The Psychiatrist

Bree Mills' web series "Pure Taboo" is hit or miss, and this DVD compilation provides a pair of misses.

"The Psychiatrist" fails to be dramatic at all, falling into the boring category of a case history. It reminded me, unfavorably, of Ulli Lommel's misguided series of a dozen "true crime" videos he made a decade ago, renowned and reviled for their dullness.

It's a simple story of a young woman potrayed by Jill Kassidy who tries to kill her newborn baby, a result of (backstory, not shown) of incest from her dad. She's assigned a court psychiatrist after being arrested, and he procedes to force her to have sex with him in exchange for a favorable report that will help her in trial.

Bree and co-director Craven Moorehead foolishly cast as the perverted shrink Adult Cinema's all-time most overrated actor, Tommy Pistol, who takes a simple, stock role and insists on filling it with endless mannerisms, tics and other Snidely Whiplash distracting expressions of evil. For an hour every sexual abuse and stupid badgering of Jill is predictable and uninteresting, leading to his inevitable betraying his promise to her. Watching Rohmer films was once compared to watching paint dry by hipster screenwriter Alan Sharp (see: "Night Moves") but watching this hour of sludge is like observing the work of a zen painter using imaginary paint. Of course, typical of a Bree heroine, Jill is made to seem a complete idiot to put up with the psychiatrist's obvious b.s.

Supporting program "Don't Talk to Strangers" is one of those cornball so-called "cautionary tales" in which Casey Calvert, innocently asking for directions, very easily bamboozles friendly cutie Gina Valentina to going home with her and her husband Mick Blue. Again presented as a case history (with endless "4 Days Later", "5 Days Later", "Seven Days Later" titles), the mean duo abuse their prisoner, starving her into literal submission. However, in mindless porn tradition, Gina loves it when the threesome goes gonzo and has not only amazing energy but boundless orgasms when the two heavies sexually give her a repetitive workout.

Poorly scripted by Bree, relying as is her norm on awkwardly improvised dialog for the most part (though Pistol recites some boring pseudo legalisms too), the pair of features rely on the gimmick of "forced consent" rather than the perhaps censorable "forced sex" of earlier roughie porn. But Jill's and Gina's consent is unconvincing, and the overemphasis on it inevitably robs the show of even a modicum of interest. It's for subscribers to her website, who naturally develop a Pavlovian impulse to watch the same damn thing over and over and send their brains on vacation for the duration.

Technically, the most annoying aspect of the Kassidy/Pistol exercise is color grading that pushes the limit: it plays like an hour of black and white footage though not in black and white, merely with the color drained just short of actual monochrome. Maybe a few remedial film courses are in order for these auteurs?