NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Kino Blu-ray (March 2026): Kino have transferred a double bill of Al Ruban's The Sexploiters and Ken Osborne's Raw Love - both from 1965 - to Blu-ray. It features strong new 2K remasters of both films, sourced from the best surviving original 35mm prints held in the Sonney Amusement Enterprises Collection at the UCLA Film & Television Archive. We reviewed The Sexploiters on DVD as part of the 2013 Platinum Pussycat / The Sexploiters two-pack HERE. The Sexploiterslooks appropriately gritty and high-contrast in black-and-white here, with sharp grain structure that preserves the raw, voyeuristic realism of its urban camera-club scenes and varying film stocks used for different sequences. Raw Love benefits even more noticeably from the restoration, delivering crisp sun-dappled textures, deep shadows, and natural daylight detail in its rural hicksploitation locations that earlier “lost” prints could never match. Neither film is pristine - occasional print damage, splices, and the inherent low-budget limitations remain letting the authentic grindhouse texture shine through in a faithful 1080P dual-layered disc with max'ed out bitrates.

NOTE: We have added 64 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Kino use DTS-HD Master dual-mono tracks (24-bit) in the original English language. For both it is cleaned up but deliberately left raw to honor their ultra-low-budget origins. Dialogue in The Sexploiters remains thin and somewhat flat with occasional room tone or wild sound recording artifacts, while the sparse jazz/lounge cues feel appropriately cheesy and era-specific. Raw Love is even more stripped-down, with natural rural ambiences and minimal scoring that emphasize isolation over polish. The lossless mono mix on the Blu-ray is clear and free of major hiss or dropouts, delivering the unrefined direct sound that enhances the seedy voyeuristic appeal - exactly as these 1965 roughies were meant to be experienced. Kino offer optional English subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-ray.

The Blu-ray disc is packed with excellent contextual material for cult enthusiasts. New audio commentaries by Gentry Austin and Casey Scott (hosts of The Sin Syndicate podcast, specialists in Golden Age sexploitation) cover both films with deep historical insight, production anecdotes, and cultural placement in the roughie wave. The Sexploiters gains an archival commentary track featuring cinematographer C. Davis Smith (The Amazing Transplant, A Taste of Flesh, The Girl from S.I.N., Bad Girls Go to Hell, The Sex Perils of Paulette) - who also shot parts of the film) -  paired with historian Michael Bowen, offering firsthand production stories from the grindhouse trenches. Additional gems include a 15-minute filmed introduction to Raw Love by C. Courtney Joyner (contributor to The Savage B's: A Tribute to B-Horror,) the film’s theatrical trailer, and a gallery of stills and original artwork. There is a reversible sleeve (see below.)

The Sexploiters is a quintessential mid-1960s "roughie" - a grittier, more violent and psychologically charged evolution of the earlier "nudie cutie" sexploitation films. Running about 65 minutes in stark black-and-white, it centers on Lynn (Terri Steele), a bored, affluent Long Island housewife with expensive tastes who secretly commutes into New York City to work for a sleazy "modeling agency." This front operation caters to camera-club enthusiasts and private clients who pay for risqué photography sessions with live models, escalating into kinky fantasy fulfillments, voyeuristic encounters, and outright transactional sex. Critically, The Sexploiters stands out for its historical footnotes: Ruban (sometimes credited as Al C. Ruban) later collaborated extensively with John Cassavetes, shooting and editing Faces (1968), and brought a similar gritty, vérité aesthetic to this exploitation quickie. Raw Love is directed by Ken Osborne (who worked with Al Adamson), and is an even rarer "hicksploitation" roughie that was considered lost for decades until its rediscovery and restoration from 35mm elements. Set in an unspecified rural backwoods community, it follows Skeeter, a moonshiner living a lawless, uninhibited life of illicit liquor production, rough romance, and family-style depravity amid his "uninhibited daughters" and local degenerates. The film leans into creek-side trysts, underwear-pulling antics, outdoor nudity, and a sordid slice-of-life vibe that mixes hillbilly stereotypes with raw eroticism and mild violence typical of the roughie subgenre. Together, the Kino Cult/Something Weird Blu-ray pairing highlights two sides of 1965 sexploitation: the sophisticated urban "modeling agency" fantasy versus raw rural hicksploitation. Both exemplify the roughie wave - post-nudie cuties, pre-porn - where sex was laced with threat, transgression, and social commentary on repressed desires, whether suburban boredom or backwoods libertinism. They were made fast and cheap for grindhouse and drive-in circuits, pushing boundaries on nudity and suggestion while dodging full obscenity crackdowns. In broader context, these films sit at the intersection of loosening censorship, the rise of independent low-budget filmmaking, and male-audience titillation. For cult enthusiasts, this package restores two "sick, sick Sixties" gems that capture the era's blend of liberation, sleaze, and seediness without the gloss of later softcore or the explicitness of hardcore. Kino Cult's Blu-ray delivers an HD presentation of two ultra-obscure 1965 roughies that were previously difficult or impossible to see in decent quality. The solid remasters, faithful audio, and generous lineup of expert commentaries and intros make this an essential purchase for fans of pre-hardcore sexploitation, and grindhouse history. While the films themselves remain deliberately crude, thin on plot, and aimed squarely at titillation, the Blu-ray package, with commentaries, elevates them with respect and scholarship, preserving a fascinating slice of American exploitation cinema that bridges nudie cuties and the coming porn explosion. Highly recommended for serious cult collectors.

Gary Tooze