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 Studio: Adam & Eve
Director: Carlos Batts
Cast: April Flores, Sasha Grey, La Cholita, Claudia Rossi, Claire, Lady Lava, Sara Vandella, Penny
The evil immortal Vlad Drakul, in his quest to subjugate Earth, sired five daughters who, with the help of Drakul henchman Mr. Experiment's unguents and potions, would implement their father's will by kissing their enemies to death.
But Mr. Experiment's son, VMMX, jealous of the attention his father paid to Drakul's girls, vowed to destroy them using his own manufactured army, the Fleshers.
So you can see that "Kiss Attack" varies from the proven porn format of Pool Guy Enters, Fucking Ensues.
An ambitious porn movie with interstitial comic art animation by Nathan Carlisle, an original soundtrack, and costumes by David Page, Louis Fleischauer, Simone Williams and Exquisite Restraint, "Kiss Attack" is the type of movie that will leave viewers wishing they had seen it when they were not of legal age to see it.
Like a theme party in which guests take off their masks early in the evening and get down to what everyone does at parties no matter the dress code, "Kiss Attack" should be viewed as a porn movie dressing up as a comic book; with a convoluted plot in which everyone is the bad guy, the sex is that much more welcome. In fact, do yourself a favor and forget the plot altogether - watch the sex instead.
After a lengthy exposition, Drakul daughter Evel (Gray) tussles with Flesher Alex Gonz. Tussles sexually. Then she kills him. Gonz and Grey serve up a great scene, with Grey jerking back and forth, and having grown some 80's-worthy pubes for the role (she is like Deniro in this regard).
Then Ms. Sangre (Flores) meets Mantis, a "synthetic nymph." They too tussle. In this vampire world, everyone fights using porn scenes. A dramatic tableau follows in which Sangre and Mantis are beset upon by Fleshers. Nothing seems to come of it. Phew.
Then we meet Luci (Sara Vandella), who tells us she is going to "kill some Fleshers." She lounges gloriously on a rug instead. That's OK. I've got no quarrel with Fleshers, either. When she finally encounters one in a lilac room, she makes short work of him.
About this time VMMX laments "these fucking vampire bitches" defeating his army. He needs to change his plan. He sends Claudia Rossi after human Mikey Butders. Meanwhile, Ms. Sangre calls in Dolores (La Cholita) to defeat VMMX by dancing near his car.
"Kiss Attack" is exactly the flesh and fantasy parade we dreamed of in eighth grade with willing, ready-to-go ladies saying geek-flavored things that don't hold up under scrutiny but Who Cares? - each one takes off her clothes. It's important to remember what the priorities are.
See a gallery here.
 Labels: "adam and eve", April Flores, carlos batts, la cholita, sara vandella, sasha grey
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 Studio: Vivid
Director: Dave Naz
Cast: Ashley Blue, Sasha Grey, Madison Young, Maya Hills, Lexi Belle, Jim Powers, De'Bella
"Can you even wait til I'm gone before making your plans tonight?" asks Ashley Blue of her insensitive boyfriend in Circa '82, "the come isn't even dried yet."
We like to fool ourselves that that this sort of narcissistic behavior is the product of the shoegazing MySpace generation, but according to director Dave Naz, this shit was happening 26 years ago to a Circle Jerks soundtrack.
Circa '82 is a fun movie that pretty effectively weaves in the references that justify the title without letting them become a distraction from the sex at hand.
People who weren't alive at the time of the original Circle Jerks (or who were too old even at that time to appreciate the band - who knows how old porn consumers really are?) will still relate to the timeless business of kids getting kicked out of their hangout spots by The Man (in this case played by the Circle Jerks' Keith Morris and the Germs' Don Bolles - not to be confused with the murdered journalist of that name).
Naz' movie might employ Blue's "Eight Is Enough"-era wardrobe (I checked: "Eight Is Enough" was on until the summer of 1981) and even goes so far as to get a rotary phone for the brief setups, but the sex is all (thankfully) circa '08.
Maya Hills' scene involves dialogue about hating the cops - an evergreen lament but also particular to San Fernando Valley punks in the eighties - that evolves into sex, which it should.
Then, like the previous scene, we watch the partners getting dressed following their tryst. This is a welcome element not usually included in the standard porn formula; a load on the face might be excellent closure for some, but Me, I'm into complete exit strategies.
Another pattern that emerges is the shirted nature of each of the women. I don't know if this is because Blue's, Hills', and Scene Three's Lexi Belle's shirts are all period pieces or if that's how L.A. kids did the deed back then.
