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 Studio: VCA Excessive
Director: Joe Gallant
Cast: Phoebe Luxe, Harley Raine, Sandy Cheeks, ReVay, Mariah Lynn
Joe Gallant seems to play to his strengths in his second film for VCA, a sort of Taxi Driver knockoff in which an obsessive fan seeks to prove his existence by merging with media bad girl "Courtney Luv."
The cab driver and his friends entangle with Courtney and her entourage in various dingy neighborhoods, basements, and rooftops around New York City. It's sort of like Annie Hall if Diane Keaton had been a machine-crafted, gone to seed stripper titan.
Gallant's casts have an undeniably seedy quality. It's not just that I'm conditioned to a certain homogeneity out here, it's that Gallant's girls look a little bit used. Like they have day jobs in coffee shops or something.
There are still elements of talking too much in this film, but nowhere near the over-trying exhibited in Gallant's previous release, UltraVixens NYC. Instead, Gallant justifies his press by filming several public sex scenes with women who look distinctly non-Porn Valley.
This is refreshing. I think the New York porn look might catch on, thanks to Gallant. It must piss people off who remember New York's thriving porn scene in the late 60's and early 70's to hear the Apple's adult output reduced to a niche, but it is great to see city landscapes, the Chrysler building, and a particular NYC squalor in a porn film, as well as girls who might only merit the most debasing of scenes should they try to start a career out here.
Just as people did read the articles in Playboy (or AVN), the presence of dialogue or some attempt at a storyline in otherwise-adult material requires that material to be judged on all its elements. It's not appropriate to just say the dialogue doesn't matter because it's a porn film. The only way the dialogue wouldn't matter is if there was no dialogue.
That is why lines like this are good:
"So what's your thing?" Harley Raine asks.
"Booze, broads, and big band music."
"Awright. Wanna fuck?"
I hope Gallant starts on Pennsylvania next. Those King of Prussia girls are dirty.
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 Studio: Digital Playground
Director: Joone
Cast: Evan Stone, Jesse Jane, Carmen Luvana, Steven St. Croix, Janine, Tommy Gunn
If Pirates had been the first porn movie I ever saw, I probably would have decided that there wouldn't be much money in making fun of porn as a profession. I would have said that porn is a healthy medium that can make fun of itself just fine, and maybe get a job as a park ranger or lieutenant governor somewhere.
But the fact is that the first porn movie I ever saw was probably something like Catherine, or some mid-80's video version of it, and I always had in the back of my mind that this was an industry ripe for deflation.
Anybody who tells you they know how much Pirates cost is probably lying, but the large amount of cash spent on publicity and premieres and special effects (the latter probably causing a little buyer's remorse) seems secondary to the solid, sexy, and engaging kind of film Digital Playground creates when it puts its collective mind to it.
As Maude said in The Big Lebowski, "Sex can be a zesty experience." That is why it is huge fun watching Jesse Jane work with Carmen Luvana, and then Janine. Pirates doesn't waste the audience's time on awkward getting into position; the sex scenes switch from blowjob to cowgirl to candles in the ass seamlessly, and all the scenes smoke (sometimes literally).
Like any porn flick, there are willing suspensions of disbelief required for answering why Jesse (who, clothed, looks a little like Janice from the Muppets in this movie) and Evan Stone don't get together (Jesse said that she and Stone "fuck in every film, so this time we just didn't") or why Carmen Luvana wears her wedding ring in some scenes and doesn't in others, or why she pronounces "Caribbean" "Carabian", or why Teagan Presley wasn't just told to go home, but this was a movie that deserved its big screen showing.
Evan Stone is a solid and very hammy actor and Joone and editor "Cousin" Nick Pulgadas gave him a lot of room to just be funny. The most ballsy performance comes from St. Croix, however, who curls himself into a fetal position and shrieks when Jesse leaves him. Every pop shot at the premiere was greeted by cheers, but the only bit of dialogue that got a similar response (though there were many fun lines) was Janine's, when she commanded Tommy Gunn to "lick it."
Every now and then - but rarely - director Joone felt he needed to advance the story, something about finding one's destiny by means of pirate hunting. It was at these times that Pirates seemed a little like kids playing dress-up (as did the premiere, which resulted in the inevitable dismissal from Variety). When the movie stood on its considerable strengths - a strong cast who had worked together before, excellent editing, a fun score from SkinMusik, and a lot of light humor as well as hot girls in abundance - Pirates was the only porn movie you need to see this year.
