Family Ties & Little White Lies

The recent resurgence in audience interest in the incest theme has generated 100s of video features exploiting the genre via step-sister, step-mother, etc. stories involving explicit sex. Florida-based Forbidden Fruits Films is a new distributor cashing in on the craze in amateurish but sometimes bold fashion.

I've studied incest in cinema for over four decades - I find it fascinating because unlike depictions of graphic sex, which has always dominated this visual medium (both in soft-core and hardcore forms) the theme of incest is purely psychological and therefore dramatic rather than "here's some nudity/here's some humping" visuals.

The current incest feature videos take the high road from porn labels like Sweet Sinner/Mile High with its ongoing series of "movies" (HDV shoots) by Nica Noelle and James Avalon, as well as similar but more gonzo efforts from Digital Sin/New Sensations directed by either Jacky St. James or Eddie Powell. At the low end of the spectrum are outfits like Devil's Films who simply crank out the same 21st Century mindless porn but have the performers briefly improvise comments about how they're related, often as loosely as their tiresome series:"It's Okay! She's My Mother in Law".

FAMILY TIES & LITTLE WHITE LIES impressed me, after watching several nondescript Forbidden Fruits features, with its audacity in slipping into the mix another taboo subject. I say slipping in because the actress involved is singularly not pictured on the DVD cover, but only buried inconspicuously on the back liner sleeve, simply because she is mucho pregnant and involved in sex with a young man, unrelated to her (rest of video is the standard step-daughter fake-incest action).

This scene featuring popping' young mama Ashlynn Taylor and untalented Justin Thyme is the sort that has been around in fetish porn from the very beginning, but watching it in the middle of a fairly mainstream video was quite surprising. After wading through the other segments devoted to star Kennedy Leigh humping her step-dad, Levi West (a regular in Florida porn, which has a severely limited male talent pool able to recite lines and stand up straight) humping his step-mom plus plenty of lesbian action, I witnessed the feature's coup de grace.

Jodi West, who stars in and writes most of the label's product, plays Ashlynn's mom in typically campy fashion. She sits Justin and her daughter down on a leather couch and lectures them, saying "I don't want to hurt the baby", and then humps Justin to supposedly demonstrate proper sexual technique so that the teens won't harm the fetus in their future sex together. This pricelessly silly bit of risqué cinema is entertaining by virtue of Jodi's terrific improvisational skills, ending with her statements to Ashlynn: "Sweetie, I'm doing this for you...It's not like I kissed him".

You gotta see it to believe it. As usual with Forbidden Fruits, technical quality and budget are rock-bottom for these videos, with basic humping on interchangeable beds and couches the norm, a throwback to the earliest porn circa 1971.