Released in the United States on November 15, 1972, Gerard Damiano's exploitation fantasy Deep Throat was an immediate and unprecedented cultural phenomenon. At once outlandishly amateur, cheap looking, explicitly pornographic and hovering just to one side of then-prominent gender and sex skirmishes in the public sphere, it was a shining and vivid example of free love at the end of the 1960s. To some it was also the most obvious and reactionary depiction of women as sex objects in the sophomoric fantasy life of the Vietnam moment with its throwback to older traditions of male dominance and female subordination.

Regardless, and with but a scant hour's running time, asynchronous sex scenes scored to top-40 rip-offs and an unexpectedly effective jump cutting technique, Damiano's $24,000 movie turned into one of the best investments in cinema history. Some have even claimed a worldwide take of some $600 million-a dubious claim in light of shaky accounting practices, changing ticket prices and the nature of exploitation to hyperbolize itself to scare up audiences-though it must be agreed, right from the start, that Deep Throat was surely the most successful porno made up to its time.

More fiscally conservative research suggests a box office take of $20 million dollars but this still leaves room for the burgeoning home video and DVD markets that have surely contributed additional funds to the coffers of the movie's copyright holder. Moreover Deep Throat is undeniably a cultural standard both artistically and business-wise, standing as an underground classic and as an exemplary model for runaway commercial success.

Combining sex play with as straightforward a plot as possible, the film made a superstar and movie icon of its star, Linda Lovelace. In deference to its episodic, sexually laden and ridiculous storyline, the direction of mainstream pornography followed its lead through the Golden Age of the 1970s when relatively large budgets were lavished on an industry organized along parallel lines to, and in the shadow of, Hollywood. "How far does a girl have to go to untangle her tingle?" read the tag line for the film with the answer unfolding before any kind of painful preamble.

Lovelace is a pretty, though extremely freckled and snaggle-toothed, young woman who enjoys her sex life but feels somehow unfulfilled despite all of her agreeable experimentation. After her roommate Helen (Dolly Sharp) arranges a gangbang to help her explore what makes her feel good, she's forced to seek professional help since she can't put her finger on the problem at hand.

She visits Dr. Young (Harry Reems) who listens to her tale of woe and through a physical exam he determine she lacks a clitoris near her vulva, although she does have one in her throat. Immediately finding total satisfaction for the very first time in swallowing Young's longish penis, Linda becomes his devotee and, eventually, his house call making therapist specializing in men with sexual hang-ups.

After seeing several clients, Lovelace falls in love with Mr. Fenster (Bob Phillips), a rape fantasist with a penis too small to tickle her tingle. Luckily, Young offers them a method for lengthening her would-be husband's manhood so the lusty young pair enjoy one final tryst before knowing their future together is mutually assured with her skills at oral sex and the brilliant release of her clitoris-in-the-throat.

In these simple steps of centering on a woman's sexual life and surrounding her with experts and lay people alike, all of whom are horny and available, the basic tone of X-rated cinematic romps were sealed in Lovelace's suspended gag reflex. The now well-understood meat shot of the pornotopia were put on display under plenty of lights. Orifices were opened to the inspection of curious viewers. But, most importantly, sex was liberated on-screen from the traditional confinements of marriage and darkness to become entirely casual, humorous and even playful for flower children coming of age.

When considering pornography's advancement since 1972 from the relatively slow, expensive grind of 16 mm and 35 mm film production through video, digital video and on into the hypertextual Web environment to become a multi-billion dollar industry, it's no small thing to pick out benchmarks of success. Especially benchmarks like Deep Throat now nearing its 30th birthday in an expressive domain that prefers the constant pairing of new bodies fucking ever-newer bodies in myriad combinations, forever and ever.

If for no other reason than parroting the sexual zeitgeist, Deep Throat turned movie conventions on end and made casual sex a topic of conversation and a comical big screen entertainment. Importantly, although often set aside in the historical memory, it also helped establish an interest in trying to explore women's sexual appetites and needs, even if those appetites and needs were entirely self-serving from the standpoint of the men who produced such movies and who would receive deep throat.

Remember, too, the film's display of ejaculation, sodomy, group sex, nudity and its rather heady crosscutting combination of rocket ships and fireworks with orgasm, not to forget the straightforward discussion of female anatomy. For many theater auditorium voyeurs, curio seekers and libertines alike, Damiano's film must have been something more than mere muckraking and titillation. I dare say it may have stumbled into being educational for at least some of its viewing public, and perhaps dually so when considering the claims of feminists, Lovelace included, who vilify the film's bodies put-on-display and the wholesale application of demeaning power disproportionately applied to the female form.

Following the film's release there was a consequent, and linked, debate over public decency, the representation of human sexuality and the merits of Damiano's fantasy itself that were all hotly contested topics of discussion. Upon its exhibition throughout the country first run theaters began showing the movie, thereby elevating it above the din of the usual rain-coaters-crowd to become one of the most popular motion pictures of its time. Not for nothing this popularity stemmed from the film's capacity to bridge the gap between high brown art and its critics, on the one hand, and the lowbrow, obviously visceral appeal of its explicit sexual content on the other.

Shot entirely in Fort Lauderdale in six days its entire production circumstance lay outside the conventional system. Apart from claims about how this independence was one among many clarion calls to filmmaking alternatives to Hollywood in the early 1970s, an aspect of this backdrop has surely led to rumors about Lovelace's complicated relationship with the film as its raison d'etre. On the one it's widely believed she was complicit with her filmmakers in making the movie for a fee generally agreed to have been $1,200. On the other, and as she's claimed in two separate best-selling memoirs, she was drugged, coerced and raped into participation by her then-husband if not also by the film's entire cast and crew.

The truth of these stories, memories, counterclaims and conjecture is everywhere uncertain when considering the exploitative nature of porn and the often-brittle personalities involved in its production. Still, there is evidence of both positions-the violation of Lovelace versus her celebration-since Deep Throat features a slightly bleary-eyed and intoxicated-looking heroine who offers line readings with awkward emptiness only to then smile through numerous scenes of vaginal, anal and oral sex with no obvious room for complaint.

Trying to assign ideas of guilt to the finished film is one approach to unpacking its mystery and influence. Another is to empty out such considerations entirely and concentrate instead on the explicitness of the sex as a masturbator's door prize. Yet again there is room to focus on the weird fact of the movie's presence at all since 1972 was the year of Francis Ford Coppola's Academy Award-winning The Godfather with its reification of mob life within the center of popular Hollywood moviemaking.

Looking backwards to the expressive freedom of movies like Easy Rider in 1969 and continuing on through the ultimate commercial triumph of E.T. in 1982, the intervening 13 years can be viewed with a rosy glass of optimistic regard for the glory of the 1970s before box office gold was re-established in a series of Star Wars imitations and technology-driven adventure stories. Into this fertile ground of experimentation, disinterest in the established filmmaking system and the possibilities presented by a wider, more diverse movie-viewing public came the remarkable utterance of pornography as comedy with a thrust, no pun intended.

As the shining avatar of this style and possibility, and also its pioneering effort, Deep Throat is as unserious a movie as could be imagined. Fortunately the weight of history seems continually interested in offering it up for repeat viewing despite its entertaining qualities that leave much to be desired. In fact, if it weren't for the happy satisfaction of 61 minutes running length, the terror of its badness would surely have overcome the production even through all the fucking and sucking.

Let it be known Deep Throat is a classic but not because it's a good movie by any stretch of the imagination.