The Spanking Master

I have seen several Spanking genre videos, starring Darla Crane and falling into the Lesbian/Fetish genres. This Gay-oriented version of the same topic is strange and almost endearing in its unexpected quaintness.

That's part and parcel of the whole fetish movement, weirdness marching to its own drummer. Almost none of this niche material crosses over easily to a wider audience.

Hal Roth, who also appears as the head of the local government's probation program, directs an ad libbing, all-male cast in a rather curious exercise that would normally fit into yet another specialty genre: the Stroker film. Various perverted probation officers, notably Sinbad O'Connor (very adept at improvising humiliation dialog) and John Long, make a habit of preying on their assigned felons, threatening them with being sent back to the hoosegow if they don't shape up for real or imaginary transgressions.

These nasty fellows drop in on the unsuspecting youngsters and dish out corporal punishment, in the form of spanking or paddling. Just as is done in the Lesbian videos, getting the posterior to turn bright red is the desired result for the intended voyeur audience. In most scenes, a good spanking is followed by everybody in the scene jerking off, singly rather than as couples or chains. By the end of the film this oddly innocent but technically not soft-core seems so timid and lightweight as to classify this genre of video as similar (in its own goofy obsession) to your typical bondage video. For a broader (slightly) audience there is series of Playgirl DVDs released by Wicked Pictures several years back featuring solo vignettes of studs posing, stripping and then beating off.

While still remaining fetishistic and kinky, the closest the video comes to conventional sex (no fellatio and no anal sex here at all) is CBT action, a fetish of Sinbad O'Connor who likes to grab his boy's privates and squeeze hard after spanking. The other pervs are content with just the sight of bright red posteriors to get turned on.

I was impressed by the decision, dating back over 25 years, to maintain a semblance of story and characters. Gay porn, just like its mainstream porn big brother, has largely abandoned such niceties, making 21st Century counterparts to "The Spanking Master" unwatchable -just footage, not filmmaking at all.