Detail from Golden Girls: Dynasty (1985), as featured in the PRESSURE edition of VHS Late Tapes
By Emily Lewis
PRESSURE, the latest curation of pornographic films from VHS Late Tapes, came to the ICA’s Cinema 1 last Friday on another sweaty evening in London. The project is organised by Helena and Harlan Whittingham who source from the Bishopsgate Institute’s UK Fetish Archive and increasingly draw from their own collection of vintage erotica tapes. For its 10th edition, the rubber and masks were stripped away to reveal some good old-fashioned skin contact.
Throughout the screening, audience members can be heard whooping, laughing and shrieking as they take in the unfolding images together. To an unseasoned attendee, it might come as a surprise that VHS Late Tapes feels like such a communal event. Some films inspire strong reactions (of bewilderment, fear, hilarity) whilst others keep the crowd silently absorbed. Who knew, there really is a whole theatre of emotion to experience whilst watching porn. What also feels special about these screenings is the conditions under which the films were made and their ability to connect to a community who care about these conditions.
This was beautifully exemplified in a clip from Masks and Macks (1997) for the PUBLIC PLAY edition of the series in September last year. A group of women stomp determinedly through St. James’s Park wearing outrageous leather trench coats and thigh-high boots. Dog walkers pass by without a word. The women find themselves repeatedly interrupted and frustrated by an anonymous cameraman who is helplessly attracted to their beauty and unusual outfits. It’s one of the more straightforwardly playful clips in this series. The uncanniness of the scenario, the mild disdain of the female characters, and their very English accents allow room for the audience’s amusement. Transgression, we are reminded, has a lineage and its actors are everywhere.
On Friday, transgression took us abroad, as the screening departed from its usual curation of UK and European films for an all-American affair. Helena and Harlan are great at easing you into the experience of watching that which is typically restrained to the bedroom, bringing it into the open space of the cinema. Any apprehension was dismissed by the evening’s first film, Golden Girls: Dynasty (1985). An erotic wrestling tape inspired by the popular TV show that starred Joan Collins. In a nightclub bathroom, Kim and Shelly discover that they are dating the same man. Worse still, he has bought them the same diamond anklet. After some unconvincing shit-talking, the pair decide to settle their differences in a fight for the jewels, the man and their imported Italian heels.
The film is helmed by powerhouse performer Roselyn Royce, who also directs and provides the vocals for the opening credits. Royce learnt how to wrestle in the 1980s for a supporting role in The Fall Guy, an American TV show about bounty hunters who double as stuntmen. Like any good businesswoman, Royce saw an opportunity to take her new skill and market it to perverts. She established Golden Girls, a video company specialising in girl-on-girl fighting. According to their website, though some of the actresses are amateurs, those involved are “truly athletic and fiercely desirous of furthering their own careers”. The operation has since moved its media to DVD and is still available to purchase online.
Ambition is the order of the day. In a clip from Denise Xposed (1997), a muscle mummy postures in the gym with eye-wateringly large biceps, the kind that can only be achieved with anabolic steroids. The eroticism lies in the camera’s lingering — a close-up of the veins in her arms as she lifts an impressive 15kg dumbbell. There’s no narrative, only worship. Another interpretation of the woman writ large plays out in a clip from “Family Reunion” (1991). Adapted from a sci-fi novel, an athletic but mousey young man is confronted by his towering female cousin. She can’t wait to show him the muscles she’s developed over the summer. She scorns his stature, declaring that he’ll no longer be able to bully her like he did at school. The showdown between them is replete with futuristic sound effects — her muscles like ray guns, a forcefield of sound emanating from her body. It’s telling that many of these American films frame power through revenge: the jealous ex, the victim of bullying and, later on, three women who capture and humiliate a Peeping Tom for trying to take photographs of them whilst sunbathing topless. Pitting bodies against each other is another crucial element of the eroticism. Submission is less a willing state of pleasure than it is something to be forced upon someone else to achieve some material gain. The crushed body, the diamond anklet.
Detail from Golden Girls: Dynasty (1985)
One tape, Hardcore: Male/Female Oil Wrestling Two, bucked the trend and made a compelling case for erotic wrestling as one couple grease up before having it out on a tarpaulin sheet. The pair genuinely seem to be having fun whilst they grapple with each other’s physiques, manipulating the other into submission. The film was supposed to be in colour, but because the tape tracked incorrectly, it screened in black and white. A happy accident, as the penultimate clip it felt appropriately intense and floored the crowd into quiet reverence. This was also the closest any of the films came to depicting sex, with plenty of rhythmic thumping and suggestive positions. It is worth noting that there was zero penetration in the entire screening and only one fully exposed genital throughout.
It is also part of the screening’s charm that a room full of strangers can watch a man trampled to agony by lithe women in stilettos, nestled on the Mall not too far from the British relics of imperial power. In July 2025, Age Verification laws came into effect in the UK, which prohibited access to online porn without the user first confirming their age. Companies could be fined upwards of £18 million for failing to comply. On their website, Ofcom lists the various methods used for age verification which include facial age technology, digital identity services and credit card checks. If huge operations like Marks & Spencer in April 2025 and the British Library in 2023 are prone to data theft it remains uncertain how users’ privacy will be effectively protected here. In an interview with the website Coda, Helena spoke of the troubles faced by indie porn producers in complying with the legislation. Expensive age-verification technology might work for large-scale businesses like PornHub but it’s financially ruinous for smaller platforms, the Roselyn Royce’s of today. Helena also runs Lover Ltd., her own management brand that has clients producing and performing in porn, as well as sex educators, activists and sex workers. In a statement, she writes that when all porn is reduced “to something dangerous, we erase the huge amount of ethical, creative, and/or community-led work being done.” Continued censorship of this work damages the producers and the consumers too, those on the other side of the screen, hoping to explore their sexuality.
For now, VHS Late Tapes remains a refuge for erotica freaks. Its curatorial spread rejects polished representations of sex or manicured attractiveness, so that viewers are free to open the door on the historically shaded world of fetish. The low-budget sets and affected performances get laughs but it’s in their sensitivity and commitment to desire that these films hold their value.
VHS Late Tapes is an ongoing series, screening at the ICA curated by Harlan and Helena Whittingham and the Bishopsgate Institute’s UK Leather and Fetish Archive