Change Your Image
lor_
Served as Chairman, New York Film Critics Circle: 1993/94.
Favorite interviews were with: Michael Douglas, Sophia Loren, DeForest Kelley, Joan Chen, Joe Henderson, Ismail Merchant, Klaus Kinski, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Spike Lee, Malcolm McDowell, Zoe Lund, Melvin Van Peebles, Ultra Violet, Wolfgang Petersen, Claudia Cardinale, Serge Silberman, Margarethe von Trotta, Alec Guinness, Leonard Nimoy, Susan George, Joseph Losey, Gale Anne Hurd, Dennis Hopper, Peter Greenaway, Katt Shea, Ken Russell, Maggie Greenwald, Jim Jarmusch, Peter Brook, Jurgen Prochnow, Andy Warhol, Judy Davis, Chuck Vincent, Fred Zinnemann, Wim Wenders, Max Von Sydow, Michael Moore, Terry Gilliam, Rita Jenrette, Karen Lynn Gorney, Bruce Beresford, Jack Thompson, Russ Meyer, Sam Raimi, Abel Ferrara, John Sayles, William Greaves, Nino Manfredi, Lee Van Cleef, Michael Cuscuna, Bille August, Jewel Shepard, Andy Sidaris, Michel Deville, Claude Sautet, Claude Lelouch, Alfonso Arau, Alan Parker, Reinhard Hauff, Traci Lords, Jim Jarmusch, Martha Coolidge, Candida Royalle, Giuseppe Tornatore, Edward James Olmos, Paul Hogan, John Mackenzie, Peter Hyams, Jennifer Beals,, Adrian Lyne, Samuel Fuller, Dario Argento, James Toback, Lasse Hallstrom, Fred Williamson, Gabriel Axel, Joe Bastianich, Aaron Sanchez, Danny Meyer, Steve Hanson, Matthew Kenney, Douglas Rodriguez, Simon Oren, Stanley Donen, Lindsay Anderson, Helena Bonham Carter, Edward Pressman, Harold Becker, Larry Cohen, James Ivory, Jack O'Connell, Michael Phillips, Kevin McClory, Jackie Mason, Joan O'Brien, Stanley Donen, Joseph B. Vasquez, Don Bluth, William Lustig, Al Goldstein, Simon Wincer, Valeria Cavalli, Dave Fishelson, Lizzie Borden, Roberta Findlay, Rob Cohen, Doris Wishman, Robert Tapert, Bruce Campbell, Bill Cosby, Pasquale Squitieri, Menahem Golan, Yoram Globus, Tim Kincaid, Joel M. Reed, Gregory Dark, T.L. Lankford, Fred Olen Ray, Victoria Paige Meyerink, Lawrence D. Foldes, Rick Marx & Ted V. Mikels
Reviews
Doin' the Rounds (1995)
Mindless "sex with nurses"
The dialogue is improvised, with emphasis on dumb double entendres in this low-grade VHS offering. Holly Body is in the cast, but instead of being starred is merely wasteless in a filler scene with male lead Alex Sanders.
Jordan Lee would be the central character if characterizations were included. Instead, anal sex is the drawing card, plus tons of footage devoted to lesbian action. No surprise here - no credit is listed for screenplay -probably because there is no story developed.
Kyle Stone is shown working out with weights, involved with physical therapy. He tells nurse Autumn Daye that he's still a bit stiff. Get it?
L.A. Rear (1992)
Porn in the form of an infomercial
The title is a play on L. A. Gear, and the video is about as crummy as VHS can get. Voice-overs and cast constantly rhapsodize about the fabulous clothing line, not about shoes. In real life, I was surprised to discover that when this porno was shot, the L. A. Gear brand suddenly lost its lustre and its founder left the company to go create Skechers.
Anal sex is the point of this worthless junker and a rather low-grade cast goes through mechanical motions. The extensive end credits have ridiculously phony names and most of them are for nonexistent functions like Period Consultant or Animal Trainer.
Beverly Hills Sex Party (1993)
Party time
Dyanna Lauren hosts a sex party for some bigwigs, and that's the entire movie. Director Thomas Paine usually has a story to tell, but he's content with all-sex for this one.
Peter North plays a senator and does his thing in a threesome with Isis Nile and Veronica Sage. Lauren is strictly lesbo at this point in her career, and takes a huge strap-on to peite Cumisha Amado, after the boys shave Amado's pussy.
