I make this joke a lot but still: this is what they took from us!!

It’s not just seeing breasts onscreen every 4 minutes (although let’s be real, we were spoiled by movie boobs in this era). 90s softcore was all about sensuality and the mysterious interiority of femmes. Paint circling a nipple, lips being licked, a shot of lingerie being smoothed over soft skin… women were delicate and needy creatures, “masterpieces” as more than one of these short films argues. If hardcore porn is all about the money shot—incontrovertible proof of a man’s orgasm—softcore in this era hinged wholly on impossible-to-confirm, luscious, drawn out femme pleasure.

In Lizzie Borden’s way-too-short first segment, a female therapist records her patient’s sexual fantasies and then acts them out for herself. Or at least dresses up like she’s going to? This one feels like the first act of a longer story but it cuts off frustratingly before events actually get going.

The segment by Linda Hassani (who directed Dark Angel: The Ascent, a straight-to-vhs movie I adore) is about a prisoner using astral projection to find out if his wife has been cheating while he’s been locked up. She hasn’t been—she’s too busy masturbating while staring at his picture. Nevertheless things go badly, in a Twilight Zone sort of way.

Borden has another segment that she both wrote and directed, this one about a woman whose husband is sexually bored with her, and so stages a series of escalating encounters between her and other men.

The interstitials are highkey Vertigo Comics aesthetics and I yelled every single time a Paul Valery or Ben Jonson quote popped up to frame the next short film. I have absolutely no clue who Playboy thought was the audience for this Jungian highbrow fantasy fest, but thank goodness it has been preserved because I loved it.

Except for the Alexander Payne segment, though, which was kinda racist.

(This relatively obscure film is streaming here.)