Buy it.
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 Studio: BurningAngel.com
Director: Doug Sakkman
Cast: Joanna Angel, Tommy Pistol
Seriously: Re-Penetrator is a must for any porn consumer's dirty library.
This is the perfect short subject film to present before any of your trendy parties. Dr. Hubert Breast (Pistol) creates a zombie woman (Angel) who craves only sex. She fucks him to death, bloodily. Fake blood dries quickly so lubrication issues kept making Pistol fall out. The end.
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 Studio: Ninnworx
Director: Michael Ninn
Cast: Audrey Hollander, Nikky Blond, Valentina Velasques, Otto Bauer, Victoria Swinger
Watching Catherine is like recovering from a hangover. But some people feel they deserve hangovers.
On what appears to be the front steps of a disused public library, a dwarfess pushes a baby carriage down the stairs while a fat man in an unbuttoned tunic looks on. Audrey Hollander, dressed as a larger version of the dwarfess, later strips naked and is verbally harrassed by a man in a fancy house gown. He calls her a cunt, a pig, and a whore, and asks if she denies it. "I deny nothing," she says. For some reason, the B-roll of the same dialogue is replayed. Then she does a solo scene on the steps, then, maybe because all is forgiven, she and gown-man have sex.
I've had several months to build up an intense dislike for Catherine because all its hype made it look pretentious and boring. It didn't help that the two trailers released for it were similarly intensely sterile.
Michael Ninn does all he can to make Audrey Hollander, who is stunning to look at, unattractive: he dresses her like Queen Elizabeth I (the Virgin Queen) through half the movie and then he makes her speak the film's ridiculous and repetitive dialogue . As a bitchy suburbanite in Roy Karch's Desperate Wives, Hollander was allowed to be a lot more believable.
The film tracks back and forth between Hollander as Catherine in some bygone age populated with aforementioned dwarfesses, and Hollander in the present day, suffering from nightmares (as I will) of Catherine's vengeful ghost.
That Ninn's work is visually arresting, and that the tableaux he creates are undeniably artful and well-considered, does nothing to forgive such abandonment of substance. You might say, "Hey Gram, it's a porn movie - I'll just fast forward to the parts I can jerk off to," and you'd have a hard time finding them. Ninn has a talent for filling up empty space with redundant shots, as if PurePlay, his executive producer, demanded a movie of a certain length. So one must slog through many empty calories to get to the meat of Catherine, which is well-constructed sex scenes.
But there's a lot of people who put together well-constructed sex scenes between sexy people - is there a market for the porn version of highbrow trappings people like Ninn provide? (And yes - this, too, is a "porn version": a mainstream movie wouldn't get away with the looped transitional scenes, and a mainstream producer would have probably raised the volume on the music every time Hollander or one of her castmates spoke.)
There is no reason why Ninn, who knows how to light, could not also have remembered to tell his actors not to look at the camera during the pop shot; this is supposed to be a feature, not a gonzo production. And the Meatholes family of products does not have a monopoly on misogyny, as Hollander's characters are continually shouted at as cunts, pigs, sluts, and whores. Which I guess is fine if everybody seems to be having a good time, but No, Catherine is deadly serious.
I wanted to be pleasantly surprised by this movie, but I wasn't. It left me depressed that, not only is there a huge amount of people out there who voted for Bush, but there are people who think a porn film can only be good if it drains all the fun out of watching sex on film.
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 Studio: VCA Excessive
Director: Martin Del Toro
Cast: Austin Kincaid, Courtney Simpson, Monica Mayhem, Stephanie Trip, Shy Love, Sascha
"Hell has never been hotter," claims the boxcover of Cum Greed, and that left me to wonder about the immortal souls of the cast. Greed, after all, is one of the seven deadly sins, even if it is greed for cum.
Here's what Austin Kincaid, et al have in store for them for their cum covetousness, according to the website Deadly Sins:
"You'll be boiled alive in oil. Bear in mind that it's the finest, most luxurious boiling oil that money can buy, but it's still boiling."
The story goes like this: Kincaid is some kind of hypnotist who keeps various starlets in her thrall. They do anything she tells them to do. They are littered around her house, waiting to be woken up and pressed into service.
The first of these sex puppets is former CFO Shy Love, who is led to a double penetration which she accepts willingly. After the loving, Kincaid makes Love and her successors share the cum they have earned. I have never understood hypnotists.
