Masquerade

Alongside such names as Aiden Starr and Julie Simone, Anastasia Pierce is a pre-eminent example of fetish boot-strapping (I couldn't resist the almost-pun), taking her acting career behind the camera to become a leading purveyor of bondage/fetish porn. "Masquerade" shows her visual ideas and style when it comes to the genre, but they are wasted in service of one big nothing of a video.

Pierce is a mistress (I was going to type master, naturally) of cosplay, with an ongoing series of silly Superheroine videos which have the distinction of ripping off Marvel and DC in equal measure, often at the same time. Here she's flying blind with just the carnival masques (suitable for Venice) as her main prop.

So we get a series of lovely fetish models, Pierce included, acting out their dom/sub thing wearing attractive masks and alluring costumes. It's all filler and largely XXX, unlike the thousands of predecessor soft-core videos in this genre. I can't complain about watching great performers like Jewell Marceau do their thing, but even the mindless skits of traditional "damsel in distress" bondage shows or Pierce's weird tales of Princess Leia and Wonder Woman hold one's attention better than this "gaze at the pretty pictures" DVD.