GOLDEN GODDESSES: 25 LEGENDARY WOMEN OF CLASSIC EROTIC CINEMA, 1968-1985

by Nelson, Jill C.

  According to some sources, Seka’s boyfriend and business partner, Ken Yontz, was controlling and possessive over Seka throughout their tumultuous relationship. Acting as her manager during her rookie years in the business Yontz occasionally performed with Seka and others in some of her early works from 1978-1982. Emphatically, Seka reiterated during our interview that she and Yontz were never husband and wife and claimed any information to the contrary is false. Nevertheless, the young, determined, aspiring star was well aware of her worth. After her first nude photo layout in Las Vegas garnered Seka a good deal of attention, she set her mark on breaking into the adult film business. Intuitively, she understood her potential to become a great asset to the industry. Inevitably, Seka loaned an intangible quality of class and raw animal magnetism to an atmosphere where she could utilize her beauty and home spun smarts to the max. Others followed her lead.

  I can remember when I started in films and I’d be working with other women and I would look at them and say softly, “Why don’t you go get cleaned up a little bit?” If we got undressed to get dressed for a scene and they started to walk around barefoot, I’d say, “Why don’t you put on a pair of shoes so your feet won’t get dirty?” or, “Why don’t you put some body lotion on so your skin’s not so ashy and chalky looking?” Just to help.

  They would say, “Oh, I never thought about that.” That’s something I would have done if I’d been getting ready to have sex at home with somebody I knew. You want to be nice and clean and smell good, and feel pretty about yourself. If you don’t feel attractive about yourself, how can you feel attractive to somebody else?

  The platinum hair was a mistake. In the beginning, I just wanted a few streaks of blonde in my hair and when the lady finished it was pretty much all white. I was devastated. Afterwards, I thought, “Hmmm…I like this. Maybe God messed up.” After all, there’s the avocado and the platypus. I think that maybe he forgot to add the blonde hair for me. This was somewhere around 1975, 1976.

  The country girl got her feet wet by appearing in a few loops in Baltimore, Maryland prior to debuting under the guise of her new persona “Seka” in her first big screen release which happened to be a porn adaptation of the 1931 classic Hollywood horror picture Dracula.

  Technically, Dracula Sucks (1979) wasn’t the first movie that I’d done, but it was the first full length feature movie that I did because I’d done some little eight millimeter loops and things like that and then moved to California and met Bill Margold. He was the one that was instrumental in helping me to get a lot of magazine work first — print stuff, and then I did the features. Dracula Sucks was the first one, and I believe Blonde Fire (1978) was the next one.

  The Freeway Films Production Blonde Fire was shot before Dracula Sucks (aka Lust at First Bite, the hardcore counterpart), but released afterwards as was often the case with many of the earlier erotic features. Set in South Africa, Seka appeared in the beginning and at the conclusion of Blonde Fire effortlessly winning adult film fans over as private detective Johnny Wadd’s (John Holmes) hot blonde San Francisco squeeze. The apex of the picture, a beautifully crafted, choreographed sex scene is filmed from the top of a ladder producing a highly desirable effect as the actors make love on blue crushed velvet. According to director Bob Chinn, Seka requested a rather robust non-negotiable sum for a partial day’s work, but he knew she would be worth it as he indicated in his following reminiscence about Seka.

  I was in San Francisco getting ready to shoot the Johnny Wadd movie, Blonde Fire, when I first met Seka. My first impressions on meeting her was that she was beautiful, blonde, bold and businesslike, and I knew immediately that she was going to be a big star. She knew that she was going to be a big star. She had come to California from Virginia with her boyfriend Ken Yontz to be a big star, and I could read the determination on her face. Here was a woman who would do what she said she was going to do, and be what she said she was going to be. Here was a woman who already owned adult bookstores back in Virginia who one day just decided to embark on another phase of her career.

  I had already finished casting Blonde Fire, but I wanted her in my movie so I hastily added a part for her. It was a small part but it opened and closed the film and fit in well with the “blonde fire” theme of the film.