Cal Jammer services his then-wife Jill Kelly, who is billed on-screen as Calista Jammer. Briefly filling the screen is Angel Bust, assigned to f*ck Tony Martino.
It's an uneventful movie, with the ending simply being Dyanna saying goodbye to her male guests -all in a day's work.
Passion Canvas (2024)
Euro porn for Wicked
The end credits confirm a "whatever happened to?" aspect to this unheralded new Wicked Pictures release. The final segment stars Erik Everhard and had me wondering about him -apparently for the past decade he's been a busy expatriate living in Europe and cranking out plenty of porn for Rocco Siffredi and others there, including this new Wicked release.
It's simply four romantic (but all-sex) vignettes loosely strung together with a bit of voice-over, tied to artists and models. The real unifying theme is natural beauties, with all four Euro femmes not big names but quite familiar from many appearances on video. They are all slim, fit and flat-chested, quite unusual for contemporary porn, especially given that none of them are underage looking jail-bait types. The English-language dialogue is somewhat awkward but not relevant.
The end credits are illuminating: Sophie Dee is a key crew member. She does not appear on screen, even in a cameo role, and her full figure would certainly clash with the leading ladies' look. As a Wicked Pictures fan, I have seen much Euro content from the label over the years, especially when Prague became an international porn center decades ago, so there is a bit of nostalgia here.
One oddity/novelty: Veronica Leal's scene ends with a creampie, and there's the usual shot of cum (fake or otherwise) dripping out afterward as porn's "proof of purchase" moment. But then she squirts and a couple of streams of fluid come out, not cum or some mayonnaise-look substitute but perhaps urine. In European porn, especially from Germany, urination is a staple fetish, so I wonder what's going on here.
Transfixed: Quitter-In-Law (2024)
An unusual situation
"Quitter-in-Law" is among the better Transfixed porn dramas, as stars Lauren Phillips and Eva Maxim manage to create interesting, believable characters prior to the inevitable gonzo sex taking over for the rest of the show.
Eva is working for businesswoman Lauren, and is also her daughter-in-law. She tells Lauren that she must quti, not due to the stress of the job but because she has a serious crush on her boss (Lauren!) and doesn't want to disrupt her marriage to Lauren's daughter.
Phillips is surprised at this revelation, but has one of her own, she, too, is in love with Maxim! The fact that Eva is a transsexual and it is a trans-lesbian marriage adds to the unusual nature of this story line. Both actresses do a fine job at both acting and sexual performance, highlighte by Eva's copios cum shot (not very often present in this series) that climaxes the episode.
A Taste of Kunst Vol. 2 (2022)
Insipid
The conclusion of "A Taste of Kunst" (note: kunst is German for "art") ends with a bang, in the sexual sense, but the story and its pretensions are a total bust. This almost defines yet another new genre: Dilettante Porn, as the movie's aspirations are unfulfilled.
What happens in this final 50 minutes (including credits) is one artist Fabien, the introvert, deciding that nudism is the answer to open up to the world. His fellow artists join him in this rather silly solution, except for Skye Blue as Candy, who is frustrated with the whole "artistic contest". Fabien, who didn't have much to do or have any sex at all in the hour-long Part One does get to hump lovely co-star Ariana van X.
The month of preparing for the big competiton is over and the whole movie premise turns out to be a shaggy-dog story: Penelope who is in charge of the late Petra Fasstender's estate phones in from parts unknown (she uses blue-screens to pretend to be in Frisco and many other places including Outer Space) to tell them she's left to enjoy spending Petra's money and there is no prize or jury to decide who's art is the best.
Left with nothing but a wasted month in the country, Skye decides to put on her performance art, which is a nude solo with pastel and laser lighting FX. The others join in and the movie ends with a group-sex orgy and a couple of money shots. Not exactly the tribute to "art for art's sake" that was intended -no, it plays just like a million other gonzo sex videos.
Attempts at humor and pithy philosophical statements all fall flat.
The Listener (2022)
Creative eroticism
Not altogether successful, "The Listener" represents a valiant effort to return Adult Cinema to telling stories that can draw the viewer into interesting stories and erotic situations instead of just doling out explicit sex and nothing more. Director Lidia Ravviso's combination of a suspenseful character study with a whodunit murder mystery weaves a hypnotic spell, marred only by the weak ending.