In any case, after a brief conversation about the shows "That's Incredible!" vs. "Real People," neither of which was on when these performers was alive, Daniel and Lexi get down to it.
They finish before Belle's parents, in a nice bit of stunt casting played by porn director Jim Powers and former performer De'Bella, walk in.
Powers, who himself was in the L.A. punk band Killroy, sees Daniel's Black Flag and Killroy LPs on the bed and decries the state of young people today.
"This is all about violence!" he says to his daughter.
"Don't be so hard on them," De'Bella says.
"You'll be hard when she's pregnant," Powers replies.
In another example of the easy, not-getting-in-its-own-way nature of the movie, Sasha Grey improvises a nice bit of dialogue with Julius Ceazher.
"Your pee has a forest-like smell to it," she declares.
"Can I pee in your mouth?" he asks.
It is only at the very end when one of the 80's references goes south. Madison Young tries to extol the virtues of Def Leppard to her boyfriend. "'Bring Back the Heartbreak'!" she misquotes (It's "Bringin' On the Heartbreak") but that really doesn't matter; she gets fucked with her shirt on. Unlike the occasional Vivid-steve misfire, Circa '82 has its priorities straight, porn-wise.
You don't have to be an L.A. punk fan to like this movie, but if you are you will be a little wistful watching people who weren't alive when punk was in full swing talking about it.
In an entertaining Behind the Scenes featurette edited by Winkytiki and featuring the charming interview style of Ashley Blue, the latter defines punk in context as being opposite from today's emo, characterized by "sucking all the masculinity out of a person."
See also: Dave Naz Loves L.A.
See a gallery here.
Labels: ashley blue, dave naz, De'Bella, jim powers, Lexi Belle, madison young, Maya Hills, sasha grey
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Barely Legal Christmas
 Studio: Hustler
Director: Jerome Tanner
Cast: Alexa Jordan, Aarielle Alexis, Nautica Thorn, Ashley Blue, Sasha Grey, Paulina James, Penny Flame
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
The elfmaidens (Aarielle Alexis and Alex Jordan) feel that Santa is too traditional.
"Don't be gay," one says. "Girls don't want dolls, they want dongs. And boys don't want trains, they want to run trains - on girls like us."
This repackaging of five previously-released scenes with a Christmas wraparound dovetails nicely with the "Barely Legal" theme of letters to "Barely Legal" magazine, but in this case the letters are repurposed for Santa.
Sasha Grey is deemed "naughty" for breaking and entering to what she thinks is her teacher's house in search of test answers. Instead she must deal with the homeowner (Jerry) and, in exchange for him not calling the police, must perform sexual acts upon his person. Personally, I think this is a nice gesture that cancels out the naughty one, but Hey, I'm a Buddhist and we don't believe in Santa.
Then we read a letter from Ashley Blue sent in the ancient days of "Barely Legal 27". She, as Santa says, is a "filthy lying whore" for duping realtors into believing she wants to rent houses when what she really wants is to use them for sex.
Penny Flame courts a security guard for backstage passes and he is the same guy who owned the house Sasha Grey broke into. That was a nice house, too; how much do security guards make?
Paulina James relates a tale of a three-way with Steven St. Croix and Marco Banderas. I found it utterly implausible. Something about mail theft.
Finally, the elves convince Santa not to cancel Christmas by the only means at their disposal.
No one will confuse this movie for an instant classic, but the individual scenes are good enough, though some voiceovers are by the performers and others are by sometime-"Barely Legal" directrix Erica Mclean. It would be better if the series chose one or the other, because it is jarring to hear 19-year-old Sasha Grey read her letter but 50-ish Mclean read another. Mclean, of course, gives the series a touch of wistful remembrance a la Jeanne Moreau in "The Lover".
Alexis and Jordan are at a disadvantage in their scene because, aside from it being tacked on, it seems to have been hastily shot "just in time for Christmas" back in September. Oh well. Jizz the season.
Labels: Aarielle Alexis, Alexa Jordan, ashley blue, hustler, nautica thorn, Paulina James, Penny Flame, sasha grey
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 Studio: Teravision
Director: Dave Navarro
Cast: Sasha Grey, Audrey Bitoni, Jenna Haze, Tommy Gunn, Marco Banderas, Spyder Jonez, Lisa Daniels, Victoria Sin, Kayla Paige
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
Broken, the directorial debut of Dave Navarro, better known as Los Angeles' Official Guitar Player, opens with Sasha Grey on the bathroom floor, sobbing and masturbating. She is left-handed. Why does she choose to lose moisture from both halves of hger body at the same time? She's Broken.
