First Dates Volume 1 (2016)

I enjoyed this more than the other make-work projects by James Avalon for the Erotica X label, because each of the requisite four sex scenes has a fairly interesting and well-acted intro before the humping starts. But once again, his departure from narrative cinema into the nearly-all-sex format is enervating.

Segment titles reflect the insipid approach to Romance for Couples essayed by such a talented guy, bent on underachievement: "Unexpected", "First Time", "Something There" and "To New Ideas". No wonder there's no script credit.

We have a very attractive cast mooning at each other and the humping is fine, nothing more. Immensely overrated Abella Danger is paired with an uncharacteristically short-haired Tyler Nixon as two youngsters both nervous on their first date together, but soon pounding away as if old-timers, which in Porn Years they already are. Other than some hair-pulling, this opening segment adheres to the soft and mushy Couples approach.

Even wimpier is the lesbian coupling of Charlotte Stokely and Jessa Rhodes in the bathtub, notable for Jessa's enlarging (to good visual advantage) breasts since I'd seen her last.

Some clown insists on adding these new videos to IMDb with the list of characters just the same as the actors full stage names, which is false, and which I try to correct. In this instance, August Ames is having a date with a guy she calls Xander over the phone, but Mr. Corvus doesn't show up -instead we get the inexpressive newcomer Lucas Frost, quite a drag. Ames' extreme beauty saves this clunky segment and I can't help but wonder if Xander was scheduled for the assignment and Avalon merely left in the set-up scene even after Frost was substituted.

Finale brings a quite beautiful threesome that gives the Couples genre some legitimacy. Jean Val Jean services both tall Alexa Grace and shrimp Scarlett Sage, latter perhaps a foot shorter than Alexa. Casting is oddball, as Sage is his wife, and Grace the plaything they've both agreed to enjoy together, when logically one would expect the roles of the women to be reversed. Ultra-confident Mile High Distribution honchos, who run the Erotica X label, named this Volume 1, so we're in for more, like it or not.