The year of 1984 was a huge year for Christy Canyon, starring in several low-budget adult pictures and making a name for herself through ubiquity and dashing looks. Christy Canyon had the charisma and appearance of the girl next door, big-breasted, unbelievably perky, boasting curly brown hair and a cheerleader look that only made her a winning hit with any porn fan. Her sex scenes were pleasantly explicit (not filthy) and her acting talents seemed to evolve with each project. The same year as Kissin' Cousins was released, Canyon starred in the funny and entertaining On Golden Blonde.
Needless to say, despite Canyon's presence, the pictures surrounding her didn't always occupy the same level of talent and Kissin' Cousins proves to be another adult film that unsurprisingly got lost in the shuffle. There's nothing truly distinctive about this film, as it bears the scuzzy videography typical for the era (and to add to the naturally cheap aesthetic, even the DVD version of the film includes the classic, fuzzy VHS lines, showing evidence of being a copy of a copy), the lack of a coherent storyline, showing evident distancing from The Golden Age of Porn, and a supremely tame look at the topic of incest, especially judging from the time period when this was made.
The film revolves around one big family moving into a beachhouse amidst an unfortunate divorce, leading to numerous cousins (including the likes of Canyon, Scott Irish, Tony Martino, Misty Regan, and Summer Rose) to experiment with one another in a variety of different ways (positions). What should be an innocuous family vacation quickly descends into a nasty amalgamation of hormones coming together to create a wild summer orgy amongst cousins.
By the mid-1980's, the taboo of incest had been played out with the installments of Kirby Stevens' Taboo franchise alone, meaning that if another series or film wanted to tackle the subject, they were going to need to go beyond the unmatched arousal of having Kay Parker play a lonely, single mother begging for fulfillment in order to even be compared to the likes of the 1980 masterpiece. Sadly, Kissin' Cousins cops out at familiar positions and indifferent, sometimes indistinct directing, with Dena giving the impression that she doesn't always know where to point the camera to get the best shot (one ordinary missionary scene turns into an off-kilter shot of the woman grinding on the male in a way that makes the camera shake and feel simply out of place).
Kissin' Cousins isn't all bad, though, for it covers the basics of what a pornographic film needs to be entertaining, thanks largely in part to Canyon and Rose's chemistry and Herschel Savage's always welcomed humor. An arousing threesome in addition to some marginally passable setups make this film a bit more memorable than it should've been, and thanks in part to being one of Canyon's early efforts, this one earns a place at least as a footnote at the bottom of a page in the unwritten compendium of classic porn.
Starring: Christy Canyon, Summer Rose, Misty Regan, Herschel Savage, Scott Irish, Tony Martino, and Heather Wayne. Directed by: Dena.
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