Change Your Image
lor_
Served as Chairman, New York Film Critics Circle: 1993/94.
Favorite interviews were with: Michael Douglas, Sophia Loren, DeForest Kelley, Joan Chen, Joe Henderson, Ismail Merchant, Klaus Kinski, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Spike Lee, Malcolm McDowell, Zoe Lund, Melvin Van Peebles, Ultra Violet, Wolfgang Petersen, Claudia Cardinale, Serge Silberman, Margarethe von Trotta, Alec Guinness, Leonard Nimoy, Susan George, Joseph Losey, Gale Anne Hurd, Dennis Hopper, Peter Greenaway, Katt Shea, Ken Russell, Maggie Greenwald, Jim Jarmusch, Peter Brook, Jurgen Prochnow, Andy Warhol, Judy Davis, Chuck Vincent, Fred Zinnemann, Wim Wenders, Max Von Sydow, Michael Moore, Terry Gilliam, Rita Jenrette, Karen Lynn Gorney, Bruce Beresford, Jack Thompson, Russ Meyer, Sam Raimi, Abel Ferrara, John Sayles, William Greaves, Nino Manfredi, Lee Van Cleef, Michael Cuscuna, Bille August, Jewel Shepard, Andy Sidaris, Michel Deville, Claude Sautet, Claude Lelouch, Alfonso Arau, Alan Parker, Reinhard Hauff, Traci Lords, Jim Jarmusch, Martha Coolidge, Candida Royalle, Giuseppe Tornatore, Edward James Olmos, Paul Hogan, John Mackenzie, Peter Hyams, Jennifer Beals,, Adrian Lyne, Samuel Fuller, Dario Argento, James Toback, Lasse Hallstrom, Fred Williamson, Gabriel Axel, Joe Bastianich, Aaron Sanchez, Danny Meyer, Steve Hanson, Matthew Kenney, Douglas Rodriguez, Simon Oren, Stanley Donen, Lindsay Anderson, Helena Bonham Carter, Edward Pressman, Harold Becker, Larry Cohen, James Ivory, Jack O'Connell, Michael Phillips, Kevin McClory, Jackie Mason, Joan O'Brien, Stanley Donen, Joseph B. Vasquez, Don Bluth, William Lustig, Al Goldstein, Simon Wincer, Valeria Cavalli, Dave Fishelson, Lizzie Borden, Roberta Findlay, Rob Cohen, Doris Wishman, Robert Tapert, Bruce Campbell, Bill Cosby, Pasquale Squitieri, Menahem Golan, Yoram Globus, Tim Kincaid, Joel M. Reed, Gregory Dark, T.L. Lankford, Fred Olen Ray, Victoria Paige Meyerink, Lawrence D. Foldes, Rick Marx & Ted V. Mikels
Reviews
Eating Her (2024)
Unappetizing
I don't know a thing about decision making at the porn platform Adult Time, but this VOD release is a real head-scratcher. To me it represents either incompetent or misleading marketing.
Labeled as "an original Girlsway production", it is not. The two segments were previously released in 2022, one from Girlfriends Films and the other from Holly Randall Productions. Girlsway was not involved at all.
B. Skow directed the Girlfriends segment, part of a VOD titled "Lesbian Daughter In-Laws 2". It's a particularly poor segment that features busty brunettes Crystal Rush and Vanessa Moon. It's a lousy scene that might as well have been shot all-sex.
The other segment is just a visual version of a Holly Randall interview podcast, in which porn star Violet Myers covers her career and biographical material. That content is not pornographic at all, and was made available (for free) on YouTube, whereas the new VOD costs money either complete or by-the-minute.
Since everything here is already currently available either from YouTube or the Girlfriends website, I wonder what's the point of Adult Time reissuing such mundane content.
Will and Ed's Bogus Gang Bang (1992)
Worse than expected
Porn parodies are usually bad, but this one (in a series) is worse than that. Back in 1992 the joke was on us fans who rented from our local porn store, and watching it now is sort of a nostalgic insult.
Wayne Summers doesn't get a screen credit (or deserve one) as George, the host, who wears a hat to hide his familiar balding dome. He claims to control the boys, dear Will and Ed, sort of played by Biff Malibu and Cal Jammer.