Maisy Taylor gives an understated, definitely mainstream performance as the central character, a woman who is highly sensitive to sounds of sex in the apartment building she's moved into. We see events largely through her eyes (and especially ears), and the quirky characters who are her neighbors provide ample material for explicit sex woven into the narrative.
Midway through the movie a woman is murdered and the apartment dwellers become suspects, with Romeo the unusual detective investigating. Movie's sexual climax is Maisy's erotic fantasy of having sex with Romeo, and the actual solution of the murder mystery is definitely an anti-climax.
I was greatly impressed by the attention to detail here in both photography and editing, most unusual for a porn movie, and evidence of the effectiveness of integrating the target audience's prurient interest with a package that stimulates more traditional "entertain me" interests as well.
A Taste of Kunst Vol. 1 (2022)
Artsy, and fartsy
This two-parter from Erika Lust Films is about what you'd expect - a mediocre "indie feature" heavy on the explicit sex and with a lousy, pretentious screenplay. Having the sexy bonafide porn star Skye Blue in a leading role is its main value.
Attractive locations aren't enough to bring a static, stilted story to life. It's one of the corniest plot hooks around: a group of strangers brought to a masion for not the reading of the will, but almost. It seems that a great art patron and philanthropist, Petra Fasstender, has hit the bucket and has sent for four young artists to spend a month holed up at the mansion, each creating a work of art, with the best one to be buried with Petra in her mausoleum and its creator inheriting all her wealth. NOTE: Petra is meant as an in-joke to Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1972 classic lesbian camp film "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant", one of my favorites of his movies.
Skye is an erotic performance artist who has lost her groove, and is on the wagon, making her a party pooper. The others are a boring lot: a femme video game designer, a Black sculptor, and an introverted painter. Other than being cast to deliver lengthy sex scenes, they're a dull lot.
The untalented filmmakers throw in some brief and pointless philosophizing, but the sex dominates. The show is arbitrarily divided into two relatively short parts, with this first one quite dull.
Idole (2024)
Quality show biz story
Clara Mia is cast as an actress on the verge of stardom in Liselle Bailey's "Idol", a warm and insightful romantic drama made in London for the French label Marc Dorcel.
She has a big sci-fi movie titled E-Dream about to be released, but auditions for and gets the lead in a play in London, against the best advice of her sexy agent back in Hollywood, Anissa Kate. Fortunately for the fans, Bailey gives us a strong threesome for Kate with a couple of young studs
The movie dwells on sexual couplings among the theater actors and folks working in a nearby pub, with Clara fitting in nicely. Though infidelity is involved, everyone seem to get along well together and the movie end on a happy note.
Thr3e vol.3 (2024)
Plenty of hedonism
Franck Vicomte directed this Dorcel video featuring six segments, each one a romantic, hedonistic threesome. There is no real story, but a bevy of new beauties decked out constantly in the trademark lovely lingerie that is so strongly identified with the French label.
Dialogue is spoken in English but is a minimal feature here, everyone is anxious to have sex and there is zero dramatics involved. In one scene, Brad Knight's wife excuses herself -she has an appointment, leaving the other three cocktail party folks to do -what else? -have a threesome. Sounds contrived, but a series named "Thr3e" (apologies to David Fincher, auteur of "Se7en") demands a 3-way each and every time.
I especially enjoyed staring at buxom Amalia Davis putting on her underwear and then having sex with great skill. The ability of these Euro performers to always retain a touch (and a lot more than that) of class no matter what sex work they're performing is amazing!
Bad Lesbian 19 (2024)
Not bad, really
The series has gone soft lately, not the sex but in terms of severity of criminality. Instead of crazy or frightening bad girls, now they're just mildly off, undramatic.
Two newomers play roommates in the opening vignette. Addison Vodka has been caught cheating on a test, and her roomie Explicit Kait sympathizes. She even suggests a scheme to blackmail the professor in order to cover up the misdeed and keep Addison from getting expelled. The girls end up in the sack together, no surprise. Oddest element here is the actresses' choces of goofy stage names.
