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Hot Yachts (1987)
Incompetent
One of Ron Jeremy's many terrible videos as director, this one is poor under any title, none of which fit. It features a houseboat, not a yacht, and there is no shipwreck whatsoever, more like a Gilligan's Island 3-hour tour.
Two babes head for an island on their houseboat and do plenty of humping when they arrive, because a mad scientist there has created a love potion they imbibe. Rachel Ashley stars and helps spread the potion around, and of course Ron Jeremy insinuates himself into the show by playing a horny security guard.
This is poorly photographed, staged and performed, merely crummy porn-shooting on location. It was randomly chosen for posterity's sake as part of an Alpha Blue Archives 3-fer for Rachel Ashley.
Space Cadet (1989)
Shaggy-dog sci-fi in Blurrovision
I made up the term Blurrovision to denote films or videos that are presented out of focus or just overly soft focus for effect, inevitably harming the show, as in this horrible VHS junker.
Sharon Mitchell, all-time great Adult actress, is credited for directing this mess. We have Jack Baker as a bartender dealing with three guys who listen to loud-mouth (among them) Morris telling tall tales of sexual conquests. The sex scenes are presented in soft-focus with a halo around the action, the old vaseline-smeared lens technique, which merely generates eye strain.
After four vignettes erotic fantasy, Morris is stumbling home after the bar's closing time and his boasting catches up with him. Three nude alien ladies from Outer Space kidnap him and wham! he's lying in Saran wrap in their space ship for experimentation, amounting to a reverse gang-bang.
Busty Belle is wasted in this mess with a brief sex scene. Alpha Blue Archives randomly resurrected it for DVD on a 3-fer of Belle features.
'Belle' of the Ball (1989)
Dumb porno, sloppily made
Busty Belle is guest star in her own video, so sloppy that the title has Belle in it but her screen credit as actress is spelled Bell.
It concerns two horny housewives who contract for a sort of Dildo Avon Lady to stop over and demonstrate her wares as well as bringing along a male stripper (played by Don Fernando, standing out in a mainly no-name cast). It's planned like a sort of Tupperware party, but in this cheap production only a couple of people instead of the expected dozen or more show up.
Poor continuity has the guys "away", shown drinking bottles of beer in a kitchen, and later when they return home to surprise their wives the same kitchen with empty bottles of beer sitting on the table is used as one of the husband's kitchen. Apparently cheating while your husband's away translates into him being in the next room in this video's universe.
Sex scenes are desultory, and Belle's entrance into the show in the final reel is not set up at all, she merely materializes and refuses to give her name, before humping away.
Whatever It Takes (2010)
Perceptive Stormy drama about prostitution
Stormy Daniels, irrespective of her recent character-assassination fallout from the Trump scandal, is a fine Adult Cinema director, as evidenced by this well-written and directed romantic drama about prostitution made for Wicked Pictures.
Tori Black is the lead, a housewife to Barrett Blade, who loses her job, joining BB on the unemployment line back in the 2008-9 financial debacle. Her friend played by writer-director Stormy advises her to take up the lucrative profession of an "escort", ever the euphemism for hooker.
Tori resists at first, even copping out when hired to accompany Daniels on a bachelor party for Brendon Miller (Stormy's real-life husband, since estranged). But soon she is hooking with a vengeance, making tons of money to spend on shopping sprees and growing apart from her hubby.
Quite disarming is Stormy casting herself in the Bad Influence roles, and in early reels seeming to paint a glowing picture of high-priced sex work, in common with most porn films that proselytize on the subject. But this turns into a cautionary tale, acted with panache by Tori, then riding high in the industry only to achieve stardom again with her big comeback in 2017.
Blade as her husband is surprisingly sympathetic in an unlikely Mr. Mom role, but unfortunately as he's done consistently in hundreds of other features he makes no attempt to look the part, merely showing up for work with his always-biker-look style and costuming.
Distinctive in the supporting cast is McKenzee Pierce as a fellow prostitute, delivering a strong d.p. scene with big-dicked co-stars TJ Cummings and the late Billy Glide. Script fudges on her character's exact fate in the story, the only defect in an otherwise laudable Stormy screenplay.