Wayne keeps popping up to explain the non-story to us, and Cal Jammer has most of the sex, Malibu being left out of most of the action in this edition. Cal has sex with an unlikely cop played by Courtney, and then Courtney uses his cell-phone (rather than a time machine) to call up Cleopatra, who shows up on set as Angela Summers. I was trying to get over Courtney as cop, and now had to suffer through busty blonde Angela as Cleopatra. She and Courtney seem to be endlessly improvising boring and silly dialogue as Cleo finds out about the modern world, and of course they have lesbian sex together.
The awful video keeps going and soon, after Cal gets to hump Cleo, a lengthy group sex scene finishes it off. The pornographers are so dumb they confuse group sex with a gang-bang, what we see has nothing whatsoever to do with a gang-bang -it's 3 girls and 3 guys having sex as couples.
Wayne butts in and tells of a sequel to watch out for, about Spring Break. Thank God I avoided all of these stinkers back in the day!
Primal Desires (1993)
Cosplay, anyone?
Mike Horner fails to be funny (not for the first time) in this porn comedy about his search for evidence of an ancient tribe, making like Margaret Mead. It's dumb.
Saving grace is Teri Diver as his wife, looking great and very sexy. Horner ruins the opening sex scene with her, as he does his exaggerated physical shtick while pumping away, clearly exaggertated for the camera (like so many other popular but overworked sex workers like Manuel Ferrara and Tommy Pistol, who have picked up bad habits such as "opening up" to give the camera a better view of private parts). Fortunately, she follows up with a hot lesbian scene with P. J. Sparxx.
The video makes fun of cheapness, using a model plane on a string for that mandatory transition footage as Horner travels to a remote location. Instead of a jungle or exotic looking locale (say, Papua New Guinea), Horner and his assistant Sparxx wander a bit in a wooded area and find the cavemen and cavewomen humping away outdoors dressed in Ricky's style caveman costumes.
I was a bit suspicious when the cavewomen had no pubic hair (even P. J. was natural looking) and their leader Micky Ray was obviously wearing a Fabio-styled wig. Sure enough, Micky eventually admits that they're fake - he leads a group called Prime Encounters that merely provides trips to the wild for fun-seekers, delivering group sex out in the wilderness.
Assy 3 (1997)
Weak vignettes
Jim Powers made this rather silly set of 4 vignettes for the same producer (Jeff Steward) of his classic series "Perverted Stories", and it's definitely second-rate.
Jonathan Morgan hams it up as the boss in a threesome scene starring lovely Chandler. She asks him for a raise and he calls in another employee at his real estate agency (Christian Steele) and forces her to have a 3-way. The lousy set is just some furniture in a home's living room and at one point Jonathan jokes that he'd have phoned a customer if he only had a phone (his tiny desk has no phone on it). Segment is titled "Asking for a Raise" and as with all the scenes, emphasizes anal sex.
"Let's Get Physical" has Brooke Ashley exercising in her living room when a trainer she advertised for shows up. It's Billy Glide and seconds later she's seduced him, asking for anal sex of course.
In "First Time Lesbians", Caressa Savage is looking mighty sexy taking a bath, when her friend Delphine Lavelle (an attractive, quite obscure actress) comes in the bathroom and they chat about neglectful men. No surprise that Caressa seduces her and some large dildos help them get off together. One dildo is equipped to pump fake cum, more like the perverted content Powers is known for.
Finale is "My Wedding Day", featuring blonde Lexi Leigh, who has jitters about her impending marriage. Typical of the low-brow script, she's scared of giving up random sex encounters, and calls in Tony (Black stud Devlin Weed) to service her, giving fetishists a little "sex wearing a wedding gown" action. Her groom Jeremy Iron (now there's an uncreative porn stage name), briefly complains and then joins in for another 3-way.
Le olimpiadi dei mariti (1960)
Poor taste comedy that Ugo can't save
Ugo Tognazzi's admirable skills as a fast-talking con man comedian (nicely teamed with Raimondo Vianello) are on display in this extremely dated situation comedy ostensibly tied to the 1960 Rome Olympic Games. As an artifact, its main interest beyond watching Tognazzi in action is how it demonstrates the changes that have occurred over the decades in what is considered risque and what is in poor taste.
