Masseuse 3

Vivid treated this follow-up to one of the label's biggest all-time hits with disrespect: editing the VHS original release version of 132 minutes down to just 71 for the DVD a year later. That 45% scissoring hurts the feature, but some quality acting (and sex footage) remains.

Setting is Manhattan, with Taylor Hayes and James Bonn as overage college students at Metropolitan University, sort of standing in for NYU. Plenty of exterior footage of New York and especially Times Square sets the atmosphere, though movie was obviously made primarily in California.

Reviewing the shortened DVD version, Hayes plays a meanie, toying with Bonn's affections. He does her homework for her, she insults him and in a flashback while he's watching her in a sort of Girls Gone Wild expose video, we see him getting lucky humping her.

But in this short version, Taylor gets lost in the shuffle, seeming like a guest star in her own Vivid Video vehicle. Instead, frustrated Bonn goes the prostitute route to satisfy his horniness. Herschel Savage, in a showy supporting role as a barker outside legendary Show World Center, does a monologue extolling the good old days when 42nd St. And environs was lively with sin and drugs, and takes Bonn under his wing. He takes him to a massage parlor run by Sharon Mitchell, who cameos in a fictionalized version of herself, as former porn star now running a low-down brothel.

He falls in love instantly with masseuse Melissa Hill, but the redhead Vivid star (in a sensitive performance) reacts negatively to his condescending attitude toward her status as a sex worker. Coworker Chloe steals the movie as a dominant type (not unlike nominal star of the shoe Taylor Hayes' persona) who later humiliates Bonn and gives him a capsule BDSM education in a threesome with novice prostie Leanni Lei.

Unfortunately, there's not much more story, just sex, including a visit to a strip joint/lap dance/sex club set in an old movie theater where Chloe tries to romance Bonn, busty Tia Bella has lesbian sex with Jenteal, and scriptwriter Neil Wexler has a juicy role as a dirty old man getting a Chloe lap dance.

Final reel crams in plot resolution as Hill offers to run away with Bonn (by bus from Port Authority) but Hayes has other ideas for him. And Savage has another well-written monologue putting the nostalgia craze for the old Times Square into perspective, recalling the downside of the sex industry, still obviously true 25 years after this movie was shot. I'd like to see the complete show, but that's only on VHS.