Gays had the groundbreaking BOYS IN THE SAND, so it's only fitting that lesbians, or at least fans of girl/girl videos, should get MERMAIDS AND UNICORNS, a fanciful backyard movie from actress/director Madison Young. I suggest Ms. Young enroll in film school, pronto, as the p*ss-poor technique interferes with her intended atmospherics.
She earns plenty of brownie points for concept: role-playing with the trappings of the title mythical creatures having lesbian sex. It's a bit screwy especially regarding the unicorns, but I've always wondered whether mermaids or mermen mating with humans falls into the realm of bestiality or just the usual I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE strangeness. I guess only the Greek gods (where are they now that the Eurozone needs them?) know for sure.
First episode is the best -in terms of planning, casting and realization. Lorelei Lee is stunning in both beauty and sexual prowess as an ultra-blonde mermaid, making love to a sailor (Beretta James briefly in drag as a man) on a windy beach with an artistic backdrop mural/statue giving the scene a timeless quality. The sex is torrid and even includes brief fisting (with black vinyl glove worn for cleanliness or fetish purpose). Having the mermaid as the dom and the sailor as a stoic submissive is an original touch.
What's wrong with the entire 2-1/2 hour feature starts here, unfortunately. The cameraman's shadow (camera looks teeny, not very professional) covers the action for a lengthy period, quite distracting and amateur night and never corrected. Main problem is that Young eschews editing, likes a one-camera shoot with zero coverage, so the sex acts are more documented than directed. Camera wobbles and jitters and even seems drunken at times, just sloppy and the viewer (and filmmakers) are stuck with it -there's nothing to cutaway to. This level of primitivism (so popular in horror movies for reasons that escape me) has always left me cold and has no place in an erotic, ethereal fantasy.
The other let-down is that Madison doesn't really care about fantasy, as evidenced in this segment and later mermaid action by the actresses arbitrarily removing (or ridiculously cutting holes with knives) their lower half costumes to reveal legs, and even the feet give rise to foot fetish action. While foot worship is certainly an erotic turn-on, worshiping a mermaid's feet is an oxymoron and is obviously moronic here. Yes, we know they're role playing but like the plays CATS or THE LION KING we're supposed to believe in the fantasy.
Madison herself and Eva Darling play a pair of mermaids in the second vignette, staged indoors and awfully down to earth. The knife-wielding to cut holes (to permit cunnilingus and fingering) was more frightening to me (RUNNING WITH SCISSORS time) than sexy, but then again I'm not into pain or threatened pain/mutilation.
The remaining two segments feature unicorns and were educational, but not in a good sense. Nikki Darling is a Black unicorn, abused for half an hour or so by beautiful dom Isis Love (she chose her name years before Islamic State rendered it a no-no) in the kitchen. The nonsense that goes on between them probably should be kept private, but apparently Madison conceives of a unicorn as a horsey to be ridden around with a saddle, a bit in its teeth and whipped liberally, plus some humiliation and constant verbal abuse thrown in. Staging this in a kitchen is the opposite of fantasy, and people (crew members) wander around occasionally by mistake (seen through an open door) and end up in the finished print. Nikki is a veteran of bondage/fetish outings, and her PUSSY WHIPPED 3 bears a different connotation than that term usually suggests.
Beretta returns in the finale, this time as a stoic unicorn who makes love to dom Missy Minks. Like Nikki, this unicorn wears boxing gloves, another fetish I had never thought of. At least this vignette is sensual and non-violent compared to the Nikki/Isis BDSM episode.
I give Madison Young high marks for eroticism but methinks this mermaid shot herself in the foot when it comes to rudimentary film (or should I say video) technique.
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