He plays a newspaper reporter, with Raimondo as his pal and staff photographer for the paper, who keep getting into trouble due to their womanizing, cheating on their wives. During the Olympics, Ugo's wife and family are on vacation, allowing him to fool around (with his apartment empty) while they're away.
Immediately obvious is the central comedy premise: that Italian men stick together when it comes to sex outside of marriage; even Ugo's boss, the paper's editor, has to keep coming to his defense when wives start asking serious questions about what their husbands have been doing.
But the central comedy motif turns out to be an endless mocking of German tourists in Rome to attend the Olympics, underscoring an uneasy relationship, 15 years after WW II ended, between Italians and the history of their fatal alliance with the Nazis.
It starts off as ridiculous but becomes nearly unwatchable how the movie becomes a full hour of comedy based on not merely the language barrier between the Germans and the Italians but ultimately a silly fabrication that Hitler is still alive, used to fool the wives. I was literally shocked to watch this take over the entire film, leading to the buffoonish German tourists turn out to be neo-Nazis (!), Ugo pretending to have been undercover on the Hitler's Alive story, showing his wife a huge Swastika tattoo on his back, and even a truly idiotic ending of the "real" Hitler showing up, still alive, after the Neo-Nazis attempt to gas our heroes tied up in their apartment, which explodes!
Besides the glut of hundreds if not thousands of strictly local-audience aimed foreign comedies being produced in the 1960s, it's obvious why this one was never imported to America. In fact, Ugo starred in nine comedies in 1960, including two co-starring that memorable American singer Abbe Lane, and none of them (I believe) were exported to the USA.
Oopsie!: Night Classes (2024)
The usual "Oopsie!" content
The chief "Oopsie!" performer Izzy Wilde is "all growed up", no longer a waif wearing braces but now cast as the "older woman" teacher of a night class in Adult-Ed Economics, attended by Leana Lovings (odd casting for adult education as she still looks underage) and newcomer Little Puck, a busty lookalike for fans of Mercedes Carrera.
The set-up scene, in tried and true slient pantomime/slapstick form, gets down to business almost immediately as within a minute Izzy has delivered a couple of sight gags, not wearing any knickers under her skirt and putting a wad of confiscated bubble gum on her erect cock for Leana to suck, plus handing Puck a large strap-on dildo for Puck to immediately peg the teacher standing up.
So the full half-hour of f*cking that follows, with Izzy talking almost constantly in her familiar improv fahsion, is rather dull, merely with series director Stella Smut putting the gals through their frequent "change positions" motions. Finale is not the expected (nowadays) creampie but rather a throwback to early porn: Izzy simulating on her face the throes of an orgasm, with her dick in Puck's mouth, followed by Puck dribbling lots of cum all over herself, fake as can be.
This points up a major "Oopsie!" drawback -it's not effectively comedic, unless a closeup of bubblegum on top of an erect dick is inherently a knee-slapper, while the usual porn result of an actual money shot or perhaps a convincing creampie is absent. The absence of "story" and characterizations remains a given.
The Big Caper (1957)
Engaging crime movie
Rory Calhoun stars in a different sort of role for the handsome hero -caught up in a crime caper that -guess what- goes awry. The United Artists picture may lack the style of "Rififi" or the big-budget Clooney films, but its interesting characters make for an entertaining ride.
Rory has a great get-rich-quick heist in mind - grab the weekly payroll sent for an army base that is kept at a small local bank. He goes to an old colleague, cool (but slippery) James Gregory to put together the team to pull off the caper, and the guys he hires are a colorful lot.
Chief scene stealer is Robert H. Harris, a guy who looks crooked at first glance, constantly getting drunk on gin yet oddly in charge of explosives! Throw in the fact that he's a pyromaniac and you have just the right guy to mess up a mission. (Harris was a frequent actor in the live TV series "Suspense", piloted by this movie's director Robert Stevens.)
A young Corey Allen (later to become a top TV director) has an even showier role, a little hard to pigeon hole, but basically Gregory's all-purpose helper. These two roles bring in a certain sleaze factor, familiar from low-budget movies but definitely down market for a major studio (UA) release.
The pitfalls of crime are well-demonstrated, and a central motif of Rory and Gregory's girl (my in-joke reference for the day) Mary Costa posing for months as man and wife anticipates some classic movies using that shtick, like the Inger Stevens TV movie "The Borgia Stick".
