I've become a big fan of Stormy Daniels the filmmaker, thanks to her single-handed work to bring back conventional Hollywood genre movies. "Wanted", a big project (compared to most contemporary porn) from Wicked Pictures and Adam & Eve Pictures plays like a last gasp at serious feature films from two venerable pillars of Adult Cinema aimed at couples.
Allie Haze sums up the problem succinctly in the lengthy BTS interviews of Disk Two of this set: she laments not being able to work on big features much anymore (as of 2015; the matter's gotten much worse subsequently) due to the encroachment of so much all-sex internet porn. That's true: even Stormy has left Wicked for chintzier assignments at other labels, leaving only Brad Armstrong there to mount would-be "blockbusters".
Her script for "Wanted" covers many cliches of the traditional Western, including the trek, a corrupt sheriff, conniving over an inheritance, fleeing a posse, a treasure map, Eastwood-esque shooting the rope to prevent a hanging, etc., but predictably with a feminist twist of the lead protagonists being women. Her own equestrian skills, most recently shown in her Wicked features "Unbridled" and "Vendetta", extend to the rest of the femme cast, with Anikka Albrite, Allie Haze and Amber Rayne all standing tall in the saddle.
It is Stormy's inclusion of actual action scenes, arresting landscape, interesting story material and strong characterizations that are sorely lacking in porn these days. Kudos to Kylie Ireland and her mate Andy Appleton for quality art direction and detail, extending to atmospheric costuming.
I especially was pleased with the excellent performance by Amber Rayne as Stormy's friend, styled mannishly with elements of an Indian maid in her dress, and contributing a hot sexual threesome with Native American characters ably personified by Tommy Gunn and an adventurous casting of Filipino-American Mia Li.
Odd footnote here, certainly unforeseen at time of production, is Stormy's co-star and husband Brendon Miller given such a prominent presence in the show as her dramatic and rom-com adversary over the course of the story. He even performs a title song, enshrined in a music video on Disk Two. They subsequently split during the Trump hush-money scandal.
A really nice touch here is listing all the extras on the show in the end credits crawl, including a favorite of mine Lucky Starr, who even is accorded a brief interview for her fleeting atmosphere-extra role in a saloon scene set in New Orleans.
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