Highlight of the video is the pairing of two popular stars in an Odd Couple segment. Sophia Locke plays the lazy, sloppy girl while Jennifer White is the go-getter, always criticizing her lover. She thretenss a break-up, but Sophia wins her back with, what else, sex. This is one hot scene.
Back to newcomers, Sage Hunter plays a food delivery girl (yes, an update on the Pizza Guy cliche) who presents a bit of a mystery. She's originally from Thornhill and vaguely familiar to customer Lucky Anne, and Lucky finally figures out that Sage was a schoolmate of her older sister, but got in trouble and was away in prison before returning to her hometown, the Girlfriends Films location. Their mutual attraction leads to, wait for it, the bed.
Finale concerns two lovely young teachers Bree Brooks and Harley Haze. Who gossip about other teachers, one of whom got rich posting on OnlyFans, but lost her job. They decide that making money is more their thing than cheating, and start shooting content together. Two weeks later they celebrate instant success online by having real sex together, in a scene notable for their wearing matching red lingerie.
Les orgasmes de ma femme (2024)
All-American, glamorous all-sex from Dorcel
Ricky Greenwood delivers three full hours of gonzo sex for the Dorcel label, with fans given a brand-new opening sequence to watch, the first change in over a decade.
A very impressive Chatsworth superstar lineup delivers the goods, with the gals fitted out in sexy lingerie (a must) and the studs furnished with condoms (Dorcel being the last major holdout promoting safe sex with on-screen adherence to same).
There is zero dialogue in the live-action, with a minimal story presented via the girls text messaging each other -the texts displayed on screen and voiced-over by name talent like Kenna James, Lulu Chu, Lily Bell and Kira Noir. There are even a few NonSex players credited, notably Katrina Colt and Charlotte Sins.
The quality of the sex action is there, though it tends to be impersonal given the absence of charcterizations. Kenna delivers double penetration action but somehow manages to maintain her classy persona, while the teaming up of Lulu Chu and Kimmy Kimm is a treat, as the petite actresses both deal the best they can with Alex Jones' long cock. An all-Black threesome teams Kira Noir with even bigger dicks: Hollywood Cash and Isiah Maxwell.
The theme is "poly-dating", an invented term spinning off from polyamory, and the vignettes are flashbacks from the cast having been to a "Play Party". It's all about as ephemeral as the phenomenon of Speed Dating is in a mainstream, non-porn context.
Deep Inside Jennifer White (2023)
Jennifer -si!, gonzo -no
Jennifer White is among my favorite Adult Cinema actresses -I've been a fan since 2010. A rite of passage for the top performers is oddly tagged as a "showcase" - a video where the artiste is the center of attention. This all-sexer from Jonni Darkko (not one of his best efforts) puts Jennifer through the ringer with 16 Black studs is sheer gonzo, merely proving that she is capable of "doing anything", that includes mainstream sex, not kink.
The racism is tough to watch -once upon a time (the 1970s/1980s) porn starlets were categorized whether they would do scenes with Black men or refuse, and the latter group would be shamed as racist. Of course, it is the pornographers who are racist, reflecting the general USA society and their audience.
Eventually this flipped, noticeably with the success of specialty labels like West Coast Productions, where Black performers, women and men, were emphasized along with interracial sex scenes. (NOTE: "Interracial" as a content category generally means white girl/black stud, with the scenes of Black women with white men presented but not marketed per se). The racism continued, as evidenced with later success of Greg Lansky's rather overt hit "Blacked", which had non-Black actresses paired with Black studs, a fig leaf provided by rather brief "story set-ups" in which the Black stud (like Mandingo or Julio Gomez with the biggest dicks) would be cast as the sex symbol, and the girl would be the beauty attracted to him and his dick.
Jennifer is fetching dancing around briefly to introduce each lengthy vignette, in colorful lingerie (orange, pink, etc.) and then going gonzo -talking dirty and subjecting herself to grueling, hardly edited non-stop sex.
Opener has Brickzilla working her over for half an hour and no rest for the wicked. It's anal sex time, tediously performed by Brick while Jenn is a good sport, earning her keep, with respites of fellatio included. Fans will note he has sex like Ron Jeremy used to do back in the day: holding his own cock and "forcing" it into her posterior rather than "no hands". It ends up with him apparently unable to deliver a cum shot. Instead it's good old let's pretend, as Jenn pretends that he came in her mouth, as she dribbles out saliva down to her chest.