Recommended for many reasons, but I'm seriously tired of every crime film (it seems) being tagged a "film noir" for marketing purposes. This is not a noir at all, and despite the false advertising, there's no femme fatale in the cast.
Transfixed: Uncaged Lust (2024)
The art of the tease
My favorite Transfixed vignette in ages, "Uncaged Lust" is noteworthy for sustained eroticism: usually these overlong scenes peter out (sorry!) after 20 minutes or so. The secret is Queenie Sateen's skill as a dominatrix, who withholds and rewards her sex slave Erica Cherry, never stepping out of character.
Erica's ability to be concincing in her pleading for sexual release is the other key component, as we watch the odd practice of a cockcage worn by a TS star (Erica). Under Queenie's orders she's worn it for 2 full months, and it's time to release the Kraken.
I'm not a fan of Squirting (as fake as pro wrestling), But Queenie puts on quite a show of it here, adding some kink to the scene. Her handling of Erica's big dick one it's been freed is textbook porn.
Scandalous: Scene 2 (2024)
Lotsa sex, one flimsy clue
I loved the creative, glamorous costuming for this threeesome segment of Danny D's Digital Playground series "Scandalous", but as I expected, the balance between narrative and XXX action is too heavily tilted to the sex action. What emergers is a glossy BDSM lite scene.
Catherine Knight, playing the PM of fictional country Salid, is interrogated by detective Danny, and reveals in a lengthy flashback how her party host Ella Hughes arranged for her to be serviced by Juan Lucho and Marina Maya. First, the hot couple does a demo of one of Ella's new line of sex toys for the assembled group, an egg-shaped vibrator working via remote control.
Maya does the talking, and soon we see the PM Knight is a willing sub as the duo have their way with her, replete with blindfold, flogging, but mainly sex. Lucho's copious money shot on the ladies faces is repeated in slow motion, a device director Danny D has been treated to as a performer in many a Brazzers vignette.
A brief coda finally gives a teeny weeny bit of relevance to Knight's testimony, as she tells Danny that one partygoer was noticeably absent from the crowd who found the victim's body -the Queen played by Valentina Nappi, setting her up as Danny's next subject for interrogation.
Don't Tell Mom (2024)
Less than meets the eye
Not one of the MissaX website's better moments, "Don't Tell Mom" is an unconvincing story of an incestuous relationship that may be coming to an end. The dramatics of Maddy Burton's script don't ring true, with lust the most significant ingredient at work. Action is set at the familiar "Immoral Proposal" mansion.
Isabella Nice certainly looks young and innocent, but her behavior belies this surface impression. She's the teen who originally seduced her stepdad (Tommy Pistol) and when she decides to leave him and go out on her own, he won't give her up without a fight.
His insistence that he'll tell her mother about their affair, pegging her as the instigator, unless she stays carries some weight, and we're treated to a lengthy, hot and heavy sex scene by the duo. What will ultimately happen? The conclusion is well-directed by Craven Moorehead, but the acting here fails to create believable characters, as they appear more one-dimensional in a familiar "sex is all" emphasis.
Een pak slaag (1979)
Simple, sly artistry
Bert Haanstra is one of my all-time favorite directors, famed for his documentaries and short films but his four fiction features have been completely disregarded. It's a shame they never traveled far outside of Holland.
I saw "Dr. Pulder Sows Poppies" at the Toronto Film Festival in 1977 and loved it, but it's taken me another 47 years to see his next (and last) feature "Eek Pak Slaag", available on a Dutch DVD boxed set devoted to him.
The title translates as "A Sound Thrashing", hardly suitable as a title so it is known as "Mr. Slotter's Jubilee" (I guess title echoes of the Tati classic "Mr. Hulot's Holiday"?).
Written by Anton Koolhaas from his own novel, it's a rather amazing study of human nature, loaded with colorful characters and expertly directed by Haanstra with an ensemble of talented, stage-trained actors. He observes their foibles, defects and underlying big hearts in a fashion that sticks with you. Nothing flashy or spectacular, but as an accompanying, brief "Making of" short film demonstrates, very creatively shot.
