The Zone

An ambitious melodrama by Paul Thomas for Vivid, "The (Sex) Zone" is more laudable for what it attempts rather than what it achieves. Released in several contrasting versions it is definitely worth seeing in spite of obvious flaws and overreach.

Dyanna Lauren stars and is impressive, portraying a beautiful, successful woman who insists on her independence, preferring hanging out nightly in an extremely seedy sex club The Zone, indulging in decadent, any thing goes (and dangerous) sex rather than settling down with anyone for the so-called normal life. Much of the footage takes place at The Zone, a sort of lower depths where beauty mixes with scuzzy folk and the mood is oppressive as sex is depicted as something dirty (of course in porn terms that's a plus rather than turnoff, supposedly).

The far-fetched screenplay centers on three main characters who accidentally come into contact with each other: Lauren, a beautiful but forlorn drug addict played by contract star Kobe Tai, and Mickey G as a too good to be true hero who like Kobe is also down and out. The theme of their living a life of independence (clearly constrained by their bad choices and circumstances) is nicely contrasted with how fate throws them together, though Thomas fails to make their gradually becoming a "team" credible.

Singular villain is Steven St. Croix, a character way too broadly depicted, as rotten to the core and with his sleazy pair of minions giving the three principal characters a hard time. While it is the immersion scenes set in The Zone that get one's attention, it is the trio's personal travails that bring the movie to life.

At least three quite different versions of "The Zone" exist: a softcore version shown way back when by the Playboy Channel, with a dialogue plug even included in the script plugging Playboy TV (and I recall PT's movies being the best features shown on that soft-X cable outlet back in the '90s). The full-length XXX version which emphasizes the group sex The Zone segments, which oddly were sort of re-created in Kayden Kross's recent hit "Drive" with Angela White, and finally the chopped-up typical Vivid DVD reissue which puts the original movie's final scene at the beginning, and tacks on a quite poor phony "shocker" ending instead, while running half an hour shorter.