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 Studio: Red Light District
Director: Dustin "Dirty Sanchez" Diamond
Cast: Screech, with unrelated bonus scenes featuring Tia Tanaka, Rebecca Linares, and Annette Schwartz
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
"Mmmm," says Dustin Diamond, who played "Screech" on the 80's Saturday morning kidcom "Saved by the Bell", "Cheese and cracker plate. I could eat that shit right up."
He has released a sex tape.
Screech wants us to know he likes cheese and crackers. How good can the video be?
That Diamond, whose financial woes drove him first to radio stations selling anti-foreclosure t-shirts, now peddles a sex tape through "1 Night in Paris" purveyors Red Light District, comes across as painfully self-conscious should be a given, but that the video fails to reveal a hidden redeeming talent is the unkindest cut of all.
Diamond made this tape after a Wisconsin club appearance when he was invited to join a bachelorette party in their hotel room, so he tells the camera, and the video is part of a series of competing sex tapes released by his friends. He addresses the camera as "Mark" and "Bro".
Diamond's entreaties to the two-girl bachelorette party (including "you grew up with me, baby") eventually result in a gradual breakdown of their inhibitions, and it is impressive to hear him talking them down.
Remembering, of course, that the "Bride" and "Bridesmaid" were aware of the filming and that they signed a release form is comforting only because you don't want to believe that Screech acted alone in ruining the marriage.
Shot in very poor P.O.V. style, Screeched features too many shots of Diamond's face. It is a plus, though, that the banter seems real and that the bachelorette party, getting consistently drunker, appears nevertheless to be doing this of their own volition.
The sex isn't good, but a tape one makes for friends isn't really about that, anyway.
Before buying this, please ask yourself: "Am I Dustin Diamond's friend?"
Screeched contains bonus scenes from pros like Annette Schwartz, Rebecca Linares, and Amy Ried, just in case viewers feel Shaved by the Quality.
(We will take "SbtB" castmate Elizabeth Berkeley in "Showgirls" any time. Where's her video, Bro?)
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 Studio: Digital Playground
Director: Robby D.
Cast: Alexis Silver, Sophia Santi, Michelle Maylene, Jelena Jensen, Flower Tucci, Brooke Haven, Chris Charming, Scott Nails, "Jerry"
There's actually not a subtitle, don't bother writing in to correct me. While we're at it, if you're not in the mood for "sharp witted, hilarious, acid tongue, tasteless, mean spirited humor"--um, whatever, Robby--surf on, surfer. I'd try to write a review as tired and stupid as this installment of Jack's Playground, but a couple of things just won't permit it.
It's the Same Old Shit save for the God-given natural bounty on delicious display in the forms of Jalena Jensen and Sophia Santi. They're the reason you picked up this DVD in the first place, undoubtedly. Like me, you probably turned the thing over and over in your hands, looking for proof of airbrushing, unabashedly awe-struck in the adult aisle as you ogled Jensen's and Santi's comicbook heroine proportions. These women are unreal, with firm, bouyant pillows of flesh lofting above and below waspish waists, supported by flowerstem legs and providing the bubblewrap around what Santi calls, in her wild kitten way, her "little baby yami". "People have told me they have trouble finding it, it's so small." Dude. Hit mute and just watch these Eighth Wonders in solo scenes over and over again, because the asshole holding the camera won't shut the fuck up, and his single-minded goal seems to be interfering with whatever brief moments of heat he manages to commit to HD.
I don't know what it is about the gonzo persona that makes a guy start to think the popularity of a series is tantamount to viewer interest in him. Porn gets produced "in the bubble", I guess, and it actually might not cross D's mind that the last fucking thing I want to see is his hammy, mottled hand roaming like a bloated, leprous rat over the angelically firm, young flesh of 18-year-old newcomer Michelle Maylene. Jesus. Could somebody get ahold of girls like this and tell them they should hang on until something better comes along? The 18-year-olds in this industry should be auctioned off like Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby. At least Maylene's paired with someone almost as pretty for the sex: This would be "Jerry". Why is Jack's Playground populated by so many Eurostuds? you might ask. Maybe it's because they don't understand enough of what D's saying to hate him.
Sadly, I do. I remember thinking Robby D. was going to save porn, and now he's the same guy I used to think porn needed saving from. Happily for Digital Playground, the quality of the series remains high, with excellent production value and jerkable if by-the-numbers sex. It's impossible not to recommend the visual tribute to truly amazing physical beauty ensconced in Volume 32, perhaps even a Collector's Edition for those who want to memorialize in particular the divine pulchritude of Santi. Here's hoping D grows out of his self-lovathon and starts making masturbation material for the rest of us.
- Eugenie Brown
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 Studio: Ninn Worx
Director: Michael Ninn
Cast: Heather Vuur, Nick Manning, Jassie, Jean Val Jean, Dee, Brooke, Monica Mayhem, Nevaeh, Scott Nails, Sledge Hammer
While we will leave it to scholars to decide whether the death of a child is a fitting setting for a porn movie, Michael Ninn's Sacred Sin really makes a case for the existence of a couples market. A heartbroken couples market.
