Los Angeles: In a twist on the recent string of sex tapes of Hollywood’s young stars, Vivid Entertainment plans to release what it says is a film from the vaults of classic rock: a sex film supposedly of Jimi Hendrix.

The film shows a naked man who resembles Hendrix, the guitar legend who died in 1970, wearing a bandanna in his Afro, having sex with two brunettes in a dimly lighted bedroom. His full face appears on screen for only a few seconds, with his eyes closed.

In other portions there are flashes of his profile. But his hands, bedecked with rings, roam large on the screen at times. The film has no audio.

Vivid, a large maker of pornographic movies that is releasing the film this week, has created a 45-minute DVD, called “Jimi Hendrix: The Sex Tape,” that combines 11 minutes of sex footage with a retrospective of Hendrix’s career in the 1960s (but with none of his music included).

The firm, which has also released tapes of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee,Kim Kardashian and others, will sell it for $39.95 in stores and over the Internet, and will also offer the film for downloading.

But the identity of the man in the film, which has circulated among Hendrix aficionados for years, is fiercely disputed by experts and former associates.

And the DVD arrives on the heels of a string of hoaxes involving star look-alikes and one other dead superstar. Internet news reports recently cast doubt on the claims of a New York collectibles dealer who said he brokered the sale of an explicit Marilyn Monroe film.

The marketing of the intimate moments of dead stars adds a strange new dimension to the surge of voyeuristic entertainment that has swept Hollywood, where sex tapes can be considered a means to stoke or revive careers. It indicates how far people will go — and how far legends may fall — as audiences clamour for unvarnished details of celebrity life.

Vivid Entertainment said that after an extensive inquiry led by private detective agencies, it stands by the Hendrix film as the real thing.

“I believe that we did our due diligence, and as a result of that clearly believe that it’s him,” said Steven Hirsch,Vivid’s co-chairman.

“If they said that it wasn’t him, I would never have put it out.”