Porn of the Dead

Britain's current top Adult Cinema director Dick Bush looks handsome in a leading man acting role as the spiritualist of "Porn of the Dead", its title the only connection to the frequently punned George A. Romero classic. No zombies at all, but a ghost story, replete with seance and ouija board instead.

Directed by Bush's frequent crew member Blacky Mendez, "Dead" is presented as a TV show, similar to those awful ghost hunter exercises that in America inexplicably are shoe-horned into the science fiction realm as filler for the Syfy channel (fka Scifi Channel).

Superstar of early 21st Century Brit Porn Renee Richards is the TV host, named Yvonne Feely, visiting a crummy practical set that looks like a rundown abandoned hospital or barracks facility of some sort. It doesn't deliver the creepy atmosphere intended, for which some gloomy old British mansion or perhaps a Corman-esque castle in Scotland or Ireland would have been perfect. If these Brit auteurs had any real affection for modern film history they would have cast Franki as a Barbara Steele lookalike and given us Mario Bava style instead of the cheap & crummy look here.

An extremely motley group of explorers go through the clichés of the genre, notably splitting up the group so they can be attacked by the ghosts. Even the seance is bungled, held standing up rather than at a table with a ouija board integrated into the process -utter rubbish.

So I must report, for the hundredth or so time, that solid talent is wasted, ranging from Euro standouts Claudia Rossi and Carla Cox to homegrown beauties like Cate Harrington and Casey Jo. For ethnic content there's Leah Jaye, back in Blighty after making innumerable junkers in Chatsworth.