Last week I watched Fred Lincoln's "Hollywood Spa", a wonderful film for Wicked starring Serenity, and wondered if I should reconsider my relegating F.J.L. to hack status so many years ago. But "Taboo X" nipped that notion in the bud -it's truly terrible.
Actually just half of a double-header shoot, with "Taboo XI" waiting on my shelf for perusal, this "10 Years After" (the calendar, not the rock group) return to the series Kirdy Stevens created is actually 12 years after Kay Parker and Mike Ranger made Adult Cinema history via the incest theme.
Probably due to cutting a film into two parts, for commercial reasons, as VHS releases did not lend themselves (in contrast to the DVD format) to running times approaching 3 hours, little happens in Part X, forcing the viewer to wait for number eleven. After a terrible "highlights" intro in which sloppy Chroma key level SPFX distort the images, we are introduced to new shrink Jonathan Morgan as Dr. Steven Manners replacing the departed Jamie Gillis character Dr. Jeremy Lodge from episodes 4, 5 and 9.
Nurse Janet, overplayed by Melanie Moore, is running the practice, comically browbeating her new boss in a horrible scene that drives home the fact that Lincoln and his then-better half Patti Rhodes (as screenwriter) are sending up the entire series. Unfortunately for them, none of the intended humor is the least bit funny, merely clunky and amateurish, as is Lincoln's direction of both sex scenes and dialog interludes.
Just to prove the director (and sometime editor) is incompetent, in one scene Morgan finally gets to see a couple needing continuing therapy for sexual inadequacy or deviance, after a couple of old Gillis clients, Flame in a tour de force of overplaying followed by Mona Lisa, get angry at him and storm out of the office rather than work with the replacement doc. Inexplicably, his business attire is suddenly replaced by a casual outfit, not appropriate for a shrink, with no explanation for the magical quick- change given in what plays as continuous real-time on screen.
The couple he treats is Marc Wallice and wife Meekah, in a threesome of course. Teri Diver is the best thing in this clunker, portraying Morgan's busty wife, who besides humping hubby has a lesbian scene with her pal Sally, played by Heather Lere -who gets an unearned top billing. An opening orgy at a night club is very poorly staged and utterly confusing from a storytelling standpoint.
It seems highly unlikely that Episode 11 will save Fred's bacon, but in any event the stink of Episode 10 will color my assessment of his talents for many a video to come. "Hollywood Spa" has to be counted as a fluke.
1 out of 1 found this helpful