Red Dragon (2002)

Wicked Pictures' No 1 director Brad Armstrong manages to combine the two formats he most favors: story line porn and all-sex exercises in "Red Dragon", a paen to the beauty of Oriental women that rivals the work in that vein by Bud Lee. He has Lee's ex-wife Asia Carrera in a lead role to boot.

The narrative, largely voiced over by contract star Stephanie Swift, is quite simple: SS is drawn back into the life of a prostitute (high-class division) by Asia after the death of her whorehouse boss Yoshi. What follows is a series of seven concise sex scenes, wrapped up in 80 minutes rather than the 3-hours-plus approach of latter-day Armstrong features, all executed with maximum style.

Armstrong's sets as well as the exotic (and often fetish) costuming are amazing, and give an element of class to the explicit sex that is both laudable and a reminder that Adult Cinema used to be about eroticism rather than today's mere documentation on video of sex acts. Besides the two lead beauties, Brad has cast big-breast queens Kianna and Miko Lee, plus the alluring Charmane Star -playing a newbie assigned to Steph to "initiate".

Many scenes are staged, shot and edited in music video or TV commercial style. Ordinarily I loathe when Brad stoops to these techniques in one of his frequent all-sex releases for Wicked, as recently as the flashy but empty showcase: "Jessica Drake Is Wicked", but this balance between dollops of story & characterization with stunning eroticism for the voyeur hits the spot.