Own the rights?
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
MRG Entertainment specialise in producing a continuous supply of softcore sex films for late night entertainment that are primarily featured on television screens through either hotel networks or late night cable presentations, I believe this must be one of the first of their films to be simultaneously released as a home video on DVD. As a result it probably had a larger budget and higher production values than most of their releases; certainly the filmscript was much better than for most such films; whilst the cast were attractive (without artificial 'enhancements' to distract the viewer) and also much more competent actors than is often the case. It has currently achieved an IMDb User rating of 5.5, unusually high for this type of film. The story is about a somewhat predictable academic crime involving the deliberate ousting of a former University Professor (who later committed suicide) through an attempted rape scandal set up by a post-doc assistant who later inherited his position. It features the dead professor's daughter enrolling in the College and determined to get to the bottom of what happened. As an ex-university man myself, I found the background academic scenario was presented quite realistically, although it certainly seemed unlikely that in real life the false charges made would have been sufficiently convincing to topple a senior academic with a hitherto good reputation. But once one accepts this scenario the story plays out in a fairly convincing manner as the new holder of the chair continued to show lapses of ordinary judgment which were not only improbable but almost unbelievable and which not surprisingly eventually led to him being unmasked. Before this stage viewers who were most interested in sexual shenanigans were provided with a plenitude of these, although the requirements of the story probably meant that individually most of them had to be kept rather more brief than is usual for films of this type.It is interesting to speculate how rewarding this attempt to make an adult crime thriller that is successful as a direct to video release will be. In the case of 'Scandalous Sex' I notice that the DVD is not even listed by Amazon, and it has been released through a distributor who advertises the availability of direct mail order sales to individual customers through the web. This raises two interesting questions, how successful will such direct sales be, and how many local retailers will eventually stock the disk. In my view it is unlikely that the availability of the DVD will add significantly to the financial return achieved by the promoters, but if I am wrong we may see many more examples of this type of film being marketed in a similar way in future. The real question seems (as always) to be whether any such film can satisfy those viewers who are primarily interested in the nudity and the sex scenes without becoming too boring for consideration by the majority of viewers looking primarily for a good crime story. Today significant nudity, and to a lesser extent direct sexual activities, spice up many films; and can greatly enhance their general appeal for many viewers in the same way that herbs and condiments can spice up a meal. But to succeed in this there is no doubt that they must, just like herbs and condiments, be used in very limited quantities. Whilst I used to assume that this approach could create products with an almost all enveloping appeal, I have gradually come to believe that those who like very spicy foods (or films) are unlikely to ever be satisfied with middle of the road fare which has been spiced up a little in this way.
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