Fantasm

Fantasm
Directed by	Richard Franklin (as "Richard Bruce")
Produced by	Antony I. Ginnane
Written by	Ross Dimsey
Based on	an idea by Antony I Ginnane
Starring	John Bluthal
Cinematography	Vince Monton
Edited by	Tony Patterson (as "Ford Footpole")
Production company	TLN Film Productions
Distributed by	Filmways
Release date	16 July 1976
Running time	90 minutes
Country	Australia
Language	English
Budget	A$50,000
Box office	A$650,000 (Australia)

Fantasm is a 1976 softcore pornographic film, directed by Richard Franklin under a pseudonym. It was followed by a sequel, Fantasm Comes Again, the following year, directed by a pseudonymous Colin Eggleston.

German psychiatrist Professor Jurgen Notafreud takes the audience through a series of female sexual fantasies including:

In 1974 and 1975 Antony I Ginnane decided to enter the production field. He attempted to set up a Roger Corman type "nurses" film which he would produce and direct budgeted at $250,000 and then a crime drama set against the background of the massage parlour business called Sexy Little Me budgeted at $150,000, but was unable to find the money. However he could raise $50,000 and allocated directing duties to Richard Franklin, with whom Ginnane had worked with on the overseas marketing for The True Story of Eskimo Nell.

Franklin and Ginnane wanted to make something commercial so their options were a bikie, horror or sex film. They decided to make a sex film with Franklin pushing to make it more of a comedy. Ross Dimsey wrote a script, originally called Fantale, which was a send up of Swedish sex education films such as Language of Love. Franklin:

With this thin veneer of medical 'therapy', or whatever, these films were being shown in these little underground cinemas and so on around the place. They were all essentially softcore, and we decided to make a kind of send-up of one, really. Not because we wanted to do a send-up, but because we didn't think we wanted to do a genuine one. We just wanted to make a fun film about sex!

Ginnane and Franklin had trouble finding actors who would appear in the film in Australia so only the linking scenes with the professor were shot in that country, with the sex scenes filmed in Los Angeles by Franklin and his cinematographer Vince Monton, using American porn stars. An old classmate of Franklin's from USC, Doug Knapp, was working in the area of porn and put them in touch with casting agent Bill Margold.

The US shoot took ten days, the Australian shoot took one day. Franklin says that John Bluthal, who played the professor, ad-libbed some of his dialogue, and that the porn actors were paid around $200 a day, except for John Holmes who was paid around $400 a day. Franklin: