The Night Porter Released -- October 1, 1974

Virtually from the moment the fighting stopped, erotic takes on World War II became a mainstay of cheap porn paperbacks and lowbrow sexploitation movies.

Those boundaries (among others) expanded with the heady, high-class art film The Night Porter, which opened in theaters on this date in 1974.

Charlotte Rampling stars as a concentration camp survivor who comes across Dirk Bogarde as the commandante who once kept her as a sexual slave. Now he’s working in the lowly job of the title at a Vienna Hotel.

Rather than turn her former Nazi tormentor in, though, Charlotte revives their kinky relationship, and The Night Porter pushes cinema into areas that are as uncomfortable as they are arousing.

Controversy flared up around The Night Porter upon its release. Three-decades-plus later, it continues to provoke thoughts both intellectual and … otherwise.