The Pleasure Chest (1989)
Sarno video not worth rediscovering
This VHS clunker from Vidway, resurrected by Alpha Blue Archives for DVD on a Little Oral Annie 3-fer, bears the trademark style of Joe Sarno's crappy VHS projects, shot and unsigned by him (this one has Mort Harmon listed as director on screen, a pseudonym he also used that year for "Sucker'). It merely adds to the tarnish on the reputation of an Adult Cinema pioneer in the '60s and '70s theatrical era.
Signatures of Joe begin with the opening footage of Lynn LeMay traipsing along the sidewalks of Brooklyn, identical to the location shots he used as interstitial material in dozens of other videos. She portrays a girl from Akron, Ohio, with Joe including some Akron jokes (in place of the usual Cleveland mockery), perhaps of interest to an Akronite such as Jim Jarmusch.
Lynn has traveled to Brooklyn in search of her mother, kidnapped 20 years earlier by a gangster named Mr. Big. A brief but boring epilog resolves her search and what passes for a story, as guest star from Sarno's troupe, Siobhan Hunter, pops up with some cheap makeup to make her look older, portraying Lynn's aunt in a NonSex role.
Before that thankful end to this stinker, we have Ron Jeremy, awful as usual in an overplayed stereotype of an Italian gangster, mixing crummy dialog with crummier ad libs. He gets to hump in a couple of scenes, one of which is color graded so that Ron and his dick appear to mimic interracial sex via the dark skin tone contrast with the lady in question, adding weight to my own theory that IR content and the current craze for same in porn is more about that color difference than the more obvious racism.
Top billing goes to Busty Belle, given the video's title, playing a girlfriend of both Jeremy as Mr. Big and his equally big-dicked enemy gangster Joe Brazzoli, played by Sarno's favorite video thesp Michael Knight. Before I identified this feature's origin, IMDb had listed the director as Joe Brazzoli, perhaps some stupid in-joke by whoever submitted the listing to the website.
Obscure actress Suzy Lee also has a major role, and also was featured in Sarno's Heather Hunter vehicle for Vidway titled "Heather", on which he used another pseudonym as director, Debbie Stone.
Rolls Royce Volume I (1980)
Mediocre loops
Preserved on DVD by Alpha Blue Archives in a 3-fer for Kandi Barbour, this set of 6 stag loops suffers from idiotic dubbing (of the MOS originals) with dumb voices and a French-accented femme narrator.
Barbour is sexy in threesomes, as is buxom Lisa De Leeuw, while John Seeman gets plenty of exposure as the stud. Final vignette titled "Army Bit*hes" seems to be about a couple of stewardesses humping Jon Martin, typical of how the "helpful" dubbing merely ruins the material.
Wild Nights with Emily (2018)
Infra dig
After watching this irreverent yet sincere tribute to poet Emily Dickinson, I had the urge to revisit Julie Harris in "The Belle of Amherst". Call me Old School, but I vastly prefer serious filmmaking to the facetiousness of this feature-length SNL sketch approach.
Certainly SNL alumna Molly Shannon as Emily and Susan Ziegler as her sister-in-law, who share the love that dare not say its name in this version of the Dickinsons story give amusing and often moving performances, but the film has no consistent style or tone, and the male characters are predictably straw men mocked for the self-centered Male Superiority attitudes. Even the movie's unreliable narrator, Mabel (Emily's posthumous editor), well-played by Amy Seimetz, is written with such a heavy hand by filmmaker Madeleine Olnek as to lose substance.
Set in 3 different time frames: 1860 for the main story, 1840 for the young Emily and Susan played by disconcertingly lovely actresses Dana Melanie and Sasha Frolova, and Mabel's current era after Emily's death, wherein she pontificates to packed audiences inflating her role in championing Dickinson's career, the movie unfolds in disconnected scenes, many of which might easily have been dropped for sheer dullness, and a couple of which (surreal in nature) clash with the matter-of-fact overall style. Unlike the usual exaggerated beauty of period movies, typified by everything from Merchant-Ivory classics to Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon", Olnek presents the show as if in a low-budget amateur dress-up production representing 2019.
