History
The story of Super Hornio Brothers is a sad one which start and end with a crime.
The year is 1993, the movie Super Mario Bros. was just released in theater and Ron Jeremy is sitting in a court room. He is witnessing one of the most famous criminal cases of the late 20th century : the Menendez brothers trial. During the trial, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times said to Ron Jeremy that he looked like an escaped Mario brother. Ron agreed and everybody laugh. Little did they know, this comment would soon become the basis for what would become one of the most infamous parts of Nintendo’s story. While Ron didn’t know anything about the Super Mario Bros. game franchise, his friend Buck Adams did.
Buck Adams, which was a very prolific pornographic actor with around 500 movies under his belt (pun intended) and a prolific director. But Buck was at a rough spot in his life. Buck was known, as he admits himself, an asshole. He had psychotic episodes during award shows, made a death threat to a cameraman and was constantly drunk. He wife left him, his girlfriend left him and he was no longer in speaking terms with his daughter. And with Lethal Passion, of the last movie he directed, was not received with the praise and reward he envisioned, he decided to quit the XXX business … for a while. Buck took time for himself and decided to drink more responsively. He gave directing another shot with the movie Uninhibited. This movie changed him.
I didn’t have to brag or get into people’s face anymore to prove myself. That movie changed me. I became a whole new person.
– Buck Adam
Buck started to talk with his ex-wife and daughter. Life was finally back on track. And after the success of Uninhibited, Buck was ready to push the limit even further with Super Hornio Brother. Buck pitched the idea to Sin City, an American independent pornographic film studio which agreed to fund the project. Buck hired Marc Cushman, a prolific writer for pornographic movies, who wrote a 37-page script. The script is not based on the movie and is more similar to the Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, which feature Lou Albano as Mario with which Ron Jeremy shared a 
resemblance.
When SinCity received the script, they decided to pull out (again, pun intended) of the project. It’s not 100% clear on to why, but many speculate that the size of the script showed how big of an endeavor this film would be. The 37-page long script was way over the top. It had crazy costumes, 3D animation, weird location, which felt like an impossible take to film with that budget. With Sin City out of the picture, Buck had to find new financing. But while the project was ambitious, to say the least, Buck had a ton of connection in the industry and he had the legendary Ron Jeremy on board. Making good use of his Rolodex, Buck managed to find another suitor for his project : Midnight Video with which he had previously worked on Midnight Angel and The Midnight Hour. Midnight Video gave Buck 20,000$ to produce the movie, which was not much even by 1993 standard. To reduce the cost the team had to cut one day of filming. As the same time, Bruce decided to add six unscripted sex scenes to make two full-length movies out of this.
On the set
Bruce was very meticulous making sure the angles and lighting were just right. But learning a 37-page script in one day prove to be a challenge for even the more veteran actor on the set.
There was so much script to learn that Ron and T.T. were getting a little too performance-driven at times instead of lightening up. I wanted them to fuck up so we could have a levity and make it cartoonish.
– Buck Adam
In the final edits, Buck went for the outtake whenever possible to ensure just that. Buck was very proud of both parts of the movies. He did note that part one was a bit wordy, but still it was a good movie. But part 2 was his favorite:
Part two has the bells and whistles and the way-out visuals. Nobody’s ever done anything this bizarre in adult video.
– Buck Adam
While Ron couldn’t comment on the resemblance with Super Mario has he didn’t really know the franchise, we would note that the film had very good sex scenes and that, in the end, that’s what really matter when it comes to making an adult movie. Ron even wanted to get into the character by checking out the Super Mario Bros. movie that just came out, but unfortunately it was so bad that it had already left theaters. This prompted hope that the adult version could fare a lot better in the distribution.
Release
Both movies released simultaneously in 1993. The movie described itself as “The wildest sexual extravaganza ever. A computer game gone crazy with the naughtiest cast of wild sex crazed nymphs and love starved studs in cinema history — Hold on to your joystick!”. But both movies soon disappear from the shelves. A CD-ROM version (with none of the dialog) was also advertised in various magazines until 1996, but it is unknown if it was licensed or not.
Preservation
In 2008, a user named doorknobjohnny of the site Somethingawful.com posted in the forum asking if anybody had the Super Hornio Brother movie for sale or for trade. Although nobody had a copy in hand, many users tried to find a copy for sale, but none seems to be available. A user named b0bx13 even reached Ron Jeremy directly and got an answer from his agent saying that even him didn’t know how to get hold of it.
In 2008, Zack Parsons, editor for the site Somethingawful.com, issues a challenge in the forum to find the movie. Many users tried to find a copy for sale, but none seems to be available. Zack’s call to action generated a lot of attention. Soon after, a user called Supreme Allah posted the image of the CD-ROM version of the movie.
