Currently unavailable on mainstream platforms. May appear on cult DVD labels (e.g., Vinegar Syndrome, Something Weird Video) or vintage adult streaming sites. Often sold as part of “forgotten golden age” collections.
In the mid-80s, adult films still attempted narrative and satire. The Ribald Tales of Canterbury is a low-budget example of the “literary porno” subgenre (others: Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical, The Little French Maid). Its cult status comes from sheer audacity—combining high school English class with smut.
Tagline: “Chaucer’s classic... as you never dreamed (or dreaded) it!” The Ribald Tales Of Canterbury -1985- -Classic-
In the mid-1980s, the adult animation landscape was a bizarre frontier. Before The Simpsons made prime-time cartoons safe and long before South Park pushed digital boundaries, there was a scrappy, hand-drawn fever dream known as The Ribald Tales of Canterbury. Released in 1985, this feature-length X-rated animated romp is neither a faithful adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales nor a conventional adult film. Instead, it is a gloriously weird, low-budget, and unapologetically lewd time capsule that has earned a cult following among collectors of vintage “adultoons.”
Not for: Chaucer purists, the easily offended, or those seeking high production values.
For: Fans of camp, bad period accents, and the bizarre intersection of literature and low-budget erotica. Currently unavailable on mainstream platforms
Approach with a dirty chuckle and low expectations.
For modern collectors, finding a clean copy of The Ribald Tales of Canterbury (1985) is a holy grail quest. The film was originally distributed by VCA Pictures (a major player of the era) on VHS and Betamax. It was briefly transferred to DVD in the early 2000s under the “Collector’s Series” label, though those prints were often pan-and-scan, cropping the lush widescreen framing. For modern collectors, finding a clean copy of
Current digital archives (legal and otherwise) host murky transfers, but the cult following remains active. Fans argue over the “director’s cut” vs. the “hard cut,” as several versions exist with varying levels of explicitness to bypass local censorship boards in 1985.