The three interminable scenes that follow constitute a blow-bang, a foursome in which various double penetrations and "airtight" porn are delivered and finally a gang-bang. The guys grunt or mutter gibberish while Jenn gamely keeps up a positive, cheerful personality, even when the "pseudo-humiliation" of cum dribbled all over her face is delivered -with an obvious emphasis on "cum in the eye" action, no longer a no-no.
Darkko is capable of more glamorous porn, though certainly he has zero interest in storytelling. The camerawork and editing here, neither of which gets a screen credit, are perfunctory.
Momma's Boy (1985)
Well-produced incest saga
Kim Christy specialized in making kinky films in the VHS era, specializing in pioneering transsexual features. This movie features a transsexual star Shannon, but she's a post-op beauty here, appearing only in a lesbian scene with the show's leading lady Tantala Ray. Main subject is incest, saved for the final reel.
Tantala is the madam of an exclusive brothel, in a flamboyant, excellent performance. The sex scenes are well-staged with attractive costuming and a lavish setting.
The XXX activities build to a flashback finale that reveals how Tantala's son Jerry Butler was traumatized (by her seducing him when he was young), leaving him deaf and dumb -a psychosomatic condition. But director Christy can't resist a dumb joke at the very end, ruining the final sequence. Ridiculous.
Danger Man: The Girl Who Liked G.I.'s (1961)
Lovely Anna Gaylor
An okay espionage drama set in Munich, the story is rather uneventful as Pat poses as an American soldier to get the goods on blonde beauty Anna Gaylor, after a soldier she dates is killed by a pair of bad guys. Their light romance is entertaining before Pat reveals his true identity and interrogates her en route to solving the mystery..It's also an excuse to show some nice second unit footage of tourist attractions in Munich.
As usual, the story is wrapped up concisely in breakneck speed in the last couple of minutes of the show, leading to a rather sombre ending. I liked seeing French starlet Gaylor, who had a very lengthy career without ever achieving stardom, and did a fine job co-starring in her husband Alain Jessua's classic 1964 movie "Life Upside Down".
Witchfinder General (1968)
Hard-hitting horror
One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Michael Reeves; Executive Producers: Samuel Arkoff, James Nicholson and Tony Tenser; Produced by Louis Heyward, Arnold Miller and Philip Waddilove for Tigon British Film Productions; Reitled "The Conqueror Worm" for American release by American-International Pictures. Screenplay by Tom Baker and Michael Reeves; Photography by John Coquillon; Edited by Howard Lanning; Music by Paul Ferris; Starring: Vincent Price, Ian Ogilvy, Hilary Dwyer, Robert Russell, Rupert Davies, Patrick Wymark, Wilfrid Brambell and Nicky Henson.
After retitling, the film only nominally fits into the firm's Poe series -instead it is a highly atmospheric horror film dealing with bigoted, politically psychopathic witch hunting led by evil Vincent Price. Classic direction and photography plus powerful Ogilvy and Dwyer performances overcome the film's sadistic exploitation quotient.
A Cold Night's Death (1973)
Cheapo TV horror
One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Jerrold Freedman; Produced by Paul Junger Witt for Spelling-Goldberg Productions and 20th Century-Fox Television; Telecast by ABC. Screenplay by Christopher Knopf; Photography by Leonard South; Edited by Dave Berlatsky; Music by Gil Melle. Starring: Robert Culp, Eli Wallach and Michael Gwynne.
Cheapo small-scale science fiction/terror TV movie, ripping off the atmospherics of "The Thing", as our intrepid Arctic experimental scientists duo discover that while they're monkeying around with monkeys, someone's toying with them.
Four Star Playhouse: A Place Full of Strangers (1955)
Next stop: Willoughby
A disarming, and disconcerting fantasy story has a strong performance by Dick Powell as a harried, irascible business executive who can't get along with anybody. After establishing his abhorrent personaltiy, writer Wilard Wiener moves wonderflly into paranoid fantasy territory, aided by atmospheric direction by Roy Kellino and photography by ace film noir cameraman George Diskant.
What floored me is how similar, in the set-up basic premises of the story (overworked guy anxious to get away from it all dadreaming into fantasy utopia/dystopia by bus or train), it comes close to plagiarism by Rod Serling five years later with his classic "A Stop at Willoughby". I can't help but speculate that Rod was heavily influenced by Wiener's work here, taking it to a different conclusion. Both TV segments are classic, with Wiener's unfortunately forgotten.