Use of poetry on screen in subtitles as it is recited (and sometimes by itself) recalls Jim Jarmusch's recent use of same in "Paterson", a techinque I found artificial and forced, just as it seems here too.
Changing Places (1984)
Quite pleasant, very minor VHS era porn feature
Jack Genero's porn career spans several eras, and here we find him dishing out a surprisingly easy to watch video made right after the theatrical stage of Adult Cinema came to an end.
It has a weak cast (the male actors are completely unknown and unfamiliar) but both Jessica Wylde and Gina Valentino in the leads are very appealing in putting across the familiar script situations.
Not unlike the classic Aykroyd/Murphy comedy, we have two women this time changing places: bored housewife Wylde and working woman Gina. So Gina goes to Wylde's house to while away the hours in sheer idleness, while Wylde proves incompetent as secretary to Gina's horny boss named Wally Walker.
Since her husband Ralph neglects her, taking frequent business trips, Wylde happily accedes to Wally's instant seduction, and the fans get to see the vastly underrated sexy humping away, her perfect nipple cones and sexily waist-length bruntte tresses a delight.
Comically, Gina is pleasantly asleep when Ralph gets home one night from his trip and humps her by flashlight under the covers (neither of them aware of the switcheroo until after waking up next morning).
It's all done cutely and harmlessly, with the gals inevitably learning their comfortable (if uneventful) existence was better before the switch -an oddly 1950s conclusion rather than 1980s.
Video was obscurely reissued over 20 years later by Alpha Blue Archives on DVD under Barbara Alton's name, but the ultra-busty Barbara has only a brief scene styled quite butch as a voyeuristic lesbian who humps Gina.
Hollywood Ending (2017)
He ruins another one
Mike Quasar likes to cast Tommy Pistol, and that quirk (or maybe the result of some porno blackmail) sinks the otherwise potentially watchable Wicked Passions feature "Hollywood Ending".
Of course Woody Allen had previously used this title on the identical subject matter, but pornographers take little notice of factoids like that, unless they are embarking on a fully identified rip-off known as porn-parody. This movie fortunately has nothing to do with Woody's.
With lots of corny voice-over narration, it's the story of a couple of would-be thespians who meet in acting class, fall in love and get married. India Summer is easy to like in her lead role, but Pistol as her partner consistently overacts and is hissable in a role that required some semblance of rom-com likeability. Think anybody from Hugh Grant to Gerard Butler, or Dermot Mulroney somewhere in between.
Making matters worse, Pistol's torso covered in ugly tattoos, his excessive facial hair, and overweight, over-the-hill body (he keeps his chest covered throughout sex scenes in a black t-shirt) are an instant turn-off.
So when the couple cornily grow apart with success (a destitute man's version of the hoary "A Star Is Born" plot line) Pistol is so unsympathetic that the film falls apart completely, including the credibility of its inevitable happy Hollywood ending.
To keep awake, we have sexy and busty Karlee Grey humping away (and flashing a 1970s full bush) as Tommy's scheming personal assistant; a blonde Mercedes Carrera as India's scheming agent and especially Aaliyah Love doing some fine acting as India's BFF in a sort of uninhibited, raunchy version of Eve Arden.
Quasarman has done some fine features for Wicked Pictures but this ain't one of them.
She Caught Me (2018)
Highly entertaining stepdaughter sex
From Bree Mills' specialized but popular "Mommy's Girl" channel on the web, these four incest vignettes definitely deliver the goods.
DVD leads off strongly with the great Mona Wales seducing her kid Dillion Harper in a variation on the cuckold genre. Seen only from the back of his head is Wales' husband, who I identified as crew member Billy Visual (correction TK, if I'm wrong). While Wales is humping Dillion, Billy keeps popping up and nearly catches them in the act, adding some spice to the usual mom/daughter sex scene.
A somewhat more confusing threesome has lovely Eliza Jane cheating on her male fiance (not shown) with both her step-mom and future mother-in-law, Brandi Love and Chanel Preston respectively. Jane makes this contrived vignette worth watching, somehow managing to stay in character during the nonsense.