  Seka was certainly a diamond in the rough. She was also an extremely sharp businesswoman. There was no negotiating her salary, which was high — much to the chagrin of my production manager. For her part in the film, we managed to negotiate hiring her for a half-day, which put a dent in our contingency cushion but still kept us within budget. Blonde Fire Seka’s first feature film appearance even though the second film she made was released before it.

  In the veteran stacked picture, Dracula Sucks included Jamie Gillis, John Leslie, John Holmes, Annette Haven, Paul Thomas, Kay Parker, Mike Ranger, Serena and Bill Margold. Seka portrayed a nurse overtaken by Dr. Stoker (Holmes) in a mental institution operated by sibling administrators John Leslie and Kay Parker. Utilizing highly potent seductive powers and a hypnotic voice, Jamie Gillis makes a very convincing Count Dracula as he seeks out and overpowers unsuspecting nymphets (Haven and Serena) and others in his wake. Seka’s titillating sexual rendezvous with Paul Thomas situated inside of a parked car, chronologically appeared before the Seka/Holmes rape scene. It had actually been filmed after her scene with Holmes.

  It wasn’t really a rape scene with John Holmes in Dracula Sucks. Supposedly, it was, but between John and I that could never have happened because we just liked each other too much. It was very interesting that during the Dracula Sucks shoot, I walked into the castle and Annette Haven was coming down the stairs in her peignoir looking like an angel, and all the guys were sitting at a table off to the left having breakfast. There was Jamie Gillis, John Holmes, John Leslie, John Seeman, Paul Thomas — I don’t know if Bill [Margold] was actually sitting at the table. I know he was in the room. I walked in and those guys turned around and looked at me, and I was just frightened to death because it was as if I was just a big side of beef hanging there. It was like, “Oh baby, there’s new meat!” It just really scared me, and the majority of the men got up and said, “Hello,” and introduced themselves and I was very star struck because after all it was John Holmes and Jamie Gillis, for god’s sake. I mean, what else could a girl want?

  As coordinator of the Dracula Sucks film project, Bill Margold stated he had arranged for Holmes to take Seka’s virginity, metaphorically speaking, which produced some disgruntled campers who also wanted first dibs. The calamity that ensued on the set created a domino effect still etched in Seka’s mind.

  The first time that I said, “No, I’m not doing that” happened in Dracula Sucks. There was a particular actor, who decided that he wanted to work with me before John [Holmes] got to work with me and he wrote a scene in. It was the first feature film for me and I was scared to death. The scene he’d written wasn’t in the script and I said, “I’m not working with you.” It was a very demeaning thing that he wanted to do and he got a little nutty and said, “Oh, you’ll never work again.”

  I said, “I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me.” He finally pissed me off enough that I took off my shoe and I winged it at his head, and told him to go fuck himself and walked out. The shoe was a Saddle Oxford and they weighed about five pounds apiece. They were huge, they were heavy, and I was glad because I really wanted to hit this person in the head with the shoe and I walked off the set. I would not work with this person until he apologized to me on set. I didn’t do the scene and they finally took it out of the script. He pouted for two or three days about it. He refused to work with me because he thought it was going to hurt me, but as most of us know, the women are the ones that draw people to watch these movies more so than the men do. Finally, he had to apologize before I would ever work with him.

  It would seem that Seka eventually accepted John Leslie’s apology. In 1985, she and Leslie teamed up for Blonde Heat regarding the pursuit of a Maltese dildo with Le
slie in the lead role as the gumshoe.

  That was the only controversy I ever really had on a film. It had to be my first one too! I figured, I might as well get it out of the way, you know. I think I was the first woman at that time that ever said, “I’m not comfortable with that. I really don’t want to do that.” I think women were afraid to say they would or wouldn’t do something because they were afraid they wouldn’t work. Whereas, I didn’t give a rat’s ass — I didn’t care. At the time, it was, “I’m not compromising myself for anyone.” I don’t care what field I was working in. If I’m walking down the street and a man is a gentleman, he’s going to step aside. If you do compromise yourself, you’ll feel bad about yourself and life’s hard enough as is so why should you make yourself feel bad?