Overall, Koolhaas is satirizing the types of personalities who get ahead in a corporate setting, even though this setting is decidedly not high-tech or high-pressure, but instead a family business manufacturing baby carriages. Stage great Peter Steenbergen plays Slieps, the founder of the namesake company, who is now thought to be senile, but still has some of his wits about him.
Event is the 25th anniversary of his protege Kees Brusse (underplaying throughout) running the business. He's an aloof boss nobody really likes, so a bunch of employees led by Jeroen Krabbe (the only cast member to make it big internationally when Dutch cinema caught on around this time) decide to honor his jubilee celebration with an underhanded, mean-spirited prank. They had "punked" him (to use the latter-day Ashton Kutcher term) with a small herd of sheep ushered into his office by a guy styled as Abraham from the Bible four years before on Slotter's 50th birthday, so why not embarrass the tight-ass guy again?
This plan backfires, and the latter reels of the movie are highly original, as we witness a combination of pathos, black humor, and thought-provoking soul-searching by the two main protagonists Slotter and Slieps. I found it tremendously moving, and casting of even the smallest roles is spot on.
Haanstra (and his prime collaborator here Anton Koolhaas) is a humanist, and his work is refreshing as an antidote to today's cynical approach.
Girls of the Double D 5 (1989)
Ron's dumb sense of humor
This series is designed to satisfy the fans, perhaps the most constant group of porn fanciers, who like to stare at women with massive knockers. Angel Cruz more than fills that description and her floppy all-natural moneymakers earn her star billing.
Director Ron Jeremy tries to connect the vignettes together with some poor gimmicks. For example, the movie opens with Francois Papillon narrating a purported flashback of him in Southeast Asia at war, humping a beautiful daughter of some big shot, played by his frequent co-star Kascha (I have fond memories of renting and watching her videos way back when). She looks great here, and in the next scene, Rick Daniels wakes up and it turns out it was his dream we were watching, not Francois's memory.
He gets to f*ck his pretty wife Chapagne, and later she goes to the doctor Dr. Cruz and Angel day dreams that she can have sex with Champagne.
Unfortunately, Ron himself shows up in the video as a jogger who humps Dr. Cruz. Then the truly awful subplot is introduced of an uncredited Black non-actor visiting Dr. Cruz, but saying in the waiting room that he only likes Jewish doctors, so he hightails it out of there as soon as Dr. Cruz (big and Black) shows up instead.
Outside the Humana hospital (hardly the sort of product placement the big medical chain would want), Tom Byron chides the Black dude for not letting Cruz examine him because now he has no papers proving that he's "clean'. He and Tom show up at Trinity Loren's home and she asks to see their papers, so when the guy comes up empty-handed he has to play the traditional cuckold role -forced to watch as Trinity rejects him and humps only Tom. Excuse me, but I forgot to laugh.
Girls of the Double D 6 (1989)
Thanks for nothing, Ron
Most of the credits are phony on this truly worthless Ron Jeremy video. The best one can say of it is that Ron does not appear, merely directing under the pseudonym "Nicolas Pera".
Premise makes no sense: a guy who lives in a house filled with bric a brac decorations including many vintage movie posters comes up with a contest offering $100,000 to the model who gives the best interview (what??). We watch porn studs as interviewers, who cannot resist humping the model before the interview makes much progress, so the guy decides to keep his money and trophy.
Why interviews would be so valuable is not addressed, since the whole video is just a crock, an excuse to show sex scenes all ending in a money shot onto the model's breasts. Busty Bell easily is breast in show (if an award for that were being offered) but what amazed me is how bored all the performers, especially the guys seemed to be, reciting dialogue as if under protest.
The interviewers get to have sex except for John Stagliano (who is particularly bored and boring), who instead listens to Trinity Loren tell of humping handsome Barry Wood (the camera whiz) in a flashback. Wallice question two girls, the lucky stiff.
Lesbian PsychoDramas 41 (2024)
A variety of situations
Only one or two of the four vignettes in Volume 41 of this Girlfriends Film series involves drama, but there's a strong dramatic sense running through the entire, nearly 4 hours long, video.
Serene Siren and Alison Rey portray lovers preparing to get married, but the fly in the ointment is Siren's past. She was previously in love with Sabrina, and since Sabrina got married to a man, Serene donated some of her own eggs to the couple to help them with fertility issues. Sabrina is pregnant, and when Alison finds out she's alarmed that it may be Serene's baby, making her insanely jealous. It looks like their marriage is off, but it turns out to have been an egg from another donor that did the job. Yet, Serene insists on being the baby's godmother, once again irritating Rey.