A more conventional segment has Ashley FIres using a hands-on approach to teach her kid Haley Reed about the birds and the bees, a scene I found disappointing considering how much more sexy Fires usually is in gonzo circumstances.
Finale is way over the top, one of Bree's many nearly-satirical exercises in squirting. We have both Samantha Rone and Cadence Lux trying to out-squirt each other with fountains of Poland Spring erupting into the air or into the face of increasingly horny step-mom Sarah Vandella. Why a talented actress like Sarah subjected herself to this ignominy is beyond my comprehension, but the stupid skit goes on seemingly forever, or until both young ladies have emptied their bladders, I mean pussies, of bottled water. Just to make it kinky, Sarah also gets double penetrated repeatedly using dildo and butt-plug and then quite enthusiastically by the two girls wearing strap-on dildos. That's Entertainment!
Young Harlots: Carnal Education (2011)
Assembly-line jail-bait porn done masterfully
With a couple dozen volumes under his belt, UK director Gazzman has the art of directing schoolgirl porn down pat, and arguably his Harmony Films series "Young Harlots" is the best of all time in this sub-genre.
This one is strictly formula, but so well performed one can't complain. Tony DeSergio plays the headmaster of an academy for young girls, Most of them have big breasts, made to look even bigger by Gazzman's low-angle, wide-angle lens style of shooting. Best of the lot is Nicole Sweet, an amazing natural boobs actress, who even gets a Bonus Scene succinctly titled "Nicole Sweet Tits" on the DVD.
As usual, there is a token mature actress scene, with Shay Hendrix as a teacher getting to strut her stuff servicing Tony. The other girls are easy on the eye, and I especially enjoyed IR content from Kit Cox, a busty actress who has made very few Adult videos, notably appearing in Anjali Kara's Victorian classic for daring! Media: "Portland Manor".
Weather Girls (2016)
Very poor
Even by Penthouse Video standards, this junker is quite bad, a pointless two hours of filler that doesn't even live up to its low-concept title hook.
We never get to see any weather ladies in action at a television newscast, just the excuse for a bit of in-fighting and plenty of sex for the leading ladies. Ana Foxxx is the lead as the current weather girl, providing us with a couple of scenes of IR action, while Cherie DeVille is the former weather lady, seen only at a mansion with a wonderful view in what amounts to an extraneous sex scene humping Damon Dice.
The unsubstantial script goes uncredited while "Hank" (presumably cameraman turned director Hank Hoffman) gets stuck with listing as director. Usually porn at this level dispenses with crew credits entirely.
Ghostly Desires (2000)
Trivial Bud Lee fantasy
Not up to his usual level of quality, "Ghostly Desires" has director Bud Lee telling a tale of haunting on a movie set. Though released by major label VCA Pictures, I had to add the title to IMDb nearly 20 years after.
The ghosts are played by Jessica Drake and Ian Daniels, a stunt team killed in 1994 during an earthquake. Evan Stone is shooting a porn video on the refurbished location, and the pesky ghosts keep popping up (via minor editing rather than special effects) to try and protect the current cast and crew from accidents.
Not very exciting or fantastic, this is just the backdrop for six sex scenes, generally with condoms except for Stone humping Drake, as they were a couple off screen at the time (and hence exempted from the curious safe-sex policy of top labels like VCA, Vivid, Adam & Eve and Wicked at this time. Beyond Drake, early in her career, the lead actress in the movie within a movie is played by a rather obscure Shaena Steele, who comes off as a sort of poor man's Sydnee Steele, no relation.
Double Jeopardy (2006)
Contrived, idiotic vehicle for the twins
Paul Thomas usually was lazy beyond belief for his string of Vivid vehicles for the untalented Love twins Lyndsey and Lacey, but this one inexplicably wastes some time and energy on a boring murder mystery plot. It still adds up to nothing, and perhaps PT sensed that fact, signing it "Chuck Lords" rather than his more familiar porn moniker.
I felt sorry for talented Penny Flame, who provides interstitial sex as detective Nick Manning's wife, servicing him and questioning him about the murder case as a lame excuse for delivering verbal exposition between the XXX sex scenes. We're presented with a set of cornball suspects for the murder of California wine grower Gregory Gascoigne, played by Van Damage, and before you can say "The butler did it" Tony G's crummy screenplay ends up fingering somebody else.