  A few hours before John [Holmes] and I were to do our scene that we had to do in the barn, he said, “Come here. I’d like to talk to you.” We sat down on a stump out front of the castle and he said, “Let me tell you something. Always respect yourself and don’t ever do anything that you don’t want to do. If you want to say ‘No,’ you say ‘No,’ and don’t feel bad about saying ‘No.’ Just be true to yourself.” I’ve always remembered that and I’ve always stuck by it. I don’t know if that’s something that helped me to take my shoe off and wing it at this other person’s head or not, because I was so pissed off at that moment. I really wasn’t thinking except that I knew I wasn’t going to do what this other person wanted to do. From that point on, John was always my favorite guy.

  Learning the Ropes

  Seka began to augment her feature film work by appearing in Swedish Erotica, Blue Vanities, and Erotica Collection loops. She illuminated how the process of shooting and performing in an adult movie was not unlike acting in a typical Hollywood film. Apart from participating in actual sexual intercourse, it was all about lighting and angles.

  I was horrified because I didn’t think I looked good. Not the sexual performance because I knew that was good, but the acting part I thought was horrible because I know I’m not an actress. Quite a few people in the adult business are quite good actors and actresses, but I’m not one of them. I don’t care because I’ve never considered myself an actress. Jamie Gillis was very good. He did some off-Broadway stuff and studied in theatre. I’ve just considered myself a performer. I’ve never professed that I am an actor. I don’t think I can act. I know I enjoyed what I did so that wasn’t acting. I enjoyed what I was doing. It was real. I’m a performer period, but not an actor. I couldn’t act my way out of a paper bag.

  I was completely okay with performing. You do get more used to seeing yourself. The first time that you see yourself nude and having sex — it wasn’t that I felt intimidated by that by any stretch of the imagination, but because I had seen other people in adult movies, I was like, “Oh man, I was so horrible.” I would cover up a shot using my arm and you couldn’t see me giving head. It’s just the little things that after a while you learn how to suck cock on screen. It’s not as if you’re at home in your bedroom. It was, “Okay, it doesn’t matter how uncomfortable you are, it looks good to the camera.” After a while, it becomes natural. If you’re giving oral sex to the man, it’s natural to put whatever arm is facing the camera down to the side or over your head so that the camera can see it. It’s the same thing that any actress or performer would do in any other kind of movie. You learn where the camera is and where your lights are to make the scene work. Just because you happen to be performing sex, doesn’t really make it any different than if you were doing any other movie, it’s just that you learn your craft. After you learn your craft, then you learn to enjoy it within those parameters.

  In adult films, everybody always has sex on top of the kitchen counter that is hard and cold. If you look at these movies, they take place in a bathroom stall, on a cement floor, on a chair or on a kitchen counter. Puleeaze! People don’t do that! Once in a great while if you have a wild hair up your ass, so to speak, you might want to get crazy and have sex in an alley way or something. Generally speaking, most human beings, if they’re watching an adult movie they’re laying in bed where it’s comfortable. It’s like, “Oh baby, we can go to the alley-way or the elevator,” but that’s not what normal human beings do.

  The niche group of actors who worked together during the golden era is identifiable to adult fans because of their individuality which made it relatively easy for purveyors of sexually explicit material to feel a sense of kinship with the actors.

  The first time you have sex with someone in a film it’s not always the best because you’re not familiar with each other’s bodies. When we were working in the late 1970s, we worked together a lot because there weren’t that many of us. The fans could get to know you.

