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.

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".