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 Studio: Powersville/JM
Director: Jim Powers
Cast: Audrey Hollander, Sindee Jennings, Dirty Harry, Cindy Crawford, Otto Bauer, Chelsea Rae, Seth Dickens, Johnny Thrust
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
Audrey Hollander is surprised when her yearly gyno checkup gets too familiar.
"Any tenderness? Pressure?" The doctor asks about a hundred times. If I were Hollander, I would have had my HMO authorize anyone other than someone named "Dr. Probe."
While the cover of "Dr. Probe's Lab of Perversion: The Demon Gynecologist of the San Fernando Valley" promises a sardonic porn right up the alley of writer/director Jim Powers, Hollander's scene is so awash with dark editing program background music that it's hard to figure out if Powers intends us to laugh or just be creeped out; the cover suggests one, the movie suggests another.
The inappropriate gynecologist is certainly Porn's version of the Nazi scientist, but we are made to wait to decide whether this is a fleshier version of "Little Shop of Horrors" or "Marathon Man."
I talked with former AVN editor Rebecca Gray.
 "Are you asking me if women think of gynecologists like the hot pizza delivery guy or pool cleaner?" she asked. "No. (The gynecologist's office) is a different space for your head to be in."
Hollander's face registers growing alarm as the doctor takes his sweet time down there.
"I think I dropped something," he calls, sniffing his fingers. He begins inserting all manner of objects.
"Is everything OK, Doctor?" she asks as he inserts a glass dildo in her anus. "I haven't been sexually active in three months."
"That's a shame," he says. Finally, we get to the porn.
Dr. Probe, after rolling up a fucking machine, does the job himself.
"Is it supposed to feel this nice, Doctor?" Hollander asks.
"Just a natural human reaction," he says. "The instruments can only do so much."
I finally decided that the movie was a comedy and just the soundtrack needed to go. Kudos to Hollander who did a nice slow burn, and to Powers for trusting an audience with a longish scene.
 Next up is Sindee Jennings as the patient and Seth Dickens as Dr. Probe. The production does not skimp on medical equipment. Sometimes it's hard to be a woman.
"I'm actually feeling a little bit uncomfortable, Doctor," Jennings says. "It just feels like you're doing the same things over and over and over."
What makes this movie earn an A for effort is its token attempts to make things look on the up and up for at least a minute or two.
That more or less goes out the window when quintressential porn dude Dirty Harry appears as Guatemalan Doctor to the petrified Cindy Crawford. He speaks Pig Spanish all the way through his scene and at this point the movie becomes high camp (which isn't a bad thing).
 Finally, Otto Bauer's scene with Chelsea Rae retreads old ground, but it's still funny. When the good Doctor is finished, he says, "Now get dressed, clean up, and fill out those insurance forms."
 Labels: Audrey Hollander, Chelsea Rae, Cindy Crawford, Dirty Harry, jim powers, Johnny Thrust, otto bauer, Seth Dickens, Sindee Jennings
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Young Hollywood
 Studio: Independent Adult Cinema
Director: Carlos Batts
Cast: Kimberly Kane, Mandy Morbid, Lystra, April Flores, Lindsey Meadows, Adrianna Nicole, Ashley Blue, Alex Gonz, Jerry, Steven St. Croix
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
"What's better than Hollywood with a pool, some honeys, and some beer?" asks folksy Mud the narrator.
Carlos Batts' "Young Hollywood" is a little like the Grover's Corners of "Our Town": everyone knows each other, there is a kindly narrator and, as the spirit of Death is ever-present in Thornton Wilder's New Hampshire hamlet, so does Glenn Danzig hover above young Hollywood.
The similarities end there, though, because you'd never expect Emily Webb to flash her tits to get into a music video the way Mandy Morbid does.
Actually, Mud's narration is more reminiscent of Samuel Jackson's omniscient DJ in "Do the Right Thing."
Like last year's "The Girls And Boys Guide to Getting Down," "Young Hollywood" takes a snapshot of the short plain of city blocks south of the Hollywood sign, and makes no real distinction between porn performers and struggling actors (because there isn't one).