  In 1980, Seka portrayed Ilsa, the Nazi Secret Service Officer in Prisoner of Paradise. The role, a spin-off character from the 1975 film Ilsa: She Wolf of the S. S. enabled Seka to have fun by unleashing her “Hyde” alter ego as her character taunts and tortures three American captives: sailor Joe Murray (John Holmes) and two nurses (Nikki Anderson and Brenda Vargo). Stranded on a remote Pacific Island outpost during World War II, the American prisoners are subjected to various forms of physical and sexual cruelty doled out by Ilsa and the other German officers, as Murray struggles with his own demons to become courageous. Despite some of the antics deployed for effect in Prisoner of Paradise, after learning her lesson on the set of Dracula Sucks, Seka was determined she would not allow herself to be pushed around again.

  In Prisoner of Paradise for example, in the scene where I looked as if I was beating the girl with the riding crop — I would not do that. I did not do that. I said, “I will not beat this woman with the riding crop.”

  They said, “Well, you have to.”

  I said, “No, I can tell you what you can do is you can move her. You can get the motion of me moving my arm. You can put a pillow there for me to hit and you can put a sound effect in later. If you want, you can spank her butt and make it red, and make it look like she was hit with a riding crop. Or you can have somebody else do it to her and have me doing the motion, but I will not do that because it’s not something I’m comfortable with.” That’s because it’s not going to be true. It’s not going to come off as looking true, or convincing, or anything else. They finally said, “Okay.” They really wanted me to beat this woman and I wouldn’t do it because it was not a spanking. Those things really hurt your butt or any part of your skin that you smack with riding crops. I wasn’t about to do it. We eventually figured out another way to do it without me physically having to do it…I’m a convincing German, Nazi bitch though, huh? It was funny.

  Gail Palmer (Parmentier) is often attributed as the lead director on the set of Prisoner of Paradise and other adult pictures because of her personal relationship with porn distributor Harry Mahoney at the time. Bob Chinn, who actually directed the lion’s share of the scenes, once again shared his memories of having had the opportunity to work with the platinum megastar.

  Prisoner of Paradise had a much larger budget enabling me to cast Seka in a starring role. She was perfect as the cruel, over-the-top, Nazi SS officer stranded on a remote Pacific island outpost during World War II. Most people don’t realize that this film is simply a strange surrealistic fantasy about a stranded sailor who must become a hero while coping with his own personal demons by rescuing two nurses held captive by psychotic Nazis who perform sexual experiments on them. Seka did, and we had a lot of fun shooting this picture. I found Seka to be very easy to work with. I found her to be smart, efficient, down to earth, and a rarity in this business — a true professional. She is indeed a “Golden Goddess.”

  Inside Seka

  In 1980, Seka embodied two signature roles in feature films which proved to have a long shelf life in the adult genre. All decked out as a futuristic alien in Ultra Flesh, Seka is sent to the earth to cure the male populous from impotency in the star-studded vehicle directed by Svetlana. Also launched that year was Inside Seka, a col
laborative directorial effort with Joe Sarno and Ken Yontz, co-starring Ron Jeremy, R. Bolla, and George Payne. By the time the quasi-documentary was released, Seka’s platinum locks were almost as famous as Seka herself. The star became immortalized when the film’s publicity team rolled out her new title: “The Platinum Princess.”

  That was Video-X-Pix. When I did Inside Seka they put “Platinum Princess” on the box and it’s stuck all these years which is why I still have to have my hair this color! I do like it. I’ve gotten used to it after thirty-some years.

  Inside Seka is the vehicle that truly showcased Seka as the glamorous porn diva she is. Stylishly dressed throughout in crisp, white blouses and tailored skirts with an opal pendant and gold diamond rings adorning her necklace and fingers, Seka’s elegance certainly doesn’t detract from her ability to get down and dirty when the scene calls for it. She does so while wearing gorgeous lingerie and hose with matching stilettos as she and various partners set out to pleasure one another. Touted as samplings of Seka’s real life sexual engagements she makes love with Ken Yontz throughout the story while tales of her many erotic liaisons, are depicted.