Nothing to Hide 3

James Avalon's technical skill is impressive (and way too showy) in "Justine's Daughter", dubbed part 3 but bearing no relationship to the previous films by Spinelli and Paul Thomas. Show ends with a cliffhanger, and surprisingly Part 4 "Club Purgatory" is much, much better.

Gwen Summers is beautiful and talented starring in both films, as a hapless young woman who's lost her memory after a car crash. Current TV series "Blindspot" on that topic, in which the heroine's tattoos lead the story, is far less complicated than Avalon's here - rivaling current b.o. master Chris Nolan in both the uncalled-for intricacy and unbelievability departments.

Jumbled film structure, with very fancy editing including endless flashes of images to amuse and confuse, reached an apotheosis in a scene (watch for it) where Gwen's heroine Avril is suddenly back in the kitchen covering her body with squished cantaloupe, the opening scene of the film proper, and while we've sat through many types of flashbacks and embedded flashbacks, this scene renders the story's opening (retroactively speaking) as a flash-forward. I gave up trying to logically follow Avalon's storyboard exercise at this point, as he (and Nolan) are interested more in immersing the viewer in complexity and conundrums than explaining things.

If that were not bad enough, film's actual beginning is a lengthy and extraneous prolog with a medieval setting in which a beautiful princess (Wendy Knights) sucks off the executioner and his aides in a period-piece gang-bang, only to have her head chopped off afterward in a cruel jest. Obviously the sex was hot in this sequence but it's about as relevant to what follows as the typical James Bond curtain-raiser.

Basically, Avril is perturbed by not recognizing key characters Herschel Savage, supposedly her dad, and Melissa Hill, supposedly her mom Justine, taking the name from the "Nothing to Hide II" lead character, but not suggesting anything about that memorable role played by Roxanne Blaze. Avalon's parlor trick is to keep us guessing as to this pair's true identity, which in fact might be mom & dad, and Gwen has endless amounts of sex, to the point of rendering her character a slut after awhile, with nothing resolved by the time a "To Be Continued" card is slapped on screen after a very short running time (approx. 70 minutes after subtracting credits).

Fortunately the followup "Nothing to Hide 4: Club Purgatory" ties up most loose ends, makes better use of the overlapping footage than this edition, and is highly erotic to boot. One has to sit through this disappointing mess first before hitting pay dirt, but in an era of binging with the video screen, a mere hour of filler is par for the course.