Between 1965 and 1975 a man named Michael Hubert Kenyon became infamous around the United States. The special crime that made him notorious? He liked to invade campus apartments and college dormitories to tie up female students at gunpoint. Once he had them in bondage, he’d administer enemas to them, with a degree of gentle politeness surprising under the circumstances. Then he’d steal their money, before making his escape. Not surprisingly, they called him “The Enema Bandit.”
The exploits of the Enema Bandit came to the attention of the pornography arm of the Gambino crime family. They promptly reached out to their house director/producer, a fellow by the name of Shaun Costello, AKA Warren Evans, AKA Helmuth Richler. The middleman between Shaun and “the boys downtown” told Shaun “I’m ashamed to have to say this, but they told me they need an enema picture.” The result? The raunchy bondage enema-rape extravaganza Waterpower, aka Water Power, shot in 1976. One notorious scene shows a handcuffed crying kneeling woman fucked in a bathtub, enema nozzle shoved up her ass.
Small wonder that Waterpower became an instant notorious taboo enema porn classic. (Perhaps it also helped that the mob put Gerard Damiano’s name on it, to capitalize on Damiano’s Deep Throat fame.)
Bondage and enema porn have been pretty firmly linked ever since. But thankfully, such wild-eyed 1970s home-invasion fare was — and stayed — rare. Subsequent enema porn tended to be far more playful and consensual, even when presented with BDSM stylings. For example, consider this next rather typical piece of Bill Ward fetish-stacking artwork. Sure, the enema recipient wears shackles. And just possibly she’s making an insincere gesture of protest at her anal invasion by the enema nozzle. But she doesn’t even put down the cigarette in her other hand! We may be forgiven for thinking she’s mostly waiting for that huge cartoon erection to get into the game:
Back when the mob was making and distributing porn movies, they didn’t worry too much about legality. Their pornography rackets were perhaps the least illegal parts of their many “business” ventures. Their distributors and theater operators were all middlemen and distant associates. Any risk of obscenity prosecution didn’t “stick” to the men who made the content decisions. But as porn got more mainstream, especially in magazine publishing, taboo topics like enema porn started getting covered in some very tame ways. It began to look more and more like mainstream (pun intended) porn:
Of course, the story of enema porn extends far beyond American shores. And goes centuries back in time. The enema going so badly for the rocket-man (“l’homme aerostatique”) at the top of this post comes from an 18th-century French comic. British Victorian-era written erotica was full of enema porn. So too is 20th-century German hardcore (although for some reason in German porn the line between enemas and scat-fetish can be harder than usual to find). But the Japanese positively revel in enema porn, both live-action movie versions and kinky “hentai” animation. The following clip, quite typical, features a villain, a transparent glass enema syringe, and a bucket of cold water:
As he squirts a bound woman’s ass full of water, the villain gloats over her screams: “A bitch who can’t follow orders deserves to be punished!”
Enema porn is about power, about invasion, about shame, about filth, about broken taboos. No wonder there’s so much of it!