Crescendo (1970)
Tight thriller
One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Alan Gibson; Produced by Michael Carreras for Hammer Films; Released in America by Warner Brothers. Screenplay by Jimmy Sangster and Alfred Shaughnessy; Photography by Paul Beeson; Edited by Chris Barnes; Music by Malcolm Williamson. Starring: Stefanie Powers, James Olson, Jane Lapotaire, Margaretta Scott and Joss Ackland.
Tight little, well-constructed old-fashioned "psycho" horror thriller, with Stefanie in an ultra-short white nightgown. Depicts interesting and ominous possessive/sexual relationships among the characters and features fine soft-focus, slow-motion nightmares, plus brief exploitation of Olson's paralyzed legs a la Tod Browning's "Freaks".
Route 66: City of Wheels (1962)
Hi-ho, Steverino!
Writer Frank Chase treads a thin line between drama and sentimentality in this rather romantic "problem" feature set at a VA hospital in Long Beach.
Main conflict is between Maharis and a Korean War vet with a chip on his shoulder, very subtly played by Steven Hill. Story doesn't wallow in the obvious sympathy for the wheelchair-bound patients getting rehab with M & M working as swimming pool lifeguard and A/V helper at the hospital, but instead centers on M & M romancing two nurses, well-cast with top-notch character actresses Bethel Leslie and Jacqueline Scott.
Several notable elements include a terrific underwater photography scene of Maharis saving Hill from drowning when Steven attempts suicide, and a terrific directorial touch by Elliot "Cat Ballou" Silverstein for the final brief pantomime scene in extreme long shot for Bethel & Steven's reconciliation.
I was struck how much Steven looked here like almost a composite of John Cassavetes and Peter Falk, who later became such significant screen buddies. I was introduced to Hill's work back when "Mission: Impossible" debuted on TV and he later was featured in Cassavetes' movie "A Child Is Waiting".
Climax!: Trail of Terror (1957)
Preston is solid in gimmicky thriller
Shock effects and horror movie tropes dominate this Climax! Episode. Fortunately, Robert Preston is so authoritative and strong in his role as a police detective tracking down a mad killer that the show overcomes these hokey weaknesses,
Porphyria is exploited as the central plot element, a hereditary disease that has a father from Brazil out for revenge against a doctor he thinks is responsible for his daughter's death. Diana Lynn is the doctor's wife, who is so shocked by her husband's murder that she becomes obsessed with revenge herself.
Lynn has a field day of displaying multiple personalities over the course of the hour, ultimately winning in a moral crisis, aided by straight-arrow Preston. The dramatics here are hyper, and overall it becomes clear that this Live TV series is built around ampng up everything to a fever pitch, including violence not usually tolerated on television by the censors.
Naked City: Make-Believe Man (1961)
B-movie hokum
Another lousy screenplay that hardly belongs to a "Naked City" story is filled with absurd B-movie cliches, leading to a ridiculous climax about as believable as a 3-dollar bill. I couldn't believe the final plot twist for a second.
Chester Morris and Nehemiah Persoff head a nearly all-male cast in a story of a revolution plotted in NYC by survivors of a 25-year-old revolution that took place in a South American country. They're planning another revolution on the July 29th anniversary, and have found a bum (Morris) on the Bowery they're going to pass off as a Colonel to fool everyone. Persoff is the brains behind the scheme.
I enjoyed watching evil Persoff in action, a truly cold-blooded villain, while Morris nostalgically conjures up so many B movies that he had starred in many years back. Our series detectives are putting together the pieces (too conveniently presented as obvious clues) to uncover this plot, but the finale of an army of bums going up against the revolutionaries in a warehouse shootout is a joke. Killing off the principal characters makes for a rushed, maudlin ending.
Blame goes on the shoulders of hack TV writers Sy Salkowitz and Jerry Devine who foisted this junk on unsuspecting fans.
Rough Draft (1986)
An amoral exercise
Not easily categorized, Fred Lincoln's "Rough-Draft" is lightly comical, a throwaway story of folks having sex without hang-ups.
