It is not your everyday backdrop for hard-core sex, Mr. Logan noted: "It looks like 'Lord of the Rings.' "

Mr. Oshima's most notorious film to date, "In the Realm of the Senses," has still not been generally released at home because of its hard-core sex sequences.

There was no law against it, but it was worse than hard-core sex.

With a much older girl who had begun teaching him the ways of pleasing a woman without stepping over the line into hard-core sex.

And like Warhol, he has covered the waterfront in terms of subject, from nearly hard-core sex to banal innocence.

"The sexual revolution was already happening, but hard-core sex hadn't crossed over," said Randy Barbato, who wrote and directed the documentary with his filmmaking partner Fenton Bailey.

A 1984 law had prohibited cable operators from exercising editorial control over programs on either type of channel, thus allowing hard-core sex shows to start appearing on some leased channels.

That means hard-core sex, performed in all the possible permutations by a fearless young cast.