13 Movies About the Adult Film Industry That Don’t Sugarcoat Anything

It’s hard to generalize about a multibillion-dollar industry that has existed nearly as long as film itself, headquartered for decades in the San Fernando Valley over the Hollywood Hills from the mainstream Hollywood studios.

When Hollywood looks to its Valley neighbors, it often does so by sugarcoating things — treating the industry as silly and amusing — or playing it for horror, with the implication that shooting explicit scenes leads inevitably to making films of people getting killed. (The Ti West movie X, above, takes a rare neutral view — people get killed, but not because they’re in the industry.)

The following films are noteworthy for their blunt presentation of the industry (though a couple do latch on to the murder trope). For the most part, they present the industry as an underground, unregulated economy where some people get along just fine — but others find themselves exploited and disappointed. We think that seems pretty accurate.

Hardcore — recently part of a Paul Schrader retrospective on the Criterion Channel — is a fascinating but not completely successful film. George C. Scott plays Jake Van Dorn, a very religious Midwestern dad who has to travel to seedy Los Angeles when he learns his daughter, Kristen (Ilah Davis) has entered the adult film industry.

The film is a fascinating look at how the business functioned in the late 1970s. But Scott’s transformation from everyman to shrewd undercover avenger isn’t totally convincing. And it feels a bit melodramatic that Kristen descends so quickly into very violent films.

Still, Season Hubley is excellent as Niki, Jake’s guide into the seedy underworld. it’s fun to imagine an older and more accomplished Schrader remaking this film with someone like Liam Neeson, the master of dad-on-a-rampage movies.

David Cronenberg’s 1983 film fairly brilliantly presages the rise of the internet and our willingness to surrender some of our humanity in the service of technology, but it starts with old-fashioned grown-up entertainment.

Max Renn (James Woods), president of a small UHF station, stumbles upon a broadcast signal of very alarming videos. This leads him to Nicki Brand (Debbie Harry) an explicit radio host with dark predilections.

Max’s investigation of her disappearance leads to him having a Betamax cassette inserted into his torso, and his eventual effort to transcend our sick sad world and “leave the old flesh.” It’s all very metaphorical, but feels especially relevant in the age of artificial intelligence.

You knew this would be here. For about the first half of Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterful second film, Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg, in his best role) finds a chosen family under the tutelage of Valley filmmaker Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds). Jack’s partner Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) and rising starlet Rollergirl (Heather Graham) even have kind of a mother-daughter dynamic.

But as drugs and — gasp! — video take hold, Dirk descends into darker and darker stuff, and it quickly becomes apparent that the romanticized good times of the ’70s aren’t sustainable in the ’80s.

Lots of people would love to live Dirk’s high-flying ’70s life, but no one would want his wretched existence in the ’80s.

This French neo-noir corporate drama by Oliver Assayas stars Connie Nielsen as a sneaky, ice-cold executive involved in a French company’s acquisition of a Japanese company that makes very gross anime.

The film is surprisingly frank in its presentation of said anime, but all the executives involved in the negotiations seem to see the material merely as a product, not a thing to be judged. There’s a great metaphor here about transactional relationships.

As is often the case in dramatic portrayals of the industry, the more mainstream films portrayed in Demonlover (we use the phrase “mainstream” very loosely here) are a gateway into violent content in which people really get hurt. Or worse.

Documentarian Bryce Waggoner released three volumes of this excellent series with a simple but arresting concept: Adult performers simply explain what they’ve been doing since leaving the industry. (Waggoner directed the first two, and the third was directed by former adult performer Brittany Andrews.)

The series removes artifice and fantasy to reveal the people of the industry as just people — some of whom are thriving, and some of whom are mightily struggling.

It raises questions about stigma, exploitation and reinvention, without telling anyone how to think or feel.

Amanda Seyfried (above) is excellent as Linda Lovelace, one of the most contentious figures in the history of the adult film industry.

She became a sex symbol for starring in what became one of the most mainstream and profitable of all adult films. But years later she wrote in her memoir, Ordeal, that she was violently forced into the business and all sorts of animalistic degradations.