Shot on the Hollywood Hills estate of Eddie Van Halen and featuring compositions by the landlord, this movie is a far cry from "Jamie's Cryin'", but thoughtful couples may want to reach down between their legs and ease the seat back.
I listened to a little bit of the director's commentary on this deluxe set, and it appears Ninn anticipated a mixed reaction to his work, but ultimately took full responsibility. The cast is leonine and beautiful to a person, and great care was taken in setting up the shots. The music is simple and piano-based (save for a Van Hagar-period rock'n number), and the house and grounds were appropriate to the period aspect of this drama.
So why does Ninn worry about the critics several times in the commentary? Probably because, as Sacred Sin co-writer L.E. Smith says, "Gonzo is killing romance."
This may be true, but nothing kills romance more than a dead kid.
Heather Vuur grieves at the death of her child, and when husband Jean Val Jean seeks solace in Jassie, she kills them both, then herself. She returns in spirit form to the present day, where she torments Nick Manning, who himself has fallen from the grace of God. At least I think that's what happened.
Sacred Sin deals sexily with the popular porn tropes of losing faith in God and coming to terms with Christianity. We meet hard-boiled detective Sean (Manning), who lost his family to a man he'd put away. Vuur leads him astray, giving him back a blissful moment in his life with lovely wife Brooke Banner to further crush his spirit.
We flash back and forth to aspects of Sean's grief and Vuur's past. There is a scene, as you can imagine, involving a demon. The demon gets some.
Sacred Sin is a lovely movie to watch, and absent from it is the harsh contextual misogyny of Ninn's Catherine. I did find myself frustrated throughout the movie with its endless repeated shots that seemed to have less to do with moving the story along than they did with accompanying the soundtrack.
In cases like this, art is distracting. "Get on with it," I thought, wishing for more demon semen.
Great for couples and C-student theologians, Sacred Sin is clearly a work of love, but when Ninn in the commentary talks of "the adult gendre" (sic) and studying a body "like the Magruder film" (sic), I couldn't help wondering if his considerable talents as a filmmaker might shine through more brightly if he didn't think so much.
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 Studio: Vivid-Alt
Director: Eon McKai
Cast: Charlotte Stokely, Dana DeArmond, Pixie Pearl, Riley Mason
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
Eon McKai's depiction of no-way-out Antelope Valley teens whose only remedy for listlessness is sex, poseur punks in L.A., and Hollywood cheating trophy wives is a fully-integrated porn movie that owes more to early 70's (and then, early 80's) moviemaking and teen narrative sensibility than to anything seen in the adult world recently.
Charlotte Stokely channels Anna Nicole Smith as a pouty Lancaster teen; older Joey Ray wears an expression of "Who is this person?" as he watches young wife Dana DeArmond getting into her steveporn ensemble, Riley Mason tells her boyfriend she's a model, but really makes her living by jetting off to L.A. to work in porn, and Pixie Pearl learns that all one finds in the L.A. club scene are empty promises and pregnancy.
"I'm an artist so I take mannequins and I turn them into abstract art that show personal and social issues that are real important," she says.
Girls Lie isn't a joyful romp, but it doesn't make the mistake of allowing the sex to become depressing, or the movie to not be entertaining. Instead - the horror! - we become invested in each of the characters. Charlotte Stokely, a hooker on a bicycle, pedals around her northern Los Angeles suburb. Her meth-y, drawling interactions with people are priceless.
"My boyfriend? If he was a popsicle? He'd be a melted popsicle."
Many feature porn directors aim to make "real" movies that just happen to have sex in them. Girls Lie achieves this, with the added bonus of throwing some light on a Los Angeles-adjacent neighborhood viewers rarely see in movies.
Each of the four stars has a vignette of her own. Stokely's is the most fully-realized, but Pearl's tragedy, Mason's second job, and DeArmond's unrequited love are all believably tinged with sadness.
Oh, and feet. The movie is also tinged with feet.
I asked McKai about this.
"I didn't really go for the feet, particularly," he said.
"Oh yes, you did," I said.
The three-disc Girls Lie set comes with a disc of behind the scenes footage, etc., as well as an excellent soundtrack CD compiled by Sean Carnage.
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 Studio: Adam & Eve
Director: Nick Orleans
Cast: Carmen Luvana, Austyn Moore, Kylie Ireland, Flower Tucci, Katja Kassin, Ana Nova, Lexi Lamour, Roxetta, Kylie Worthy, Mia Bangg, Annika, Randy Spears, Lexington Steele, Evan Stone, Harmony, Scott Nails, Tommy Gunn, Tyler Knight, Eric Masterson, Derrick Pierce, Veronica Hart
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
What I don't understand is how a porn director or company will give its audience a liitle bit of credit, and then stop. Adam & Eve's Tailgunners, set in 1944, raises our expectations with cinema-quality lighting, sound, and editing (and the sex isn't bad, either), as well as presenting us with an involved story about WWII.
Then the producers really hope we won't notice that a lot of the acting is bad and the historical details are a little sketchy. At least Tailgunners errs on the side of boobies. (And the Allies.)