The equation of sex with despair, as is fashionable in porn movies lately, is something I don't understand. After she's finished on the bathroom floor, for example, Grey collapses in a sad heap of moroseness. It would be one thing if she worked through her depression with a good wank (and see how I've suspended my disbelief, try doing that sort of thing while weeping openly), but it doesn't seem to do her any good.
That's not to say she doesn't look good while doing it. Grey is sylphlike, vulnerable, and inviting. But if the porn fantasy is that she's also accessible, couldn't her accessibility come as a result of her being slutty rather than without hope? Guess that might be a different movie.
Eventually everyone with a high enough profile who has an interest in the porn world will direct a movie. Screech did it, and we're just waiting for Mr. Belding and David Spade to jump in. But though the mood of Broken is dark, Navarro has brought something new to the table. A few things happen in this movie that haven't been seen before, but not so many that it ceases to be a porn movie.
When she's through, Grey enters a Kubrickian overexposed room and has a petulant conversation with some bruiser who doesn't cotton to her tartness. Their conversation is subtitled in Italian. Why? Just in case Ennio Morricone drops by for soundtrack tips. Oh, and because the couple's relationship is Broken.
At one point the bruiser picks Sasha up by her head and lifts her a foot off the ground. He could have just told her to move.
Though he kisses her afterward, she still retreats to the bathroom to shoot up. Because the movie is called Broken, she needs a fix.
Time passes and we arrive at a porn set in which Tommy Gunn plays the pizza guy to Jenna Haze's lady answering the door in her lingerie. The camera tracks around to several scenes being shot at once. It's a cool effect, as we watch Marco Banderas holding up his own camera while Grey holds up other things, a cameraman zooms in, yet another camera captures the master shot, and Navarro directs, shirtless but hatted.
It's like Dave Navarro's Porn Circus.
When Sasha has finished with Banderas, Navarro directs her to help out the other couples on the set, as if she has completed her art project early and the teacher sends her around to check on the other kids. She aids a threesome with Teravision owner Evan Seinfeld.
This extended sequence is the heart of the film, and is a clever means of getting the porn-standard amount of scenes in. Grey returns to her apartment, having been empowered by her porn experience, and confronts her Babelfish boyfriend.
Then there's a twist ending!
I admit that my prejudice about porn with a bad attitude is my own. I still think you can get more flies (or, in this case, popshots) with honey (or, in this case, a pleasant disposition). But I will admit that some people do behave this way all the time and that Broken is a fascinating movie directed like a music video and featuring oversaturated and tasty talent.
It also has a unique narrative style that is refreshing and compelling (but can't be used again).
Labels: dave navarro, sasha grey, teravision
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Swallow My Children
 Studio: Metro
Director: Rob Rotten
Cast: Mercedes Santos, Marsha Lord, Sasha Grey, Heather Gables, Roxy Deville, Laurie Vargas, Whitney Stevens, Daisy Tanks, Brandi, Britney Stevens, Leighlani Red, Allison Pierce, Chavon Taylor, Faith Deluca, Kaylee Love Cox, Jocelyn Jaden
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
Rob Rotten's Swallow My Children is a love letter to Acton, CA, which Rotten (because I can't find anyone else who says it) describes as "the energy capital of the world". Acton, situated on the wrong side of Magic Mountain and in the vicinity of various high desert nuclear tests, is like a blend of Los Angeles and a disaffected desert Hell. We should all live there in order to complete our transformations.
Rotten combines people from the neighborhood with many performers you've never seen before (or perhaps will never see again), along with the rough and ready likes of Sasha Grey, Alison Pierce, and Roxy Deville to present a blowjob movie that is so much more than a blowjob movie; it is like a little piece of punk art and something that should go on the Acton Chamber of Commerce's website.
Unfortunately, the movie was not shot in Acton at all, but in one of the standard-issue porn McMansions here in Los Angeles.
"Then why did you mention Acton?" I asked Rotten.
"There was this brand-new 18-year-old girl who was asking us a good place to visit in California," Rotten said. "I couldn't think of a worse place than Acton, so that showed up in the movie."
As "Acton" is mentioned early in the flick, and as Rotten improvised most of the ridiculous scenes with a variety of white trash characters, Swallow My Children seems like what The Kentucky Fried Movie would have been had fellatio been involved.
The movie is very silly, and Rotten has chosen performers that look sexy in natural light, in bare feet, with minimal makeup.