In 2009, Zack Parsons posted on Somethingawful.com, that someone finally posted a full DVD copy of Super Hornio Brothers 2. It took another 3 years for a copy of the first movie to emerge. In 2011, Ian Helm a fellow film researcher discovered a used VHS copy of Super Hornio Brothers for sale in Aurora, Colorado by a vendor dealing in defunct video rental store collections. Since then it has remained in archival storage, contained in its original packaging and in playable condition. In 2014, the film was finally digitized by Atomicthumbs, but it turned out to be Super Hornio Brothers II. But while this was taking place, a user called Samuel L ACKSYN posted that the original film was already available online.
Enter Nintendo
You may wonder why the previous section was even included in this article if, in the end, both movies were posted online anonymously. Well, while the search for the Super Hornio Brother was going full speed, a lot of people contacted Ron Jeremy to inquire about it. So Ron decided to publish a blog on his site explaining the situation. This all started when Ron wanted to put his catalogue online on his website. This is when he decided to contact a company called Hot Movies, which specialized in the distribution of pornographic movies. As they had a whole “classical” section of movies on their site, they were the best one to approach anyway to make all of his movies available from his website. This is when he was informed that Nintendo had bought the right to both Super Hornio Brothers movies and halted distribution indefinitely. While Nintendo never came forward to confirm this, they never denied it either.
It is unknown how the movie somehow caught the eyes of people at Nintendo. But Nintendo always had been very protective of their IP and at the time, also had very strict policies concerning adult content on its platform as they wanted to be seen as a family-friendly company. So it is no wonder that they wanted to get rid of these movies. The problem is that parody and satire are both protected to a certain extent under the Fair use doctrine. Still, Nintendo could have taken this to court, and drown a Midni
ght Video in legal fees until bankruptcy to force them to shut down the distribution, but this would have created a lot of unwanted attention for Nintendo which wanted this movie to disappear not gaining more exposure. Nintendo wanted to avoid that other producer could be tempted to create parodies of Nintendo’s IP knowing that Nintendo would buy the rights. In any case, Midnight Video also didn’t want to go to court over this, so an agreement was reached. Nintendo would buy the distribution right from Midnight Video and pull back all copies from shelves.
This deal was kept under wrap for many years. As the movie was not very popular to begin with, nobody notices that it had disappeared from the shelves.
While this doesn’t make Super Hornio Brothers 1 & 2 a true Mario movie, it does make them some of the rarest “Nintendo” memorabilia out there. With Nintendo being more open about adult content on their platform, could one day Nintendo acknowledge the Super Hornio Brother as being owned by Nintendo? It is doubtful, especially since Ron Jeremy is accused of sexual assault by 21 women. On January 17, 2023, Jeremy was found by the judge to be mentally unfit to stand trial due to “incurable neurocognitive decline” and was committed to a state mental health facility in California.
To finish on a more joyful note, it 2009 the news broke that Todd Ludlow, Ron Jeremy’s attorney, was suing Nintendo and Shigeru Miyamoto for $69 million dollars. The suit claims that the Japanese artist, under the supervision of Nintendo, used Mr. Jeremy’s image as the sole model for their most iconic video game character “Mario”, from the internationally recognized video game “Mario Bros.” Mr. Jeremy’s attorney, Todd Ludlow, provided the following statement: “We intend to prove that the accused used our client’s image and persona as the basis for creating one of the most legendary characters in video game history. If you look at the facts, it is quite clear where Mr. Miyamoto obtained his ideas. The obvious similarities are the round, overweight stomach and dark mustache. Mario’s occupation is a master of piping, and if you go back to the character’s debut, his goal is to beat a monkey. We have done our research and the time line matches perfectly. The “Donkey Kong” video game was released in 1981, two years after Ron Jeremy’s first “adult video” was released. This is no coincidence.”
At first, it was thought to be a publicity stunt by Ron Jeremy, but in a later statement, he clarified that he had nothing to do with this press release and that it was clearly a prank.
Cast
Actor:
 |  |  |  | ||||
| Ron Jeremy (as Squeegie Hornio) | T.T. Boy (as Ornio Hornio) | Chelsea Lynx | Buck Adams (as King Pooper) | ||||
 |  |  |  | ||||
| Don Fernando (as Bob) | Krysti Lynn (as Spider Woman) | Natasia (as Bon Dori – Queen of Bondage) | Rikki Ray (as Egg) | ||||
 |  |  | |||||
| Richard Reynolds (Credited as Rick Blaine) (playing Virusman) | Kitty Yung (as Ileeza – Mistress of Evil) | Diane O’Daine (as Evil Eliza) |
Other:
|  | ||||||
| Buck Adams Director | Marc Cushman |
Source:
– (NSFW) Super Hornio Bros: XXX-mas is Ruined – The thread from 2006
– Super Hornio Brothers! The Real Super Mario Movie- Tales From the Internet is an excellent video on the subject, especially on the subject of The Something Aweful
– Ron Jeremy Says Video Games Are Rotting Kids’ Brains – Interview of Ron Jeremy by Mike Pearl
– Celebrity Gamer: Ron Jeremy – Interview by Electronic Gaming Monthly in issue 173, December 2003
– Buck Adams Helms The Super Hornio Bros. for Midnight Video – Interview of Buck Adams by Gene Ross in AVN – Oct 1993