Studio: Sex Z Pictures
Director: Kurt Lockwood
Cast: Lockwood, Samantha Ryan, Monica Mayhem, Eve Mayfair, Alektra Blue, Venus, Naudia Nyce, Eve Lawrence, Charlie Lane, Alexis Amore, Ron Jeremy

Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot

Interviewer: Back in the 80's there was a big movement in music.

Kurt Lockwood: Yeah.

Interviewer: Now there's a big movement in porn. How do you compare the two?

Kurt Lockwood: I came out to be a rock star. Didn't quite make it. But porn is a good consolation prize. I still get a lot of pussy.

Let's say Oskar Schindler himself took over for Liam Neeson in "Schindler's List", and also directed the movie. That is what "The Decline of Western Civilization Part 69: The Porno Years" is like: a great movie about a fascinating subject (Lockwood), except that this viewer couuldn't shake the uncomfortable knowledge that Lockwood made the movie about himself.

If this movie were a documentary about Lockwood and his exploits commissioned by someone else (like the BBC), or even if it was revealed that Lockwood had paid someone to make a documentary about him, the uncomfortable feeling would go away. As it is, the thrilling feeling that we are watching what Lockwood wants us to know about him pervades the movie.

For example, in the beginning of the film we are treated to a music video of Lockwood's song "Strip". Lyrics are included so the viewer can sing along.

She razzle dazzle
She rock 'n' roller
She superhero
She holy roller

It is, unfortunately, clear why Lockwood did not make it as a rock star. That he is fantastic in his consolation prize should be the theme of this movie. Instead, interstitial shots of sex as only a person who has a lot of it can conceive (with women one wants to have sex with again and again), are mixed with just the type of tiresome noodling one expects from the cute guy who thinks it would be a good idea to get a band together.

We watch Monica Mayhem fuck Samantha Ryan with a strap-on while Lockwood, getting his ass eaten by Ryan, jerks off on her stomach.

Who needs the rock music?

The movie is, like the Penelope Spheeris movies it seeks to emulate, all over the place. The high points are the sex and the interview segments, the former no-nonsense, fast, and visually arresting and the latter frank, informative, and competently edited and shot. Attempts at humor by people playing characters ("Reverend Brimstone") fail.

But the simple truths revealed in the movie (Eve Lawrence - who has since left the adult business - : "I'm cute and I'm smart and I make a shitload of money") or Lockwood's observation that it's not the porn stars who are buying porn movies - it's all of us - really make this porn movie into an effective document.

"In the future, there will be no difference between mainstream celebrities and porn stars," Lockwood says after the big orgy at the Roosevelt Hotel, an orgy that in itself should be a How To Have an Orgy movie.

Of course the statement isn't true. As close the worlds of porn and mainstream come to each other, one will never be confused with the other, only compared when it is convenient, like an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. Lockwood really wants to believe otherwise.

Labels: "SexZ", dvd, reviews

Studio: Sex Z Pictures
Director: Daniel Dakota
Cast: Felix Vicious, Keeani Lei, Roxy Jezel, Lexi Love, Ice La Foxx, Victoria Allure, Victoria Sweet, Courtney Simpson, and Sara Jay

Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot

Is a teen a runaway if you kick her out? That was my question for director Daniel Dakota of this film for Sex Z Pictures. Because if my daughter ever felt the need to dress the way these teens do, I would kick her out, after a great deal of shame about my failure as a parent.

Roxy Jezel and Keanni Lei walk up a dusty Porn Valley road. They are in high heels, short shorts, full makeup, and see-through tops without bras. Wherever they are running from, it would have to be close by. They walk into a house and begin playing with the vibrators found conveniently therein, until they are interrupted by the owner of the house, whose bandanna and board shorts didn't convince me that he was the owner.

I was surprised to find that no other movie has been named Teenage Runaways, but of course that isn't true. What, then, distinguishes this movie from the dozen other porn movies called Teenage Runaways? Well, there seems to be a decided lack of bus station menace to scenes, and if any of the teens are worried about being homeless, they seem very brave.

The next scene finds Ice La Foxx and Lexi Love at the same house attempting to steal a car. They are quickly apprehended by a plainclothes police sergeant who interrogates them up the ass. To be fair, he first asks if they are runaways to justify the title.

Victoria Allure and Victoria Sweet, playing actresses on a casting couch in the next scene, don't allude to being runaways once. I guess it's implied.

Felix Vicious and a young man who appears to be a foot shorter than she is are the runaways in the next scene. They find an unused room and ease their homesickness on one another. Vicious is both expressive and tall. Her performance is fun to watch.

By the final scene there is no pretense made about runaways or teens. Courtney Simpson, unable to pay her rent, entreats the police sergeant from earlier in the movie, who is apparently her landlord, to let her service him for the rent. For a police sergeant in Los Angeles to own a house like that implies corruption and graft.

While the two of them are in the middle of their payment, his wife, Sara Jay, walks in. "You've hurt my feelings," she says dully, the red-hot shame of a compromised woman threatening to melt my DVD player. She joins in.

This is a movie which is shot and lit well that features tiny spinners more or less inhabiting the title roles, along with Jay, who is older and more womanly. Is Jay, as the humiliated wife, doomed to later produce a Teenage Runaway of her own?