The subsequent scenes increase in heat and participants. The most satisfying moments are when Kincaid wakes up her subjects, each of whom is found sprawled somewhere in the house like a prize in a video game.
Cum Greed is a good example of what a little money can buy, or at least the impression that there was a budget at all can buy. The girls are well lit, the porn house is beautiful, and director Martin Del Toro only wastes a little time coaxing the standard-issue pseudo philosophical porn dialogue out of Kincaid.
"What is darkness without light?" she asks us. "What is sharing without greed?" blah blah blah. Let's just see the zombies.
Monica Mayhem stands out as the movie's gigawatt porn star; she takes her pop shot with two spiked heels in her mouth. Rarr.
Though the box promises us someone named Sascha but the movie gives us someone named Sophia, each girl's performance is hot like fire, whatever her name is, so Cum Greed is not a work of sloth.
Labels: Austin Kincaid, Courtney Simpson, Monica Mayhem, Shy Love, Stephanie Trip
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 Studio: Lethal Hardcore
Director: Stoney Curtis
Cast: Destiny, Annie Cruz, Seana, Bailey, Julie Robbins
"My pretty little pussy stays hot just about all the time," claims Julie Robbins at the beginning of Butt Busters 2. "It's an awesome little fuckhole; almost as good as my ass. Isn't it hot?"
Come on, man! Why put me on the spot? That's like a comedian asking, "Aren't my jokes funny?"
Azz I've come to understand, the Lethal Hardcore model involves direct address to the audience and a heightened sense of drama. This is clear from backstage footage, where an actress acts like any porn chick one might meet at Koo Koo Roo. In a scene, however (and before anyone else appears in it) she's all about the nipple self-licking and the vocal fry.
A reader asks: "If someone did that to you in person, you're saying you'd kick her out?"
No, but I would ask her, gently, to get on with it. (I am no cad.)
The Lethal Hardcore line seems to suffer from a lack of understanding of the Big Picture, as evidenced last week by Tommy Gunn referring to the film he was in by the wrong title. This week, Annie Cruz (wearing starry black boots and a belly chain - classy)waited for her butt busting to begin when her scene partner said, "Here comes the Ass Buster."
He might have meant, "Here comes the ass, Buster," where he referred to himself as Buster, finding it necessary to carry on an interior monologue, but I don't think so.
"The ass is so much pleasurable," says full-figured Bailey later. Bailey has long streaks in her hair, and I found myself glad that she hadn't been appropriated by Sausalito Wiccans instead of porn. She could have gone either way. She looks like the hot girl at the Ren Faire.
I guess the big news of this movie is that it is Destiny's first on-screen anal scene. This was my favorite scene because, in general, Destiny was non-commital to the standard dialogue. The final scene was the Finn Seana (Sanna?), who also didn't have the standard rap down, for which I am grateful.
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 Studio: Digital Playground
Director: Robby D.
Cast: Tera Patrick, Rocki Roads, Nikki Benz, Kellie Tyler, Melanie Jagger, Sandra Romain, Randi Wright
Watching archival footage of current and former pornstars, which is what the Tera Patrick and Rocki Roads segments of Jack's Playground 25 consists of, makes me feel like I have stumbled into a temporal anomaly. They might still be young and pliant, but I can't shake the feeling, since both their scenes (Tera's in Budapest, Rocki's in a barn) are a few years old, that both actresses are actually wizened crones somewhere. You know, like Helen Mirren in Excalibur.
Causing further distress is the sight of Nikki Benz in a string bikini doing the Lucite-heeled Porn Walk (camera at ass level as it tracks her up the stairs). Benz looks like she is about to fly into bits, as five separate parts of her anatomy move in opposite directions.
It is hard to make sense of Jack's Playground, since scenes not shot for the series were mixed in with scenes that were, and still other scenes seemed like they might not have made the cut for yet a third movie.
I don't know - that might be part of the charm.
There is also a casual mean-spiritedness that betrays old Digital Playground feuds. Again, this might seem appealing to insiders, but what purpose is served in calling Melanie Jagger a pig? That editor/MC Cousin Nick P. needed to intrude as much as he did underlined the the lack of worthwhile action.
It is fun seeing Tera in her pre-boob-job days (appearing with, the caption needlessly points out, "a couple of Euro fags") and the Rocki Roads scene, looking a lot like an old Anna Nicole Smith Playboy video pictorial, is a nice piece of history (and ass - I forgot to mention a nice piece of ass).
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Studio: VCA Excessive
