---
alias:
- Screw
- Screw magazine
category: Private Organization
created: 2026-09-23
end: 2003
location: New York City
start: 1968
summary: New York sex tabloid founded in 1968 by Al Goldstein and Jim Buckley, whose
  publisher was arrested 19 times on obscenity charges in its first three years; it
  folded in 2003.
tags:
- Organization
- Publication
- Pornography
- Obscenity
- RCHorsch
updated: 2026-09-23
---

*Screw* was a weekly sex tabloid published in [New York City](/places/new-york-city/), founded in 1968 by [Al Goldstein](/people/al-goldstein/) and Jim Buckley with 175 dollars each. "Screw grew from a combination of many factors, chief of which was my own dissatisfaction with the sex literature of 1968 and my yearning for a publication that reflected my sexual appetites," Goldstein wrote in a 1971 anthology. It sold 140,000 copies a week at its height. In its first three years Goldstein was arrested 19 times on obscenity charges; in 1974 a federal judge threw out an obscenity case against him. The magazine was later outdone by more explicit publications including *Hustler*, and it folded in late 2003, when Goldstein filed for bankruptcy protection.[^1] Its review of [R.C. Horsch](/people/rc-horsch/)'s 1973 film *[The Erotic Memoirs of a Male Chauvinist Pig](/misc/the-erotic-memoirs-of-a-male-chauvinist-pig/)* called the sex in it disgusting.[^2]

[^1]: "Al Goldstein, Infamous Pornographer, New Yorker, Dead at 77," Associated Press, *NBC New York,* December 19, 2013. https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/al-goldstein-dead-obituary-screw-magazine/2124859/
[^2]: "How a pornographer's violent fantasies blurred fact and fiction as cops searched Olney house for missing women," *The Philadelphia Inquirer,* August 2, 2026. https://www.inquirer.com/news/a/raymond-eugene-horsch-olney-philadelphia-missing-women-history-20260802.html