoyed doing it, so in some of the early features she by default became the star. The fan reaction was immediate and I would call it overwhelming for the niche that we fill.

Within the course of a year and a half all of a sudden this girl had this incredible fan base. I think what's incredible about Misty Mundae is that she's atypical. She's not what you'd think of as a pinup girl. She is the girl next door. The fact of her popularity is surprising but not really, because she has the look and the smarts to back up her ing?e personality. She doesn't fit the model. I think her look is refreshing to viewers. There's nothing modified about her. This is a girl with natural small breasts and it's not an issue.

She also exudes a sexiness that cannot be implanted with the wave of a scalpel.
I think the all-naturalness all fits with her attitude. She's a very smart girl, really on the ball. She's great to talk to, very low key. I think the back up to that is that she's truly talented, multi-talented in the sense of she can act, she's studying filmmaking, she's directed two features for us [Lustful Addiction (2003) (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3) and Confessions of a Natural Beauty (2003)]. This is a girl who knows how to load a film camera, how to shoot and edit film. That's certainly very different from most actresses.

Is Misty Mundae still working with Seduction Cinema? Do you have her on contract?
For two years we emulated the '40s/'50s studio system mentality of having girls on contract. It evolved, all the talent wanted to branch out and do other things, Misty included. All of our contracts ended January first, which allowed the talent to take a break. Misty was on a four-month hiatus from doing anything. If you look at her IMDB listing, I mean, God, the girl has forty films to her credit that she's done from age eighteen.

She's now twenty-four, she's been there, done that. We've shot so aggressively in 2003-2004 that we have a number of unreleased Misty Mundae features on our shelf, and she took a well-deserved break. Only now have we begun chitchatting about what we're doing together. Seduction Cinema formed an entity called Misty Mundae Media, and we're working with her to explore new feature-film projects, stuff that she may actually write and direct, as well as branching out to record some music.

So she's still part of the family.
Absolutely. It's very loose, and you have to understand that she's still a student. I would call her a mega-talent, and she's really concerned about going to school and shooting her student films and allowing Seduction Cinema to handle the business end for her. There are a lot of inquiries for her to act in films that are managed through our office. She's not jumping on every offer that comes to the table, including films that we produce.

I'd call it a maturity from two years ago when she was shooting every month for us, whatever was put in front of her, to now she's actually spending the time and going through a script. She may pass on a subject or bring a project to us.

What's next for Misty Mundae?
She is doing a film with our horror label, which is called Shock-O-Rama. That label models the sensibilities of the early '80s. I felt that horror films got homogenized in the '90s. You'd be hard pressed to find nudity in horror movies in the '90s, early millennium. I felt that our Shock-O-Rama films should be a little on the exploitation edge, where there's still a fair quota of skin in it. We launched last year and hired Brett Piper to produce a trilogy of films for us, and he's working on his third right now, and all of them star Misty Mundae.

What's it called?
It's actually called Shock-O-Rama. It's a Creepshow-like anthology.

Speaking of your various subsidiaries, how'd Retro-Seduction come about?
Sam Sherman brought some films to us--Naughty Stewardesses and some films that he owned that he bought from Cinamation, films like Joe Sarno's Inga (Picture: 1 - 2), Seduction of Inga, Swedish Wildcats, Female Animal (Picture: 1 - 2), which is actually directed by Jerry Gross.

Jerry had a company called Cinamation, and he's actually responsible for bringing all these erotic features over to the US. Like Joe Sarno's Inga, which was produced in Sweden, and Jerry Gross in the '70s brought them over as import art films, but of course the content was sex. They'd play as arthouse films--this is before hardcore. It was hugely successful. A film like Inga in '68 would gross millions of dollars. Films like Sam Sherman's Naughty Stewardesses grossed high numbers as well. For independent feature films they did huge numbers.

Here we are now, with the DVD market, a lot of these films are not available, though certainly now there are a lot more labels releasing retro products. But with our Retro-Seduction label we found these films, re-mastering them from their original negatives and doing a really stand-up job with the releases, finding the directors, getting commentary tracks, shooting extras. Most notably, we found a library of erotic features from Nick Philips; he's a San Francisco filmmaker who produced in the '70s.

With these features we started shooting retro-remakes. We would take our Seduction Cinema talent and shoot a new version of a film and release it on the same disc. It really took off. Some of the earlier ones, such as Roxanna (Picture: 1 - 2) and Pleasures of a Woman (Picture: 1 - 2), they were short features, some of them forty-five minutes, an hour, but we went in production last year on Chantal, which is a remake of Nick Philips's 1969 film. We spent a lot more time on it. We shot it on film. We're spending a lot more time on the Retro remakes.

What about hardcore production; do you plan on crossing that line?
We thought about it and we decided to stay on the soft side. It gives us more opportunity to develop scripts. It's satisfying to work on an erotic feature, and the hardcore element of it doesn't really interest us as a company, any of the talent or producers and directors. It kind of limits you. I always thought the hardcore business sort of parallels what we do, simultaneously perhaps hardcore will produce a spoof, but it never really crosses over into what we do. It's a whole different world, different distributors, different venues, different markets and not something that we're really interested in.

Now, be honest, as the president of a company producing some of the most salacious product in entertainment, with a stable of arguably the hottest actresses in the business, what kind of fringe benefits do you enjoy?
The sets are very fun, no doubt about it. Certainly friends of mine that are not in the business think the sets are a wild sex orgy. "Oh my God, girls naked all day long!" It's a very laid-back atmosphere. Some of the talent likes to lounge around all day naked. It's no big deal. Some of the talent prefers to be naked most of the time. It's very professional. I know that must be disappointing.