The original inspiration for ATOMIC CINEMA was my exasperated observation that no video store offered all of Metzger's films together. Metzger would be famous if he had never directed an XXX film and he would be famous if he had only directed XXX films. It is absurd to segregate them just because one shows people actually having sex while another shows people  pretending to have sex. That is not a valid artistic distinction. (This section combines all his movies. Explicit films are marked .)

Metzger seems a no-brainer pick as best American erotic director except that his work is so European in character that it's hard to describe him as an American director at all. Metzger was a driving force in every stage of the cinematic sexual revolution in America. The saucy European art films his company Audubon imported in the early 1960s helped set the stage for US acceptance of nudity in film. As a director, his acclaimed 1960s soft core films remain highly regarded today and he later directed several of the most acclaimed American XXX films.