Syren stars for director Bud Lee as a TV reporter in "Hot Copy", a fascinating porn feature shot in the format of a mainstream B-movie. My review has spoilers, central to discussion of the story.
An unknown Lillian Lee is impressive in a dual role: playing Peter Lee, a businessman whose product Velvet Extract is an aphrodisiac that Syren has been assigned by her boss (George Kaplan, a top screenwriter in an effective unbilled role) to get the story behind it. She's assigned cameraman Tony Tedeschi to work with her, a stormy relationship to start with which will eventually, in tried & true B movie fashion, result in romance.
We first see Lillian as Peter Lee having sex with the corrupt mayor TIna Tyler at a government building, well-directed by Bud Lee to misdirect the audience. Later, Peter Lee's sister Quan Lee is kidnapped after Syren & Tony see Peter gunned down in an alley en route to an interview scheduled with him, and Syren in a Mercedes-Benz is sent on a suspenseful chase from phone booth to phone booth across the city in an effort to prevent Quan's death.
SUPER SPOILER:
We have seen Syren and Lillian as Quan have a strong lesbian sex scene, so the final revelation that Quan and Peter are one in the same, and Lillian Lee is a trans-female actress comes as a strong surprise, even though director Bud has carefully built up to this, especially in balancing Quan's beauty with her low voice. So instead of an audience cheat we have solid suspense.
Filmed entirely on location in San Francisco and Sausalito, the show has some ragged editing and loose ends, particularly in Syren's scenes working on her story that include a visit to a porn shoot, with director Lee and his cameraman Barry Wood briefly featured on screen. But it adds up to an unusual Adult feature involving the transsexual subplot decades before the genre has become mainstream in porn.
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