A needlessly complex flashback structure drains any life out of this dead-on-arrival project, poorly acted especially by Manning who walks through his cop role with a distinctly non-regulation pony tail and delivers his cliched "Droppin' Loads" right on cue for a money shot.
The twins run around outdoors and look pretty, but are shoehorned into the story quite poorly by scripter Tony, sort of representing guest stars in their own Vivid show.
Slut Tracker 2 (2010)
Big breast edition
Other than his oft-copied first-person camera style, this video made by John Leslie late in his career is just gonzo porn, that almost any director working for Buttman's Evil Angel label could crank out. Its sole distinction is casting big-up-front ladies.
My favorite of these is the delightfully monickered Sea J Raw, an ebullient performer who gets the clean-up spot, batting fourth in the overlong (nearly 3 hours comprising just 4 vignettes) video. Leslie's gimmick of the girls coming to his home to be shot by the famous Slut Tracker is uninteresting, hardly a variation on his Voyeur series.
Gay Massage House Volume 5 (2018)
Not enough variety, in trivial episode
Nica Noelle didn't put much effort into this fifth volume of her hit Oiler series for Icon Male, relying almost entirely on voice-over narration to carry the four scenes of masseur Jaxton Wheeler seducing his closeted clients.
Yes, Jaxton is masseur throughout the show, playing the top for the entire hour and a half. Even the set-ups are nearly identical -about as boring as Gamma's boy/girl "Tricky Spa" series.
The studs include an old guy credited simply as Max, who gets to voice-over his longing for the masseur to get beyond the legal rubdown and finally deliver a happy ending, which of course we get to see Billy do. I could only think of New England Patriots owner Kraft and his current legal troubles stemming from happy endings for the famous old guy in a Florida massage parlor.
College Girl's Extreme Initiations 2 (1998)
Nothing much
Merely sex filler, the only notable aspect of this sorority girl porn show is that Sid Deuce, hot star of the first volume, returns as writer-director in the followup.
She's running a sorority, but a low budget keeps the total femme cast down to just four actresses, no extras as fellow sorority girls hanging around on screen. Sid and three pledges have sex and that's about it. The "extreme" initiations are mild indeed, mainly consisting of pledge Dakota role-playing as a kitty, chained at the neck and crawling around on all fours except to have stud Steve Hatcher hump her at Sid's behest.
Hatcher also gets to have sex with Sindee Coxx, first seen roller-blading with Sid. Chris Cannon, sporting a long hairdo for a change, gets to hump luscious pledge TJ Hart in the shower, after a variation on the traditional porn fetish of whipped cream, substituting here Sid and Chris covering TJ's body with shaving cream instead.
Not to be left out, Sid visits Alex Sanders who services her outdoors.
The Babysitter Volume 9 (2013)
Jessa is terrific
Jessa Rhodes, playing a character named Jessie in the title role, is irresistible in this well-made James Avalon entry in the hit Sweet Sinner series.
She's not treated well by her boyfriend Tyler Nixon, and falls for new employer Erik Everhard, who is saddled with taking care of his 2-year-old son now that the mommy Dana DeArmond has selfishly divorced him and left the country. The script is slightly confused here, as she's merely handed him divorce papers after a farewell humping in the first scene, but everyone talks about divorced in the past tense thereafter, with no time lag before Jessa is immediately hired.
Erik plays a p.e. teacher, and kindly teaches his new babysitter golf and tennis when she's not tending to the kid (who in Sweet Sinner tradition is never shown on screen). Everhard hangs out with his next door neighbor Steven St. Croix, who happens to be Tyler's dad.
Before their break-up, Jessa has sex with Tyler, and the obligatory extraneous sex scene here is a flashback in which St. Croix humps the cute young daughter of his Latina maid, nicely played by GiGI Loren, an actress whose Adult career never really took off.
One interesting aspect here is that Jessa's natural breasts, with beautiful nipples, are far more alluring than the big fake boobs she has opted for only 3 or 4 years later.
