I enjoyed extremely-obscure porn director Steve Michaels' "A Sticky Situation", but following up with this "California Gigolo" (not to be confused with the big deal Chinn/Holmes parody of Richard Gere) left me disappointed. Michaels delivers such a namby-pamby product here as to conjure up an entire genre of Porno Lite.
Given that Steve Drake stars in Michaels' videos, and that "Michael" is Drake's real middle name it is safe to guess that our obscure director is actually actor Drake trying his hand behind the camera.
People often tag soft XXX (oxymoron time) porn as Couples, meant as an insult, the way right-wingers' propaganda made Liberal an insult (I was a liberal decades ago and still am). But this video is just weak tea, not meant to be appealing to couples or Romantics, just executed in a half-hearted away. Just another reminder (IMDb bottom feeders pay attention please): the sin in Cinema is not making a bad film but rather making a mediocre one.
Randy West, who takes to wearing maitre d' style tuxedos, runs a brothel where men are the whores, but business is bad. Looks like termination time for his staff of male hookers, including Peter North, Steve Drake and Buddy Love. Warning signal that this video was a clunker came in early sloppiness: opening credits list North in the role of "Al" but when West introduces his stable to prospective femme customers, he refers to Peter as "Ricky". Smart pornographers would have named him Peter and avoided this crisis.
The solution to the boys' dilemma is in the person of Dina DeVille, her last name back in porn fashion 30 years later (Cherie, Vanilla), but with her fake wig she was a flop in the Adult biz. She becomes a partner in West's firm bringing her fellow housewives, they would later be christened MILFs, to the nondescript brothel for servicing.
No script credit is part of the problem here, as nothing much happens after this establishing premise is laid out. A hint of tension is introduced as Bianca balks at the format, rejecting the offer of servicing from Randy, but later she joins the boy toy craze with nary a grumble. Nina De Ponca, masquerading as "Vera Butler" early in her career, provides interracial sex.
A friend of Vera's, Brittany Stryker inveigles her way into the house and has an excellent scene sucking and jerking off two studs simultaneously, so fine that the director repeats the scene later in the video as "memory" = padding. She's typing away at her nostalgic Brother portable typewriter, intent on filing a big story expose on the brothel with her editor, but a phone call from Dina easily talks her out of it. Cue Brittany in the bathtub crumpling up her hard-wrought story, with the admonition: "There will be other stories".
To make her argument Dina had told Brittany: "These men provide a needed service", hoping her brothel won't get shut down by the gendarmes. This sort of mild propaganda and lack of any conflict make "Gigolo" a dull boy, indeed.