Surprisingly, Alison won't let her fiancee off the hook -the marriage is off, but she okays one last roll in the hay. This segment is relatively complex emotionally, but director B. Skow ends the scene after the orgasms are all done, but leaves the pair's future up in the air -will Alison relent and marry SS?
A different situation confronts newcomers Emily Norman and Addison Vodka (now there's a stage name for you! Emily is beside herself when her boyfriend stands her up for a date, compounding the situation when he posts a photo online of him out with another girl. Her roommate Addison suggests that revenge is in order, so she dresses up like a boy for some play-acting: the duo pose for photos together to post on-line to get the boyfriend jealous.
But the intimate poses result in a hot lesbian scene by the contrasting couple: Addison is a beanpole, while Emily has a zoftig, plus-size figure. Sapphic romance eliminates the boyfriend issues.
A highly compatible couple stars in a vignette about being bicurious. Summer Hart is auditioning with star actress Kayla Kayden for a part in her new show, and they do a reading together acting out several scenes. One is a lesbian love scene, and Kayla has trouble getting into the role, so Summer, who is lesbian, volunteers to teach her how a lesbian would play it.
A surprising plot twist occurs when Kayla reveals she can't do such an intimate scene without first having really had sex with her acting partner. No problem - that's A-OK with Summer, and the resulting coupling is a beaut.
Final scene maximizes tease, making it probably the most erotic of the set of four. A new MILF, Krystal Sparks. Is recovering from breast enhancement surgery, and young Aubree Valentine is living with her as a temporary caretaker. Not only is Aubree impressed with Krystal's new triple-Ds, but the viewer as well, and judging from 2023 stills of Krystal's, it appears that she has recently had the surgery -not just a plot gimmick.
Both ladies are horny but shy throughout the first 20-minute set-up of this lengthy (hour-plus) vignette, relieving themselves by msturbating, until finally Krystal asks Aubree to help her fall asleep by using a vibrator. Of course, a full-blown sex scene results, and miraculously (only in porn), the pain in Krystal's pair of recovering moneymakers has disappeared.
Bright Lights Big Titties (1988)
Cynical and self-serving
Trinity Loren stars, but several obscure but massive-breasts actresses are featured in this mammary feature, borrowing its title from Michael J. Fox. Surprise credit is John Stagliano as cinematographer, taking time out briefly from his butt fixation.
The dancing footage provides some softcore relief from endless XXX casting couch filler, in service of a stupid story line. Marc Wallice and pals are pulling the familiar scam of posing as show biz employers, and just fooling the girls into having sex with them. After being fooled several times herself, Trinity discovers the scam, finds Wallice's wallet and gives some of the girls a decent $500 payday just for their audition/casting couch action. It's probably simple racism that the two bustiest strippers, Black and Arabic, get no money from Trinity. Crappy ending has the boys not chastened but planning their next scam - a casting calls for ladies to appear in a nonexistent kung fu movie. Final shot has lines flubbed, and they do the scene over, all the footage left in the print.
Barry Wood, as a fake producer is handsome enough to play Rod Stewart in a film, but is better-known as a quality porn cameraman.
Between a Rock and a Hot Place (1989)
Random scenes, loosely linked
A pointless "catchy" title for a series of five sex scenes where people talk about a previous scene (gossiping) as the sole connection from one segment to another. Extensive technical credits are listed but NO director.
Most cryptic element for me was a shot of Charisma looking quite beautiful during the opening credits: she never shows up after this and is not listed in the credits.
Instead, Carol Cummings stars, having a sex dream about making love to her man Frank James; he's mad at her for cheating but makes up with her after she awakes. Dean James is bored but has sex with Arcie Miller at her request -she reminds me of current star Alison Rey.
Nikki Knights has sex in her kitchen with nympho Bridgette Monroe, and in an unrelated scene, Bridgette (billed as "Paulina Down") is on her doorstep being eaten out by Ron Jeremy, when Tony Montana suddenly appears (he's billed as Jo Jo for some reason), he punches Ron out and takes over humping her.