Teens Love Huge Cocks 22 (2018)
Why bother?
Reality Kings, in recent years just another cog in an international porn conglomerate managed in Canada and Europe, has been grinding out web porn for nearly two decades. This assemblage for DVD fans of random scenes is a loser.
Sean Lawless brings his big-knobbed cock to most of the scenes, humping away with mainly unknown talent. DVD draw is based, however, on scenes featuring young superstars Piper Perri and Megan Rain, not at their best either visually (styling) or erotically.
The set-ups for the scenes before sex begins are perfunctory, with extras like a mom (whose boyfriend Lawless humps daughter Sierra Nicole) left uncredited. The original net vignette reveals she is played by Mirabella Amore.
It's strictly about jail-bait sex, baby.
Hardcore Threesomes Vol. 2 (2018)
Repetitive and tiresome gonzo
Mick Blue puts on his director's cap with little success in this workmanlike salute to "2 on 1 dick" action. Not surprisingly, he casts himself as sex performer too to take advantage of the situation.
So we get eight porn beauties humping away with gonzo abandon in yet another high-energy exercise that is hardly erotic, more like porn's Sweat Equity division. The fans are becoming groomed to appreciate fake passion and lots of activity as a supposed stimulant to masturbation.
Probably the strongest scene has busty Lena Paul and highly arousing Carmen Calilente vying for Steve Holmes' huge cock, poorly photographed by Mick with almost a single-camera technique. The lack of editing merely makes it seem duller than the usual 2-camera, reverse and alternate angle approach to porn.
Fetish (2014)
Unusual and rewarding girl/girl porn
Sasha Heart ups the game of her label Filly Films with this carefully thought out series of vignettes spotlighting a variety of porn fetishes. The DVD packaging calls it "Sasha Heart's Lesbian Fetish Show", while the screen title displayed is succinctly just "Fetish".
I wasn't surprised that the goofiest fetish here is that of baking muffins, with the finished product rubbed against a girl's pussy for "food-porn" and sex in the kitchen. Whether this porn staple has any relationship to real-life fetishes is something I'm sure I'll never confirm.
More obvious is a foot-fetish segment set in the "Immoral Proposal" mansion, and very effectively making photogenic use of that popular porn location's oval-paned doors and spiral staircase in the background of the sex scene. Violet Monroe and Nikkin Hearts make a fine team doing the toe-sucking, foot worship and display of lovely hose and many tattoos for the fans to ogle. Sasha returned to this kink and the same location with "Sasha Heart's Foot Fetish" a couple of years later.
Heart features herself in a torrid lesbian threesome, working with Ela Darling to ravage young & innocent Carmen Callaway. Other fetishes like ass-play and are included.
Perverted Stories 25 (2000)
Imaginative vignettes
You have to admire Jim Powers' enthusiasm as he directs some wacky scenes for this hit series, as documented in the BTS short subject included in the DVD version.
Prinicpal among these is "Terror from the Deep" starring pretty Aspen Brock who is sexually abused by a huge sea monster (looks like a squid) treating her to airtight sex with three of his vast tentacles (that each end in plastic looking dildos, a la the porn spoof "Edward Penishands". This strange adaptation of the popular outre porn genre of Japanese anime tentacles-penetration porn is a feather in Powers' cap.
Horror and fantasy dominate here, including the opener "Lady, Can You Spare a Ride?", with Kelsey Heart as a motorist who kills a homeless guy in a hit-and-run accident, only to be haunted (and humped) by him in her guilt-ridden aftermath.
"Pumpin' Stumpy" is one of Powers's successful exercises in black humor, having JJ Daniels loyal to his wife Zarina after her off-screen car accident that leaves her with no arms or legs. All the better for sex, with Powers artfully cross-cutting between closeups of the old in & out, with shots of JJ hoisting a bandaged up mannequin torso representing her amputee state.
Less successful is "Animal Abuse" in which Samantha Fox is literally treated like a dog by her "master" Rod Fontana, sharing her in a threesome with his pal Dave Hardman. It's merely an excuse for giving the fans some d.p. action, content expected in each volume of the series.
