I have a love/hate relationship with pretentiousness in the porn genre: at times I'm bowled over by a filmmaker's audaciousness, but just as often am repelled by pitiful overreaching, which merely shows up a director's lack of talent.
With LIMBO, Michael Raven tries to create a surreal nightmare that is to be taken seriously, but the results are decidedly mixed. I give him a B for effort, and recommend the video only to tolerant intellectually-minded porn fans.
It's presented as a wild nightmare for wifey Ava Vincent/Jewel Valmont, a lovely blonde who is skilled in sex scenes but not much of an actress. Early in the video she has a lengthy diatribe to shout at boss Herschel Savage, basically taking on our whole culture in America and the rat race of making a living. Adult Video News, as quoted on the video box, took this to be pegging the video at "closet communists" in the audience, but as delivered by Ava it has little impact.
Fortunately for her Savage is cast as a submissive type, not typical of his thousand or so other porn roles. Her husband Randy Spears is as slimily dislikable as usual, plotting to kill off Ava by hiring a couple arsonists to truss her up and burn her alive. Hence, the nightmares, which unfold in the time-honored structure dating back to AN INCIDENT AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE.
The women are all quite beautiful in this opus, including Jessica Drake who has emerged as a porn superstar in the decade since it was shot. Perhaps the most arousing sequence is a nod to GOLDFINGER, with Evan Stone servicing two girls who are covered with golden makeup (a la Shirley Eaton) as Ava watches, on an impressive (for porn) set carpeted with fake snow.
Though SPFX are modest, Raven does create some interesting imagery as he depicts hell/limbo/purgatory. I thought he did overreach in a stressed Jesus portrait on Ava's wall, however.
I saw the softcore version of the video from Purgatory (appropriately) Films in England, distributed by video company Salvation. It ran 69 minutes compared to the hardcore 80 minute edition, with evidently alternate angles (fellatio strictly invisible with camera behind the woman's head) and other tricks to avoid any & all penetration or money shots. It plays surprisingly well in softcore mode and is a good example to would-be crossover directors on how to come up with a finished product that will appeal to both markets, X and XXX.
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