"I tell people not to come with the porn heels and the stupid porn bikinis," Rotten said.
Best line: "What are you doing in my tub? Maybe the piss can wait!"
There are also scenarios in which a blowjob is traded for the return of a retarded uncle's bike, an unlikely tryst on a roof with porn-ratty Tony Tedeschi, and some trampolines. After Dirty Harry's, the best line is: "Can I borrow your weight room? Mine's being worked on."
The secret to an effective porn movie (at least for a male audience) is juicy women having sex with loopy undesirables. Swallow My Children is an effective porn movie.
Swallow My Children, though everyone in it is tatted out with metal playing in the background, is so silly, well lit, and populated with healthy vixens that it seems wholesome. After all, isn't a blowjob the friendliest gesture one can make? It's when penetration happens that people get all possessive.
View a trailer here.
Labels: bj, dvd, rob rotten, sasha grey
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 Studio: Naughty America
Director: Brett Brando
Cast: Sasha Grey, Satine Phoenix, Pinky Lee, Dana DeArmond, Adrianna Nicole, Lorelei Lee, Tommy Pistol
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
This movie features my personal Power Station, Cream, and Damn Yankees of porn, a tasty cast in a series of scenes that progress literally from dark to light (or at least from brunettes to blondes) as well as back in time.
Director Brett Brando put together a sequence of vignettes with setups that are just a little more complex than other gonzo movies, each playing to the strengths and whimsies of the people performing them. I can't think of a recent movie that was better cast with people I like, or that seemed to target my personal tastes as well.
Further, the progression of scenes was particularly thoughtful, as we will see.
Sasha Grey is a mopey teen. She wakes up in her makeup in a squalid Hollywood apartment. Her dialogue sounds like a bad MySpace page. "Sunset Strip?" she grouses. "More like Sunset Drip."
At this point I was ready to fast forward, because there was nothing to suggest this wasn't another of the breed of self-important Sylvia Plath porn scenes that was only funny unintentionally.
But then a biker enters in a cloud of dry ice and fucks her "hungry pussy".
The sex itself was just what we would expect from the precociously dirty Sasha Grey, who knows the lingo and delivers it poutily, as is the current fashion. But the scene is just slightly wacky, and it is that intent that makes it fun to watch.
The first scene is also the darkest of the movie.
Next comes Satine Phoenix as a restaurant manager who is having trouble with the help. Before she can fire her insubordinate employee, however, he tells her that what she really needs is to be fucked.
Even though we know this to be universally true, from diners to the Vatican to the International Space Station, it still seems a little uncomfortable to hear it, like a hoary porn trope that is part of the shorthand but still off-putting and past its welcome. That changes when Phoenix pulls her handyman over the bar and takes control of the scene.
The third scene is the most surreal and, when I take advantage of my Constitutional right to create an adult awards show, I will nominate Pinky Lee as Best Actress for her portrayal of a showgirl who fucks someone else's fan. The scene is silly and bittersweet, and Lee actually tap dances.
Then Dana DeArmond intercepts the man who has been surreptitiously leaving mash notes at her door.
"I know you!" she says sweetly. "You're my boyfriend!" Indeed it is her boyfriend Daniel, and their chemistry is apparent. Both act like they feel lucky.
Finally, Adrianna Nicole and Lorelei Lee, two punky blondes who can get up to some real graphic nastiness in other movies, are seen here braiding each other's hair in a superbly kitschy pink bedroom when both realize they are dating the same guy.
They spring a trap for Tommy Pistol, who plays a Brooklyn doofus.
It's not as if this movie was directed to the hilt, or stage managed to the nth degree. It is instead often wonderfully sloppy and improvisational, and the players seem to be having a great time. This in turn makes me happy, because I like it when people enjoy their jobs. Because so much porn can seem negative, or not the zesty enterprise I think it should be, I realize that I am exactly the target audience for this sort of fun, bubbly movie.
"You cad," Lorelei Lee ad libs.
"Did you call me a cow?" asks Pistol, and Lee laughs out of character.
The three end in a menage a trois-cum-pillow fight, free of "Come fuck my hungry pussy" and super-serious lines of that ilk. The movie makes you wonder what the sixth scene might have been had there been time for one. Naughty Flipside is the feel-good movie of the summer!
(Also, if the guy from Prospero's Books had been in it, it would be the Gielgud movie of the summer.)
Labels: adrianna nicole, dana dearmond, dvd, lorelei lee, naughty america, reviews, sasha grey, satine phoenix
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Studio: Adam & Eve