It stars an unfamiliar leading man, Jason Brooks, who is billed here as just Jacko. He's concentrating on writing a Western novel, and while taking time out to have sex, is so fixated that he pays no attention to all the sex going on around him. That's the source of intended humor, almost farcical, but the movie just sort of lies there, lie the cast.
Sharon Mitchell plays Jason's wife, and she's playing around, too, having an affair with Randy West. Randy plays a character who seems slow-witted -no matter what's happening, all he really wants to do is play some co-ed softball. Again, this gimmick doesn't work.
By the end of the movie, Lincoln has packed in lots of sex but almost randomly. Final shot has Sharon, playing one of the more level-headed characters, turning to the camera and asking us (while an orgy is ongoing all around her): "Yo! Anybody want to play some baseball?".
The Western Visuals 1989 reissue titled "Bedtime Stories" is likely identical, but I haven't seen that version.
Thunderstorm (1986)
Oversexed teacher
A somewhat odd NYC porn feature from the good old days, "Thunder Storm" opens with sex during the title event, and then meanders into a portrait of the sex life of a hyperactive teacher. She may look plain, but she's the Georgina Spelvin of her neighborhood.
In the central role, Charlie Latour certainly doesn't look like a porn actress, and perhaps her lack of obvious beauty accounts for her relative obscurity. She has sex with her fellow teacher Jeanna Fine (by contrast one of porn's great superstars) and takes up with swinger couple Nina Preta and David Morris. Main plot twist is a bit too cute: she ends up having sex with a well-hung student (Bucko) she's tutoring, who turns out to be Preta's son.
Love Is in Your Future (2024)
Slow-paced, ultra-cool sexiness
This trio of vignettes from Gamma Entertainment's "ASMR Fantasy" series remind me of those ubiquitous fetish videos -generally soft porn from the VHS era. Instead of damsels in distress, carefully all tied up and wriggling around, moaning as they squirm in an effort to escape their bonds, here we have static camera depiction of sexy beauties in which sound is the dominant contrast, more so than the visuals.
The content is XXX, hardcore porn, yet it is the sound (which by definition is not pornographic) that matters most. Analogous to a foot-fetish porn scene, this content is extremely boring and lifeless if you're not into the fetish.
Best of the three scenes is driven by the fine acting of Ariel Demure, emerging as one of the most talented actresses of the burgeoning TS porn genre. She plays a dark, mysterious spiritualist, not specifically a gypsy fortune teller but suggesting that type of perona. Her silent client Vanessa Vega is an audience stand-in, barely visible until about 20 minutes into the lengthy scene, when sex takes over.
Just as pioneering 3-D features (in the early 1950s) were filled with gimmicks to spotlight the depth effect, here we have Ariel drumming her long fingernails on the table, blowing out matches, breathing heavily and even speaking in order to drive home the amplified sound. Sounds of sex including smoothing, fingering, tribbing, and moaning also.
Lizzie Love directed and stars in a half-hour solo turn, initially intriguing but overstaying its welcome. (The internet is filled with similar material, running optimally about 1/3 this length.)
This is traditional erotic ASMR -whispering with crystal-clear amplification to hold the audience. She establishes intimacy with the viewer, trying on outfits for a date and then enthusiastically masturbating. Lizzie sells the scene well, but enough is too much.
Finale is in its way influenced by the perfectionism one associates with Stanley Kubrick, a master of bearing down and holding the viewer's attention so skillfully. Serene Siren stars as a lab technician on a white-on-white set tinkering with the newest model of a femme sexbot, testing it prior to readiness for being put on the market. The static POV camera has become familiar (in a more distorted wide angle way) in so-called Virtual Reality porn, but here it is the sound that is amplified.
Fine casting of the bot has flat-chested beauty Christy Love doing an impressive job of remaining absolutely motionless as a nude corpse-like figure for the first half of the vignette, as Siren performs simple tests. As an in-joke, she pours a decanter of water into the bot's off-screen mouth to prime it, reminding me of the set-up of a modern mini humidifier or air conditioner, which will spray mist in the air when turned on.
In this case, the turned on bot makes love to Siren, who has removed her lab coat and clothing (including high heels) for the XXX second half of the segment, and lustily drinks in Christy's famous squirting fountains of water, aimed at the camera but mostly directly into Serene's mouth. It's a rather uneventful lesbian scene, with a very minor, unnecessarily negative final twist added.