Mona the Virgin Nymph

Mona the Virgin Nymph
Film poster
Directed by
Written byBucky Searles
Produced byBill Osco
Starring
  • Judy Angel
  • Gerard Broulard
  • Orrin North
  • Susan Stewart
  • Fifi Watson
CinematographyHoward Ziehm
Production
company
Graffiti Productions
Distributed bySherpix
Release date
  • August 6, 1970 (1970-08-06) (San Francisco)
Running time
71 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$7,000 (est.)[1]
Box office$2 million (est.)

Mona (also promoted as Mona; the Virgin Nymph) is a 1970 American pornographic film directed by Michael Benveniste and Howard Ziehm, produced by Bill Osco, and starring Judy Angel, Gerard Broulard, Orrin North, Susan Stewart and Fifi Watson. The film was screened without credits due to legal concerns.[2] It is regarded as the second sexually explicit film to receive a general theatrical release in the United States, after Andy Warhol's Blue Movie (1969). However, unlike Blue Movie (which was shot without a script), Mona had a plot, though there was more emphasis on the action.[3]

Mona helped pave the way for other films containing unsimulated sex scenes (both penetrative and non-penetrative) that subsequently appeared in theaters, during the Golden Age of Porn (1969–1984); and was a big influence on later films of the genre. Deep Throat (1972), for example, borrowed elements of Mona's plot.[4]

Earnings, believed to be $2 million, helped finance the directors' 1974 film Flesh Gordon. The team also produced Harlot (1971), and Osco later backed the similarly explicit Alice in Wonderland (1976).

  1. ^ "Budget". IMDB. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  2. ^ "Flesh Gordon Interview 3". PicPal.com. Archived from the original on August 28, 2008. Retrieved July 16, 2013.
  3. ^ "Pornography". Pornography Girl. Archived from the original on May 6, 2008. Retrieved July 16, 2013. The first explicitly pornographic film with a plot that received a general theatrical release in the U.S. is generally considered to be Mona (Mona the Virgin Nymph)...
  4. ^ "Sex in Cinema: 1970 Greatest and Most Influential Erotic / Sexual Films and Scenes". Film Site. p. 21. Retrieved January 16, 2012. This film's storyline was borrowed, to some degree, by Gerard Damiano's Deep Throat (1972).