From the opening strains of a "Castle Wolfenstein"-worthy score I knew I was in for a treat. On a reconnaissance mission outside of Paris, Evan Stone, in color, takes pictures of black and white German military targets. Already the viewer is prepared for the spiritual crisis that is war.
Tailgunners is an excellent example of big-budget porn filmmaking in which the standard is set so high that weaknesses stand out more clearly. It is a movie that is shot and edited so well that a viewer expects quality control throughout, having given up the right to say "It's just porn". Then something happens - aside from the sex scenes - that makes the viewer remember that it is, in fact, just porn. Oh well.
An early outbreak of "It's just porn" is a scene between Randy Spears and Tony Tedeschi. Something to do with an Axis nation's ability to deliver a bomb. While the lighting and sound are perfect, and Spears delivers his lines with the gravity and humor that are representative of his recent performances, Tedeschi appears embarrassingly unfocused.
It would almost be OK if Spears brought his performance down to Tedeschi's level rather than teasing the audience with a standard Tedeschi was unequal to.
Then we meet President Roosevelt (played by Adam & Eve founder Phil Harvey) who now and then forgets his polio by crossing and uncrossing his legs in his wheelchair. He praises the ladies of A.S.S. (American Secret Service), who are helping to win the war clandestinely.
In the heartland, Tracy Hogan (former A&E contract performer Austyn Moore) complains to her war-widowed mom (Veronica Hart, used here to less effect than in Neu Wave Hookers) that the Army Air Corps won't let her fly. "I'm the best pilot in Peacock County," she pouts.
The real innovation of the movie is Kylie Ireland as Eleanor Roosevelt, dictating policy from the business end of a glory hole, where she is servicing the White House chauffeur. Before this movie's inevitable run on hotel room cable, perhaps it should make a detour to the History Channel?
"There's nothing like black cock in the White House," Ireland says.
Meanwhile, in Paris, Evan Stone is captured photographing Nazi planes. The movie's best scene is mostly in German as Stone is granted a final request by Katja Kassin and Annika (and Carmen Luvana who, speaking Spanish as a kind of cross-platform Nazi ringer, is finally cast well in a non-documentary speaking role). Luvana determines Stone's nationality by an unorthodox method and then he is smothered, similarly unexpectedly, by Annika.
Tracy is finally given flight status via an audition process that surprises no one, and she saves Manhattan several scenes later.
We have seen porn movies combine sex with story very fluidly and effectively, as in Adam & Eve's excellent O: The Power of Submission. Tailgunners, while featuring lots of eye candy, ultimately sends our expectations southward again.
But you know what? Tailgunners is still better than Kenneth Branagh's "Warm Springs".
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 Studio: Digital Playground
Director: Robby D.
Cast: Ava Rose, Gianna, Lexi Belle, Faith, Jesse Jane
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
Digital Playground continues to refine how standard porn is presented, often improvising within a rigid structure to make things interesting. In this fourth installment of Jack's POV, the crew doesn't deviate from the norm so much as it optimizes the experience.
The whole "Jack" motif, devised by director Robby D., involves an offscreen character trying to get girls to do nasty things. In some movies, such as this one, the context is "What will you do to be in my music video?"
While offscreen distractions are often hit or miss, and the music video setup has really become an afterthought at this point, the formula is honed a little finer each time, and this movie features a very engaging cast.
First up is Ava Rose, who shot this movie just before becoming a contract performer with Adam & Eve. Rose is very saucy, effectively interacting with the person holding the camera, not the camera itself.
"You have a scandalous laugh, Jack my friend," Rose says. "(But) you don't give a shit as long as I'm sucking your cock."
The lusty Gianna is next. Gianna herself has a scandalous laugh, and I can't imagine that older porn consumers who cut their teeth, as it were, on large-breasted tough girls next door won't see a second coming of sorts with this one.
Robby D. pays special attention to the cowgirl position, which affords ample opportunity to watch Gianna's breasts bounce this way and that. It was so hypnotizing that I wished I smoked so I could quit.
The result of Gianna's exertions with her faceless partner, naturally, lands on her breasts. I bet the number of times she has taken one in the face can be counted on one hand, which would be clenched elsewhere anyway. Was that crude?
A funny interlude between Scott Nails, Jack, and Faith follows in which Jack tries to persuade Faith to not do guys on film. Cut to Faith blowing Nails and Nails blowing loads. Was that crude?
Sexual Freak Jesse Jane arrives with a cake for Jack (his parents didn't bother calling on his birthday). Jane's presence in a room tends to ionize the atmosphere a little, so well stocked is her bag of tricks. She is the only one of the five who talks more than Jack in her scene.
In another clever interlude, Lexi Belle shows up at the door as Jesse Jane is leaving, bringing her own, smaller cake.
"Size doesn't matter," Jack stammers.
"Uh, yeah it does," replies Belle. The fresh-faced Belle proceeds to be consoled, but not before eating some of the goo-smeared frosting from Jane's scene. It's a little crude.
Jack's POV 4 is a fun movie throughout, though the Gianna scene alone is worth the price of admission.
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Studio: Red Light District