Morbid and Lystra fuck on the Mustang parked in Danzig's yard (it is actually Glenn Danzig's yard; the Satan-appreciating "Mother" vocalist lives in Hollywood) and later spend some topless time talking about cosplay and Comic-Con. This is a slightly more believable kind of unreality than what is found in traditional porn videos; it is only because the camera was on that their conversation seemed so awkward, because that's how the two of them actually talk.
 It's not a rule, but porn shot in the San Fernando (Porn) Valley often looks different from porn shot over the hill in Hollywood and downtown L.A. We meet Kimberly Kane on the set of a movie. She fucks Steven St. Croix on an art installation chopper and makes plans on her phone for going out later. No Porn Valley McMansion and no chirpy starlet, just the angular, frank, and badass Kane in a room festooned with Atari art.
 A lot of porn movies come with behind the scenes footage, and it is there where any consumer can become well-versed in what it is like to shoot a porn movie. Often this footage is ten times more entertaining than the movie it accompanies. "Young Hollywood" takes a different angle and seeks to dramatize the backstage logistics. In that way it is like an X-rated reality show.
 Adrianna Nicole looks particularly sirenesque in a bathing cap on a Hollywood roof. Downstairs she gets fucked in the shadows of the venetian blinds in an empty apartment. Something about the light identifies Los Angeles - that and the fact that, if Adrianna Nicole lived on the east coast, who would ever leave?
Natural light plays more of a role in Ashley Blue's segment with Alex Gonz. It's twilight in Los Angeles and they're on the rooftop pool. This is a really good look for Blue, a very cool light.
The movie culminates at a party in Beverly Hills with fire dancers and carrying on. This scene is poorly lit and anticlimactic.
"Young Hollywood" succeeds in its music, its sense of place, and its very loving photography. The statements it seeks to make about celebrity and hanging out would be more effective without the narrator telling us what we already picked up from the action, though.
Still, "Young Hollywood" paints a nice picture of our town; everybody gets along and looks good. It's a much better postcard for the area than the Christmas parade on Hollywood Boulevard.
Labels: adrianna nicole, Alex Gonz, April Flores, ashley blue, carlos batts, Jerry, kimberly kane, lindsey meadows, Lystra, Mandy Morbid, Steven St. Croix
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 Studio: ClubJenna
Director: Michael Zen
Cast: Jenna Jameson, Dru Berrymore, Ashley Moore, Cherry Rain, Aurora Snow, Randy Spears, Dale Dabone, Justin Sterling, Dillion Day, Kendall Karlson
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
Jenna Jameson is back like you've already seen her before as a hypnotized jewel thief in Jenna Loves Diamonds, a movie made in 2002 but just released now.
Jameson fans will appreciate this movie, directed by Michael Zen, for its loving attention to the millenial Jameson as an insurance investigator hypnotized by Dru Berrymore to do the latter's evil bidding.
Little does Jenna know that her airheaded secretary, Cherry Rain, is smarter than she lets on.
Jameson interviews a heist victim, the delightful Ashley Moore, whose mind was on something else when her jewels were taken.
Not only that, but Aurora Snow adds some tasty blondeness to the equation in a scene with Randy Spears. They read about the diamond heist in a paper without a copy editor.
When Jenna's double life is horribly revealed to her, she seeks solace in the arms of her betrayer (as we all do).
Though flawed, Jenna Loves Diamonds has a lot of star power, and it's a pleasure to see Jameson, Cherry Rain, Moore, and Snow in this footage. Still, little editing gaffes and spaces where the line delivery could have been tweaked abound, making me wish for something more worthwhile of Jameson's legacy.
Labels: Ashley Moore, Aurora Snow, Cherry Rain, Dale Dabone, Dillion Day, Dru Berrymore, jenna jameson, Justin Sterling, Kendall Karlson, Randy Spears
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 Studio: Powersville
Director: Jim Powers
Cast: Daisy Tanks, Desire Moore, Scarlett Pain, Paris Gables, Holly Wellin, Rob Rotten, Drehyden, Jenner
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
One of my favorite directors is Jim Powers, whose punk rock and pop culture sensibilities always find a way into any movie he directs.
But he always stays removed enough so that his earnestness never backfires on him. In other words, he never succumbs to the notion that he's making art when he's in the entertainment business.
That is not to say that the non-porn elements of his movies aren't compelling; in fact, they are usually the most watchable non-porn scenes in porn. They are just not redolent of the director's need to justify his career in Filth.
