Adventures in COUNTIF functions

The very first thing I did when starting this Robert Rimmer Re-Watch Collector’s Choice Challenge, was to set up a spreadsheet listing every film Rimmer rated as CC. Inevitably, on the first pass, I missed some so in an effort to help catch any major oversights, I also made spreadsheets for the films listed in Jim Holliday’s The Top 100 X Rated Films of All Time and Only the Best and the pre-1988* entries from The AVN Guide to the 500 Greatest Adult Films of All Time. It’s distinctly possible these lists already exist somewhere, but after some (relatively light) web searching, I decided it was easier to do it myself.

Sure enough, cross-checking these lists led me to a few Rimmer CCs that I hadn’t logged initially, but what I found more interesting were those films that were deemed all-time greats by Jim Holliday and/or AVN but not sufficient to earn a Rimmer CC stamp. Not counting softcore entries, about 550 films received Collector’s Choice designation. Of the 80 adult films released through 1987 that AVN included in their all-timer list, Rimmer reviewed 56, and of those, rated 40 as CC. Jim Holliday’s Only the Best consisted of 251 films** (assuming I didn’t miss any...I did check my list against the index twice, but you never know). 215 of the 251 were reviewed in Rimmer’s book. 144 of those were CC-rated.

There are nine non-Collector's Choice films that appear both on Holliday’s and AVN’s lists:

All the Way In (1984)

All-American Girls (1982)

Bad Girls (1981)

Ecstasy Girls (1979)

Hot Dreams (1983)

Inside Jennifer Welles (1977)

Never So Deep (1981)

Sexcapades (1983)

Society Affairs (1982)

Those are some pretty fucking good movies. Pretty good fucking movies?

(It’s worth noting that Rimmer did rate sequels All-American Girls II and Great Sexpectations as Collector’s Choice.)

A few of the non-CC films from Holliday’s list that jump out to me are Barbara Broadcast (1977), The Filthy Rich (1981), Little Girls Blue (1977), Pandora’s Mirror (1981), and Young Like It Hot (1983). Admittedly, I have a soft (hard?) spot for The Filthy Rich because it was the first X-rated film I saw.

As for the AVN list, I was surprised that 1001 Erotic Nights (1982) and The Widespread Scandals of Lydia Lace (1982) didn’t earn their CCs. I suppose the former is a little uneven, but I was gobsmacked when I read Rimmer’s review of Lydia:

“This is a quickie that Pachard must have flipped off on a rainy Manhattan weekend, and then gave it a zoomie, cryptic title which means nothing.”

Holy shit! Them’s fighting words, Bob!

Sharon Mitchell ain't havin' it, either!

I don’t anticipate being at a loss for films to watch, but if my randomizer ever brings up a film I’m not particularly feeling, I may pick out some of the critically-acclaimed films that Rimmer didn’t rate CC to further help suss out what his criteria were.

* The “Revised and Updated” edition of The X-Rated Videotape Guide was published in 1986, but spend enough time looking at release dates of old pornos and you’ll know that giving listed dates a plus/minus of 2 years is good practice.

** 93 of the Top 100 X Rated Films of All Time made it to Only the Best. As Holliday explained, the first book was geared towards retailers so the list wasn’t intended to reflect quality considerations. Most of the films that didn’t appear in Only the Best were rationalized in chapter footnotes.