Fans are supposed to watch this sort of random junk with a straight face, but I found it totally mystifying.
The Butt Sisters Do Chicago (1995)
What the hell was that all about?
A meaningless title for a meaningless porn video. Steve Drake co-stars and hogs all the credits, but from the meager results he should have left his name off.
Even stag movies have a stronger, more interesting plot than here. Opening has Drake and wife Morgan LeFay making love in bed -she gets a phone call from Nikki Sinn who is coming to visit. Drake mentions he was nearly mugged/car-jacked but nothing happened -this dialogue is used to set up the boring ending of the movie.
Nikki arrives and tries a thick accent, apparently she's playing a European character. Steve schedules a party and all the guests have sex.
That's the whole movie, with a bit of small talk and apparently set in Chicago. Why Drake made such a nonsensical video (apart from making a few bucks) is hard to fathom.
Satin Angels (1987)
Bucolic romance, with a twist
A rather laid-back sexual romance aimed at what was called the Couples genre back in the day, this John T. Bone feature doesn't go for his usual Gonzo content, but instead is a rather remote, "posh" affair, almost saved by an effective surprise ending.
Bone has a cameo as the chauffeur, as Sam Strong visits her cousin Patricia's ranch. Frankie Leigh, billed with an odd stage name of Sparkle Denzmore, haughtily runs the place, very condescending to everyone but hot in the sack. Strong doesn't fit in, but since she's the star of the movie has plenty of sex.
It's an uneventful screenplay, but Bone tries to make things interesting with a tiny bit of kink -you can't keep a gonzo boy down. For example, in Strong's two sex scenes with studly ranch hand Shone Taylor, she gets off when Shone uses a noisy portable sander on her pussy instead of a vibrator, and later gets slightly violent with her while having sex in the kitchen. A running gag has John Leslie wandering around the house nude, embarrassing everyone slightly.
Leigh's ex-husband is played by Leslie, who currently is married to Taija Rae, and they all happily live (and f*ck) together. Nina DePonca plays the sexy Black maid, and not appearing on screen is Sam's Aunt Marie, who invited her to stay while the aunt is in hospital. This complicated menage is sorted out in the final scene.
The glamorous costumes and uppity manner differs from the usual porn movie (putting this one squarely into the Porno Chic category), but it could have benefited from a stronger, more dramatic story.
The Tempest (1993)
This ain't Shakespeare
A very early Sin City release, "The Tempest" is a Couples movie, very simply depicting period romance, in out of fancy old costumes. I watched in a German-dubbed print, released in Germany by the genius who made Sarah Young and Teresa Orlowski superstars in their day, Sascha Alexander.
Sunset Thomas and a porn nonentity named Jack Bear rummage through their attic and find old mementoes in a trunk, prime among them some books. Reading aloud, they introduce a series of sex vignettes with familiar porn stars playing the roles, and looking fine all dressed up in Victorian era styled costumes.
The romantic approach works, even though there's very little story here -it reflects pornogtapher Paul Norman, who usually stresses gimmickry, doing a sincere job sticking to the basics. Though Sunset is the star, I was especially glad to see Rebecca Bardoux with her original natural body look.
WandaVision (2021)
Misses the boat
Running about six hours in total, this Marvel miniseries streamed by Disney+ is a disappointing mixture of parody and trite superhero nonsense, clearly designed to delight Marvel fanatics, and nobody else.
The format of living in a fantasy, ever-evolving sitcom, which spans several decades of nostalgia is slightly amusing at first (taking very, very easy targets of the slapstick of early TV as well as the quaint morays of the times), but becomes tedious in its endless teasing of a real story, that spans science fiction, comic-book style, special effects and ultimately corny notions of witchcraft.
The overacting is intentional and the viewer is invited to laugh at the characters, then later on supposedly empathize with them. If you've drunk and become addicted to the Marvel Kool-Aid, it has its moment. If not, it seems ridiculous and more self-parody than mocking those still beloved shows like "I Love Lucy".
WandaVision: The Series Finale (2021)
Anticlimax
Lots and lots of old-hat battles between superbeings eat up plenty of running time for half of this finale segment. I doubt if newly budget-conscious Disney will be wasting this much money on nonsense content like this in future.