Sometimes the pendulum swings so far back into the "entertainment" category that he leaves the camera on during painful backstage episodes. His Porn's Most Outrageous Outtakes series captures many of these, but porn is such a playground of morbidity in general that there's an undercurrent of it in every movie he does. If fans of mainstream porn call what he does exploitive, he might argue that all porn is exploitive.
 So what does somebody like Powers do when he makes a movie around a subject - punk rock - that he genuinely cares about? Little Runaway 2 is definitely a dirtier, sexier movie - the sex scenes, anyway - than any of the altporn Powers in his press releases compares it to, although companies criticizing "Alt" at this point (Adam & Eve's Independent Adult Cinema has been doing it recently) is like beating a dead horse.
A series of scenes revolving around last year's Punkfest 2007, Little Runaway 2 features people with the hair and the wardrobe and tattoos that seem more integral to their personalities than the poseurware Powers et al have an issue with.
 Daisy Tanks, Scarlett Pain, and Paris Gables really walk the walk and fuck the fuck, rutting in dirty warehouses, buses, and on questionable mattresses. The movie also features performances by several angrily aging punk bands, including Powers' own, Killroy.
I could have done without these performances, but real fans of SoCal punk, especially those who wouldn't normally buy porn movies, might well love this as a pretty reliable document. In the behind the scenes featurette Powers captures drunkenness and belligerence, as per usual, and Rob Rotten's scenes with Daisy Tanks and Scarlett Pain made me think of alleys and back rooms of every dive-y, dangerous club I've ever found my feet sticking to the floor of. And that's a good feeling.
 But the "Clockwork Orange" riff at the beginning of the movie falls flat; I'm sure there was a reason to use those Kubrickian sets and costumes beyond their availability from The Violation of Chelsie Rae, but availability of the sets seemed the primary reason.
(And the droogs in the previous movie were women, which was a plus.)
In the end, Powers is filming his friends, with some sex representative of their lifestyle thrown in. In that I would want to do similar things to Scarlett Pain as Rob Rotten does, Little Runaway 2 reaches into my Gordon Lightfoot/Ronnie James Dio world and makes me regret tossing out that mattress I got scabies on.
Labels: Daisy Tanks, Desire Moore, Drehyden, Holly Wellin, Jenner, jim powers, Paris Gables, rob rotten, Scarlett Pain
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 Studio: Abby Winters
Director: ?
Cast: Jamie Lee, Em, Violet
Review by special correspondent Larry Smathers
This chick-on-chick flick comes from Australia and is produced by Abby Winters who runs a site featuring young well-scrubbed Aussie girls, all of whom frolic together like they’ve just come back from a volleyball match with the Indigo Girls. This is the first release to be distributed by Wicked Pictures and bares little resemblance to that company’s high-gloss features, but should please those who like their adult entertainment on the sweet and natural side.
Fist up is Em and Jamie Lee, two cuddly college girls who look like they might have sat in front of you in art history class, that is, if you went to school in Australia and/or took an art history class. The girls remove their sporty summer gear and get on with a lot of heavy groping and kissing, and then some kissing and groping, then they’re back to the kissing with a quick grope.
Well, you get the idea.
These are not the typical primed porn princeses, nor are they those bubbly barely legal babes; they’re just two girls with a Pixies poster behind them exploring each other's hairy hootenannies.
The next sequence involves Violet and again Jamie Lee. This time things have a less realistic feel; the lighting is a bit better, the girls seem more prepared, and sadly for you ‘80s music fans: the Pixies poster is gone. Fear not, you still get plenty of intimate kissing, nipple play, and hard and heavy humping, or as the back of the DVD describes it “full-body tribbing.” Who knew for all these years my dog’s been tribbing my leg?
The bonus features here certainly add to the organic feel of this female love-fest and should have been part of the actual work rather than tacked on as extras. The conversations with the ladies about what they want to do with each other and a quick post-coital wrap-up really help to ratchet up the thrill level on this, at times, girls gone tame DVD. Also included is a nice solo scene with raven-haired Violet; a close encounter that may have you planning a trip down under with your didgeridoo very soon.
Labels: abby winters, australia, porn lesbians
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Studio: Powersville/JM
