The 8th Day (2009)

It's 2016 going on a Trump-filled 2017, and Gonzo porn rules Adult Entertainment. But sampling quality story-line XXX features from the past is enlightening, as in this fine motion picture that plays like a real movie, only with tons of explicit sex included. And that's what porn should be.

This is a post-apocalyptic bit of sci-fi, the venerable genre dating back to literature like Alas, Babylon or Earth Abides, favorite reading of my youth. Director Ren Savant/Tom Elliot keeps a serious tone for 4- 1/2 hours of running time, and the acting delivers on his faith in a solid script he penned with "Tony G".

Kayden Kross, introduced as an ideal nude beauty waking up from suspended animation, is the daughter of a scientist (played by the director himself) whose misguided efforts to create an earthly utopia instead caused a holocaust. His Zero-Point Energy Reactor upset the Earth's magnetic field, causing electricity to no longer function and killing off most of the population.

Kross appears to be in a space ship, where she humps studs Tommy Gunn and Aaron Wilcoxxx, but it turns out to be a bunker, near the L.A. storm sewers, and when she ventures outside the "Brave New World" is a photogenic (courtesy of the great star Kylie Ireland doubling as production designer) barren wasteland.

Kross's adventures center around two unsavory characters who take the beauty sequentially as a slave. Tyler Knight with a fascinating uber-Mr. T haircut and braids humps her first for interracial sex content, and then the late, great actress Amber Rayne steals her away and treats her to Sapphic pleasure. Rayne also delivers some great d.p. action in a subsequent threesome scene.

Lording it over the flies is Ameatabh Bachan in a terrific non-sex performance as Prince Amir, who holds a group of survivors in thrall in his cult-like Elysium Fields in the desert. High point of the script for me was when his right-hand Vizier played by H.M. Smith recites for the crowd some beliefs of this Luddite society, condemning: "Cursed be the TV, the CDs and the Internets. Cursed be the Gates, the Jobs and the Linux".

Plenty of arousing sex scenes are integrated into Kayden's saga, including Kylie Ireland in a hot sex scene of her own. Lavish production, which was issued on 4 DVDs in the manner of Adam & Eve's previous all-time hit with Digital Playground "Pirates", also features numerous porno greats behind the camera ranging from Ireland to Lexi Lamour and Nikki Hunter. With the possible exception of Brad Armstrong over at Wicked, Adult Entertainment doesn't support large-scale projects like this one anymore.

I especially liked the ending of "The 8th Day", which is set up well earlier on and delivers the nihilistic saga's exclamation point in a manner that mainstream "visionary" (how I hate that term!) filmmakers should envy. Highly recommended.