Near the end of his career, Michael Raven made this admirable Gothic genre romance, a Stormy Daniels script that creates a powerful atmosphere of bleak decadence, well attuned to the BDSM subject matter.
Contrast that with the recent "50 Shades" phenomenon, that paints female submission and bondage with a fake glamour of jet-set lifestyle more appropriate to 1960s and 1970s pulp by Harold Robbins (see: "The Adventurers").
Story is told in voice-over by two narrators: Stormy as a former drug addict and prostitute who boards the gravy train by marrying a kindly old benefactor (Dave Cummings, porn's oldest stud at the time) and later on by Tony DeSergio, portraying Dave's long-time loyal lawyer.
Beyond the suspense generated by the flashback structure and heavy reliance on voice-over, film benefits from a sense of melancholy, as both narrators (who are the chief romantic protagonists) lament failed lives. Both became bound to Cummings, and after the old man's death from cancer both felt emptiness despite the wealthy trappings of their world.
BDSM is presented in lite form, with the bondage life of a sex slave rather eloquently described by a master (Randy Spears) and his sub (Gianna Lynn), more thoughtfully than the recent popular porn movies in the genre.
I suspect the serious tone here as well as its willingness to treat non-sex scenes with some care rather than disposable filler (to fast-forward through) was way out of step with porn back in 2008, accounting for the quick fold to Raven's illustrious career in the subsequent (and current) gonzo era. And Stormy's interesting scripts have disappeared in the last few years since her departure from Wicked Pictures.
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