Killer Klub Girlz (2007)

The Penthouse videos, like those from Playboy, have been very dull, cookie-cutter efforts over the years, but filmmaker James Avalon manages to circumvent the format with this highly original, relatively unknown release from early in the Kelly Holland/Toni English (as producer) era.

It stars Kim Kane as a platinum blonde assassin, who coolly recruits and manages a string of female assassins who seem to be merely prostitutes or escorts. This cover works wonders, as the unsuspecting male targets never guess what will be coming to them, in addition to the expected sexual servicing.

It's an interesting premise, but Avalon brings high style to the crisp, 83-minute feature. Each of the 5 sex vignettes meets the required porno quotient demanded of a Penthouse release, but there are frills added that one does not anticipate, beginning with Kane's terrific acting performance. A recurring image of her nude upon a cross, back lit majestically with a lit cigarette in her lips, calling out to "Sam" is left cryptic and tantalizing -not the expected corny resolution of what this is supposed to mean. That recalls the Avalon work of his experimental period at the turn of this century, especially his surreal classic "Trial by Copulation", and makes "Killer Klub Girlz" worth seeking out among the hundreds of mainly mediocre titles in Penthouse's video catalog.