Studio: Mercenary Pictures
Director: Tina Tyler
Cast: Page Morgan, Bailey Monroe, Ariel Alexus, Nikki Grind, Belle de Leon, Ashley Brooks

Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot

Maybe because director Tina Tyler has herself performed on camera for 12 years do her interviews with newly-minted porn girls seem less predatory and elicit more interesting responses than the gonzo-girl interviews of many of her male counterparts (David Aaron Clark, to give him his due, admits that he intends to sound creepy).

Working within the tried and true formula of interview->smidgen of a setup->sex, Tyler moves these newbies along in engaging fashion.

Including Page Morgan.

One of the great benefits of porn movies, other than using old ones to pay one's gardeners, is the dizzying number of porn styles a performer might try on in his/her career. While many "contract" performers can afford to employ a winnowing-out process, most performers love the money and will pretty much do anything.

Hillary Scott, Eva Angelina, Kami Andrews, Tory Lane, and many of today's bankable porn actresses will appear in everything from Private and Wicked shoots to the lowliest Skank Factor fare. One of the perks of watching so many desensitizing hours of porn is seeing someone turn up with two dicks and a broomstick in her mouth in one movie whom you just saw playing a happy-ending-bestowing nurse who keeps most of her clothes on in another.

That is called range.

Page Morgan, who will appear in this week's release of Vivid-Alt's ReBelle Rousers, showed a far more human, less rehearsed side to Tyler in a series of quick interviews.

Morgan had been working as a night waitress. She was 18. She loved sex and money "and then put two and two together". Morgan has a distinctive, almost Billy Idolesque porn sneer. Watching her employ that and her 40's pinup curves in a gonzo production is sure to be the first stop for Page Morgan completists, many of whom will be forged in the next few weeks as various releases, including this one, hit the streets.

Arial Alexus is next. Again, when Tyler says that Alexus has beautiful skin, she doesn't sound like a heavy breather on the other end of the prison bars. Alexus, in the business for three weeks at the time of this shoot, takes on two fellows and she does it with an exuberance that might just be due to a lack of practice but no deficit of enthusiasm.

The third scene is delivered by Ashley Brooks, who was a few months in porn at the time of this shoot and now, not too long after, told me she is "looking for a good way to leave the business", is very sweet and sexy in her scene. Petite, her partner can't get enough of her.

All Tyler's interview scenes are edited to keep things moving, but some appear to have been edited more than others. Bailey Monroe, in what might have been her third scene ever, appears over the experience; she struggles to find something to remember about her short time in the industry. But it is in her performance with Lexington Steele that she finds her element. I guess some people just aren't talkers. They're doers.

Monroe is tall with large natural breasts. She is not porn-glamorous but is instead interesting to look at. I imagine people from her hometown picking up this movie and saying, "I should have tapped that when we worked at Waffle House. God damn that Lexington Steele."

Nikki Grind and Belle De Leon are next. Grind has a hairdo like a 1955 Pan Am stewardess. It makes me long for those golden days of travel. Belle De Leon, in the final scene, says she's 21 but acts a lot older. Maybe 21-year-olds just seem older these days. A black girl with a tattoo (a rarity in porn), she takes on Lexington Steele and is not a shy flower about it.

Particularly for people whom I think might be famous in a porn kinda way someday, like Page Morgan, but also for the solid scenes and engaging, non-cringeworthy questions, Fresh Out the Box 4 is a smart purchase.

Labels: "tina tyler", dvd, reviews, wgl

Studio: JM Productions
Director: Jim Powers
Cast: Jim Powers, Kate Frost, Keegan Skye, Genesis Skye, Ashley Blue, Katie Gold, Cindy Crawford, Lucy Liu, Sabrina Jade, Aspen Brock, Erica Lockette, dozens of others

Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot

As narrator/director Jim Powers tells us in this selection of bloopers from ten movies he has shot for the morality-challenged JM Productions, "We're all fuckups in porno."

The idea of a porn gag reel is both redundant and very necessary in an industry that takes itself so seriously.

People who want the porn industry to go away need look no further than this collection for validation. A casual misanthropy permeates each of the scenes, from Powers' description (and then our viewing of) a sequence in which actresses storm off the set after being cajoled into being gagged (the titles were called "Gag Factor", after all) to the aggressive way the performers choose to resist the non-physical, but very real pressure to continue performing for their $300.

As we watch Behind the Scenes footage from series like Attention Whores and Girlvert, we become aware that Powers and crew are guilty of not explicity spelling out the fact that a creepy photographer is going to be present at every moment, even when the actresses are not performing. The most oft-repeated line in the whole movie is "Would you get the fuck out of here?"

The JM movies' behind the scenes footage has always provided the best snapshot of porn performer loopiness, but Porn's Most Outrageous Outtakes seems to cast more light on the people who are shooting it. Powers is right: they do seem like fuckups.

Once you get past that, the rest of this movie is like the best reality show ever. It is like a bukkake at a car crash. Fights, drugs, drunkenness, fear of police, misplaced pathos, and the horrifying California town of Acton all vie for primacy at the top of the monkey pile.

If properly attuned to the glory of the world around one, one could masturbate to anything. Except this. This should be watched in horror.

Studio: Digital Playground
Director: Joone
Cast: Mercedez, Scott Nails

Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot

Mercedez is floating on my screen like a PlayStation icon, the only color on a field of black. It is eerie. The effect is such, with very languid movements and an expressionless smile, she appears computer generated.

Welcome to her virtual world. Four choices appear on the screen: Strip, Stories, Foreplay, and Sex. Aside from the Stories, each selection results in the action taking place against a black background. There is no sound of airplanes or glimpses of Porn Valley architecture behind her. The background and the elimination of ambient sound (particularly any off-camera voices telling her what to do) keeps the former Vivid Girl immediate.

For the Stories section, Mercedez is placed against a green screen upon which is projected images of flame. The camera goes back and forth, music video style. Her voiceover relates tales of three-ways with cops and her first lesbian experience.

Then we get to the Sex. There are several choices available, including dildo, Mercedez on top, etc., represented by icons depicting various positions to either side of the screen.

Whichever way the virtual user wants Mercedez, he must be content with Scott Nails standing in as his proxy. At no time is anything other than Nails' hands, arms, stomach, or cock visible as the viewer's surrogate, so the distractions are few.

I have been Scott Nails before in other Digital Playground titles; he does good work, so I'm not complaining.

There are several other interactive sex titles out there. This is the first one I've seen that seems to place the subject in the emptiness of Time and Space. There are only Mercedez' and Nails' visible tattoos to give us a sense of place. Otherwise, the experience is very much like a home-run lap dance in a club with no bouncers and no Warrant songs intruding through the curtain.