Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes (1998) Nude Scenes

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John Holmes is the stuff legends are made of in that he is the foundational big dick of porn. He’s been the subject of countless books, documentaries, tributes and of course, was the inspiration behind (Mr Marky Mark himself) Mark Wahlberg’s character in Boogie Nights. Born in the 1940s in a small Ohio town, he knew from an early age that he was special. When he’d jerk off, he’d get all dizzy because that massive dick of his drained way too much blood from his head. With enough practice, though, he was able to control his dick growth and keep his balance, and soon became an absolute master of cock manipulation. He joined the army and he was stationed in Germany for a few years where he no doubt gave a whole bunch of continental slut-bags a night to remember. After his discharge, he went to Los Angeles to discharge his wads on American soil with good ol’ American gals. It wasn’t long before John took to porn, and soon, became the massive smash-hit star. According to Pornhub, he starred in Deep Throat, Behind The Green Door and The Devil In Miss Jones, when he didn’t actually appear in any of these films at all. So, what makes John such a big name? You probably already know the answer unless you just got out of seminary school where you’ve been for the last several decades. John’s sporting a massive foot-long fuck-rod which chicks go absolutely gaga for. He also unleashes a fury of jizz bombs every time and every scene he shoots has that special Holmes climax.

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That is the heart and tragedy of Wadd: his demons could easily be anyone's but he was given the unique opportunity to have them unleashed and nurtured in fantastic fashion. Despite the fact that he succumbed to them and became someone else, the people who loved him remained themselves, and were left to deal with the aftermath. The film's end, juxtaposing interviews in which the same people describe him as both a drug-fueled maniac and as someone for whom they felt genuine love, is jarring and heart wrenching. Even if there is no sympathy to be felt for him, the pain his loss caused his family and friends is real and startling. According to IMDb, one of the directors of Wadd chose not to be credited, instead opting to have his/ her name listed as Alan Smithee, the pseudonym used by anyone in the film industry who is so displeased with his or her work that they do not wish to be associated with it. That's a shame because Wadd is an incredible feat of biographical film making. Opting not to use voice-over narrations or anything that creates the illusion of an overarcing narrative, Wadd is entirely composed of interviews with his friends, family, enemies and acquaintances, all of whom are permitted to tell their side of the story in their own words. The result is a film with no agenda other than to give the viewer as unbiased a presentation of his life as possible -- and the result is utterly fascinating.

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Starting in the middle with his heyday as the undisputed King of Porn, Wadd seamlessly moves through the various chapters of his life, from his childhood as an all-American boy to his salad years as a forklift driver. The segments on his early life come across as equally shocking to those depicting his involvement in the Wonderland Murders and the revelation that he knowingly exposed other adult film starts to HIV. The reason, perhaps, is that there is little indication that the Holmes of 1975 would do the things that the Holmes of 1983 did. Before he was Johnny Wadd, he was a bashful guy driving a forklift who had to have his mother sign a form permitting him to get married, since his all-American, Cat's-eye-glasses-wearing wife was a few years older than him and he was a minor. His progression to a drug-fueled, soulless monster is well documented and believable; interviews chronicling his abusive childhood demonstrate that the capacity for evil was always festering in him, not in the form of malicious intent but in the form of weakness. For all of his on screen prowess, Wadd shows him as someone who was ultimately impotent. What began as a quest to quash an inferiority complex became an addiction; he got so much gratification from the porn biz that him as an individual ceased to exist. The beast whose painful, AIDS-related demise is recalled in the film's closing moments is not an evolution of the scrawny, crew-cut guy; it's what he left behind.

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Wadd aims to fill in the gaps in what turns out to be the rather fascinating life story of John Curtis Holmes, the Ohio farm boy who grew up to be literally and figuratively larger than life -- while not really having a life of his own. The topic was first touched upon in 1981's Exhausted, a video biography of Holmes produced by one of his admirers. That movie, parodied as the "love letter" that Julianne Moore's character makes in Boogie Nights was produced during his lifetime, shortly prior to becoming one of America's most wanted fugitives and affords viewers the unique opportunity of hearing him tell his own story in his own words. Unfortunately, he (as Wadd demonstrates) was a tremendous liar, even when it would be more beneficial to tell the truth. As such, Exhausted only functions as a novelty piece or for the psychoanalytically inclined, as a porthole into his ever blackening soul. For the real story, one must go to Wadd; and it's one hell of a story.

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He is one of those unique figures that pretty much everyone has heard about but no one really knows about. The adult film star with a thirteen inch penis, his name is synonymous with the American pornography industry, with the subculture that surrounded it in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and for true crime buffs, with the gristly Woderland/ Four on the Floor Murders. However, one would be hard pressed to find many people who have actually seen one of his films, except for clips featured in documentaries and gag internet downloads that do nothing more than display his erect member like an exhibit in a modern-day sideshow. Likewise, even if one can track down individuals who actually viewed any of his films in the theater when he was still the king of porn, those individuals would probably not be able to tell you much about him beyond a description of what was between his legs.