One would be wrong, but it would be reasonable to assume that after a long day in the porn mines, my main squeeze and I would ride Go Karts or drink Merlot or something. Fools! Tonight we watched Digital Playground's Control and Chatsworth Pictures' Donkey Punch.

I don't usually do compare-and-contrasts (not since seventh grade, anyway), but these two had things in common that I didn't expect.

Studio: Digital Playground
Director: Robby D.
Cast: Lanny Barby, Rita Faltoyano, Keri Sable, Jade Hsu

The idea of Lanny Barby in a bodybag intrigued us, so Control was first on the menu. Director Robby D.'s high-end gonzo project opens big, with the future Vivid girl pulled from the trunk of a car in a clear plastic bag. What follows is two discs of very pretty scenes with actresses as diverse as future Wicked girl Keri Sable (now out of the industry) and Rita Faltoyano, who gives a blowjob through a cage.

Strange, though, that the makeup never ran.

Aside from a bonus scene with a (chemically-altered/really smart - we couldn't agree) Jade Hsu, Control seemed like a movie for tourists, like a Club Med on the edge of a dangerous place.



Studio: Chatsworth Pictures
Director: Cram and Grip Johnson
Cast: Deja Daire, Rachel Luv, Haley Scott

Donkey Punch, on the other hand, wasn't pretty. (A donkey punch is when a fist is administered to the back of one's partner's head at the moment of ejaculation. Well, that's the classic donkey punch, anyway) It was harsh and crude and hilarious.

People like Deja Daire were treated most cruelly. Others, like Rachel Luv, looked like the Six Flags ride they were strapped into was violently disagreeing with them. There were tears that interfered with the mascara, and threats to donkey punch in retaliation.

The difference between the two movies was more than cosmetics. Both approached the dark side from different angles, like competing prom dates. Control dressed it up but Donkey Punch took it out. How close you want to get will determine which movie you pick.

Studio: Vivid
Director: Paul Thomas
Cast: Tera Patrick, Monique Alexander, Shy Love, Syvette Wimberley, Spyder Jonez, Tommy Gunn

As everyone knows, Los Angeles is all seedy underbelly, all the time. Tera Patrick, as a naive dreamer, and Spyder Jonez (aka her husband Evan Seinfeld), as the violent object of her inexplicable affection, find some kind of love through the squalor of prostitution and other vices in Desperate.

Spyder Jonez' character, Spyder, is a scared little boy. Even when Tera Patrick lays all her best moves on him, he tells her to fuck off, and to get the fuck away, and to go back to fucking Kansas, bitch. Yet she pursues him, follows him back to the warehouse he shares with his badass robbery buddies and a couple of gun molls. When will Tera ever learn?

Spyder and his business associate, Tommy Gunn, use molls Shy Love and Syvette Wimberley to maneuver rich men into vulnerable positions. Then Jonez and Gunn break up the action dressed as police officers. I do this all the time.

Why Tera is attracted to Spyder, why her love for him persists despite his never saying a kind word to her - even as she descends into prostitution - is a mystery. The key, I feel, is the tremendous guilt writer/director Paul Thomas must still feel for denying Ted Neeley all those years ago.

The collapse of Spyder and Tommy's near-foolproof scheme is not Tera's doing, but a twist ending probably would have justified her slavish devotion to him. Instead, the message of "Desperate" is that the worse one treats his girlfriend, the more she loves him.

Fans of Tera, Shy Love, and Monique Alexander will get an eyeful (as does Tera) and Tommy Gunn, who has been in every other porn movie released in the oast two years, is all Method as Spyder's right hand man.