The Innocence of Youth 11 (2018)
Less distasteful than usual
This Digital Sin series specializes in substituting legal porn for kiddie porn (utilizing the loophole of role-playing to avoid the obvious fact that the female characters are meant to be underage-looking but with papers to prove they're played by 18 & up actresses), but casting Black star Cassidy Banks helps to escape criticism. Her big natural breasts don't look childish (but recall that Traci Lords road that gimmick to fool the casting folks back in the day).
Banks is matched up with the huge cock of Steve Holmes, clearly a crowd-pleasing final vignette on the DVD. The other gals are less impressive and hardly big names, reducing this to routine porn.
Another aspect here is the incest overtones, most obvious when Harmony Wonder enthuses with "I love you daddy" in her role-playing segment opposite Lucas Frost -odd casting since he is among porn's younger generation himself. This scene has the switcheroo of Frost in bondage, a departure from the series' stress on young girls as submissives.
Natural Beauties 6 (2018)
Typical "pretty" porn
In one segment here Greg Lansky aims for something slightly different than his usual pantomime sex vignettes, spotlighting Tori Black on her recent return after a reported 7-year absence from the porn wars.
Styled as a brunette imitation of Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct", she recreates the famous uncrossing the legs beaver shot, interrogated by shadowy figures, one of whom I recognized as Sean Michaels in less than a cameo appearance. Chief detective is Jean Val Jean, who she easily seduces and services.
The other scenes are perfunctory: lovely Ariana Marie seducing her boyfriend's pal, huge-cocked Euro import Chris Diamond; Bree Daniels as a blonde married to Val Jean (in a different role), busy in threesome with their cutier redhead babysitter Codey Mercury; and lastly, Abigail Mac as a body-beautiful model, seducing her photographer, yet another Euro import with a big dick, Christian Clay.
Suspiria (2018)
Misguided, pretentious horror-porn
An admirer of the classic Dario Argento film, director Luca Guadagnino, fresh off the major success of "Call Me By Your Name", elected to foolishly remake the movie, throwing out all that made the original great. No more fabulous Technicolor experiments in color, no pulsating score in the vein of Goblin, but instead a stupid decision to retain Argento and Daria Nicolodi's 3 Mothers supernatural story, the weakest element of the show.
I was a huge fan of Argento's "animal" titled thrillers Bird, Cat and Flies, and even owned a 16mm 'Scope print of Four Flies on Grey Velvet back in my movie buff days of the '70s. But I never got into his later supernatural horror shows, while admiring Suspiria for its technical brilliance.
Now remakes are problematic in the first place, and just copying or aping an original like Gus Van Sant did with "Psycho" is an exercise in futility. But I did enjoy both the original "The Initiation of Sarah" and its fine TV remake. These are traditional horror films in the same genre as "Suspiria", set in a female world.
A pornographer would have taken this remake opportunity (called porn-parody in the Adult biz) and used it perhaps for a Sweetheart Video of lesbian porn, with the top young and old actresses having romantic liaisons. "Confessions of a Sinful Nun" is a recent example from Sweetheart of this approach in a non-supernatural nunsploitation vein.
But Luca opted instead for the sadistic brand of horror porn, meat hooks and all, with plenty of gore and unpleasantness rather than erotic entertainment. His use of urination is yet another example of rejecting sex in favor of other staples of pornography (softcore division). And his casting of several of Europe's best actresses of recent decades goes for naught: Tilda Swinton quite professional in a lousy, paper-thin role; Angela Winkler solid but hardly up to her great work for German directors; Sophie Testud lost in the shuffle along with the fabulous Renee Soutendijk, and only Ingrid Caven allowed one scene of panache near the end. Bringing back Jessica Harper was a good idea, and her scene has some power.
The many dimly-lit scenes play poorly on the home screen, evidently "artistic" for theatrical runs, of which the movie was one big flop at the boxoffice. The prologue staring Chloe Grace Moretz is terrible: poorly edited, uninvolving and utterly failing to engage the viewer in the story, just a waste of time and footage.
Just when I had gained an interest in a relatively new director thanks to his sensitive gay-themed "Call Me" movie, the guy's feet of clay were revealed here -just another delusional hack.