None of it makes much sense, but then again modern audiences apparently will swallow anything. Take that classic "The Matrix" for example: the gender-bending brothers (nka sisters) came up with some original ideas, but reducing everything to a kung fu fighting is about as lowbrow a crutch as one could imagine.
I only wish filmmakers would turn back to literary science fiction for inspiration (I always loved the science-oriented novels of Hal Clement (try "Mission of Gravity", a classic) or Larry Niven ("Ringworld") -there's truly original material for serious filmmakers to tackle.
WandaVision: Previously On (2021)
A clash of genres
I grew up in the 1950s, becoming addicted to science fiction, horror and fantasy, while watching many a TV comedy: my favorite was Gail Storm in "My Favorite Margie". "WandaVision" poaches on the widespread nostalgia for such things, with quite mixed results.
In the penultimate episode (8), Agatha's back story of witchcraft is mixed with the science fiction of out superheroes. Gone completely is the comedy (and mainly attempted, cynical satirical comedy) of earlier segements. Instead we have a dreary and maudlin concatenation of back stories, even managing to throw in a bit of "The Dick Van Dyke" show into the mix (I wonder if the still-active Mr. Van Dyke approves?).
The attempt to build sympathy for Wanda's character was lost on me. What I watched was plenty of speical effects, plus idiotic and illogical discussions of superpowers.
I was cured of my dedication to comic books and Saturday matinee movies and, yes, situation comedies many decades ago. "WandaVision" fails to resonate.
WandaVision: Breaking the Fourth Wall (2021)
Her 19th Nervous Breakdown
That laugh track has finally gone, as the comedy series morphs into another form, but I'm afraid the rush of self-aware characters (especially Wanda's brother Pietro) and very silly comic-book content (Kat and pals escaping in ludicrous fashion) sapped by willingness to believe the new plot twists and invest in these characters. Wanda one minute is a menace to our world and the next an object of pity for her as a lonely creature. Undead Vision seems to have agency, or is he still at Wanda's mercy? Even the character played by Kathryn Hahn is presented in a mixture of real and phony personae, at the whim of the scriptwriters.
Much of this busy episode merely relies on old "The Twilight Zone" tropes, especially when the "beyond Ellis Avenue" residents of the town are unused, waiting for Wanda to need to animate them as part of her fantasy life that is the sitcom.
I enjoyed the darker elements of this episode, but its overall messy confusion was frustrating. More and more, I anxiously await the makers to pull the plug on this series by drawing it to a conclusion.
WandaVision: All-New Halloween Spooktacular! (2021)
Unraveling
That laugh track has finally gone, as the comedy series morphs into another form, but I'm afraid the rush of self-aware characters (especially Wanda's brother Pietro) and very silly comic-book content (Kat and pals escaping in ludicrous fashion) sapped by willingness to believe the new plot twists and invest in these characters. Wanda one minute is a menace to our world and the next an object of pity for her as a lonely creature. Undead Vision seems to have agency, or is he still at Wanda's mercy? Even the character played by Nancy Hahn is presented in a mixture of real and phony personae, at the whim of the scriptwriters.
Much of this busy episode merely relies on old "The Twilight Zone" tropes, especially when the "beyond Ellis Avenue" residents of the town are unused, waiting for Wanda to need to animate them as part of her fantasy life that is the sitcom.
I enjoyed the darker elements of this episode, but its overall messy confusion was frustrating. More and more, I anxiously await the makers to pull the plug on this series by drawing it to a conclusion.
WandaVision: On a Very Special Episode... (2021)
Curioser and curioser
The twists and turns of "WandaVision" accelerate in this segment, as it's revealed that Wanda is using her mind control to rule the entire town, yet Vision and briefly others can break out of the spell. I enjoyed the series' toying with reality on several levels, but it goes too far in relying on Wanda's superhero powers to cover many logical lapses. For an arm's length audience (myself included), it's all a bit much, while for Marvel addicts it's just additions to the fantasy universe's minutiae and trivia -anything goes.
Sitting through the intentionally corny sitcom spoof is becoming tedious, even in the smaller doses, as the intentionally unfunny comedy and condescending pathos (re: pet Sparky) are strictly functional. I want to stick with the sci-fi story unfolding, but like fake commercials (Lagos paper towels) the viewer is forced to suffer as payment for the various entertainment goodies being doled out.