Lovelace handles her story sensitively and sympathetically, never crossing the line into the kind of exploitation the real Linda Lovelace tried to escape.

One of the most common criticisms of the industry is that it exploits women. King Cobra is all about gay adult product, so the gender component is removed.

But that brings into more stark relief other potential forms of exploitation: namely older people exploiting younger people, and people with money exploiting those without it. (These are also problems, of course, in supposedly respectable fields.)

King Cobra is based on a true story — the source material is the book Cobra Killer by Andrew E. Stoner and Peter A. Conway, about the the life and early career of former adult actor Sean Paul Lockhart (Garrett Clayton, above).

Written and directed by Justin Kelly, it’s a little-seen but captivating film with a top-notch cast that also includes Christian Slater, Molly Ringwald and James Franco, who is also a producer on King Cobra.

Journalism doesn’t get more serious than PBS’s Frontline, and in 2002 the Oscar and Emmy winning documentary program investigated the business of adult entertainment, charting its rise and the reason for the demand.

If Hardcore provides a fascinating but melodramatic look at the industry in the late 1970s, this Frontline doc is a fascinating investigation of the state of the industry in the early 2000s, when the internet was radically shifting the dynamics of the business and making adult product more accessible than ever before.

You can watch the entire documentary — and every episode of Frontline — for free online via your local PBS station.

One of the best films on this list, Sean Baker’s Red Rocket is a judgment-free portrait of Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) an adult semi-star forced to return to his Texas hometown while on the outs from the industry.

Mikey believes he can wheedle his way back in by convincing Raylee (Suzanna Son), a 17-year-old donut shop employee who goes by the name Strawberry, to join him. He also strings along his ex, Lexi (Bree Elrod) and her mom Lil (Brenda Deiss), so he can live with them while he gets back on his feet.

Packed with excellent first-time actors, the film feel visceral and alive, adroitly blending comedy and sadness. It avoids moralizing, yet you’ll probably come to hold some strong opinions about Mikey.

Baker is one of our greatest filmmakers, who uses stories about sex work to make broader points about hard work in general.

Almost every Sean Baker film involves some element of investigating sex work, always empathetically and evenhandedly.

Baker and co-writer Chris Bergoch came up with the concept for the Mikey Saber character in Red Rocket while doing research for Starlet, when they realized how many male actors in the adult film industry live off of female talent.

Starlet follows Jane (Dree Hemingway), a 21-year-old rising star who strikes up an unlikely friendship with 85-year-old Sadie (Besedka Johnson).

Director Suzanne Hillinger’s documentary about one of the most prominent websites for adults isn’t interested in anything salacious. It just sets out to normalize — and humanize — the people who just happen to make adult content for a living.

“To me, it was really important the way that we shot the interviews, for example — that the environment around each interview subject is very much a part of the frame, that these are people in their homes, with details and lives and plants and pets and shoes in the background,” Hillinger told MovieMaker.

A Sundance darling that gained lots of initial attention for its blunt depictions, director Ninja Thyberg’s Pleasure is the story of Linnéa, a small-town Swede played by Sofia Kappel (pictured) who travels to Los Angeles to try to break into the industry.

The film is notable for its multifaceted presentation of the adult film industry. Some of Linnéa’s experiences are good, but others are horrible, including a scene in which she technically consents to a violent scenario but does so only under considerable coercion and pressure.

She soon finds herself contributing to the abuses.

All three films in Ti West’s X trilogy — the other two are 2022’s Pearl and 2024’s Maxxxine — seek to demystify the adult film industry while exploring the stigma around both sex and violence.

X is the most blunt about it. The film takes place on a very DIY adult film industry location — a Texas farm — where the older couple who own the place seem to disapprove of the young people’s shenanigans. But things are more complex than they seem.

In all three X films, the main protagonist is a young woman — always played by Mia Goth — trying to use her sex appeal to get ahead. It doesn’t usually work out as she planned.

You might also like this list of Excellent Films in Which Not Much Happens.

Main image: Sofia Kappel as Bella Cherry in Pleasure, from writer-director Ninja Thyberg. SF Studios.