What is Porn?

My review of Q a few days ago seems to have aroused some discussion among visitors and regular readers as to what truly constitutes porn.  Which I must admit surprised me - this blog has scarcely gone out of its way to avoid porn over the years; how strange that controversy arises when I turn my attention to something that isn't pornographic?

So perhaps we need to establish what we mean by the word "pornography."

For some people, the presence of non-simulated sex automatically renders a film pornographic, regardless of the presentation itself.  And presumably this extends to other art forms too - paintings, photographs, sculpture, the frescos excavated from the remains of Pompeii - until all depictions of sex, whatever the motives behind their creation, are swept under the derogatory carpet of "porn."  Because it is a derogatory term, one which ensures that nothing the creator says can defend or even justify his work in the eyes of the "majority."

Or perhaps "pornography" is simply any gratuitous exhibition that the exhibitor knows and intends step outside of the societal norm, and that can encompass anything from a true XXX movie (and anyone who describes Q as XXX material clearly hasn't watched much... if any) to a banker publicizing his latest bonus.

It is intent, not content, that defines pornography, and Q falls as far from that criteria as any other movie themed towards an adult audience... which is very different to an adult movie.  I agree that there is a need for appropriate terminology, for Q and for those other movies that have stepped into similar waters.  But please, keep "pornography" out of it.

We're meant to be clearing the waters, not muddying them further.

The Clit-erion Collection: Q (Desire) (2011)

Building the ultimate porn library, one great flick at a time

There are worse ways of spreading the word about a new French language movie than isolating the naughty bits and stringing them together on Redtube and the like.  Worse ways, too, than seeding the Internet with stills and clips of actress Deborah Revy naked or kneeling for a mouthful of cock.  And showing that mouthful in all of its mouthwatering glory.

But still, anybody walking into director Laurent Bouhnik’s Q (Desire) expecting a wall to wall fuck fest is in for a surprise, as French film-making turns out another in that long line of movies (Betty Blue, The Hairdresser’s Husband etc) destined to become a Stateside cult favorite simply by virtue of its honesty.  

Q  is nominally the story of Cecile, mid-20s and stunning, mourning the recent death of her father - whose ashes she carries around in a Tupperware container - by making a pass or more at almost every guy who comes close to her... with the exception of the one guy who makes the pass first.  He just winds up in a ball on the floor, clutching his crushed testicles.  

Her own boyfriend Chance (Johnny Amaro) isn’t exactly blameless; more interested, it seems, in hanging out with his mates than spending time with Cecile, we meet him naked in the kitchen by a blinking neon light, with an equally unclothed Cecile attempting to pump some life into him.  Unsuccessfully.  So she looks elsewhere - and not necessarily deliberately,  but certainly with a degree of cunning, she begins to weave together the lives of a handful of local youth, male and female, bad boys and businessmen, simply by doing what she seems to do best.  Looking gorgeous.

She is delightfully shameless.  One guy is seduced while he talks with his own girlfriend.  Another is spellbound simply so she can steal his cellphone.  And when a couple of attempts to get the local pointy-faced goth guy Matt (Gowan Didi - who really ought to be the next Johnny Depp) into bed fall short at the very heavy petting point, she turns her attention to his girlfriend Alice (Helene Zimmer), who herself undergoes a fascinating metamorphosis as the movie goes on.  

The first time we see her, she is the drawn-faced, bespectacled nerd girl whose first shot at giving her boyfriend a blowjob is memorable more for her conversation than her technique.  The second-to-last time, she is half-naked in the bathroom while Cecile finger fucks her to what was probably the first decent orgasm of her entire mouse-like life.  

In between times, she is ogled by a construction worker, fingered while her mom stands just feet away - and Cecile’s not-quite-unwilling collaborator in one of the hottest reconciliation scenes you’ll see, as an estranged couple are lured separately, and unknowingly, to a deserted house, blindfolded and stripped and then placed on a couch, while other hands reintroduce them to one another.   Watch it and wriggle.

So am I still insisting Q isn’t a porn flick?  I am.  For a start, there are no lingering close-ups of penetrative sex, no splattering cum shots or wide, gaping assholes.  It is true, that sure ain’t no popsicle that Cecile pulls out of Matt’s unzipped pants and sucks like it’s going out of fashion; and when she lures the bland businessman to a beach hut assignation, then pushes him to his knees before her, his tongue knows exactly where to go.  

But the sex in Q is just a part of the movie’s attraction and fascination.  Cecile is unquestionably the catalyst and cause of a lot of desire, but her actions are designed around a more-than-plausible subplot.  Likewise, the lives of the movie’s main characters are lived around, and not amidst, the eroticism, all the more so as Cecile’s policy of sultry subversion begins to blur with a couple of local gangbangers’ feud with a local businessmen.  

Beautiful camerawork, sensitive subtitles (at least on the UK version; I've not yet seen the US edition) and an almost-unanimously good-looking cast (at least among the younger generation) are the icing on this 103 minute cake; Bouhnik’s direction is exquisite and the French coastal scenery is a picture postcard in itself.  In other words... well, I stumbled on Q courtesy of an eleven minute montage of sex scenes on the aforementioned tube site, and now rank it among my favorite European movies of all time.  Watch it and you will probably feel the same way.

The Clit-erion Collection: Sanatorium - Watch it with the lights on

Building the ultimate porn library, one great flick at a time

I have often wondered about XXX DVDs whose packaging recommends them to “Couples.”  As opposed to... Threesomes?  Lonely Singles?  Orgies?  Hope you have a really big screen for that one.

Sanatorium lays down its groundrules early on, laying bare the hypocrisy that every passing news week insists lays behind the political point-scoring war against porn; in this case, an uptight Utah Senator who will speak on TV about the need to legislate against hardcore video, then pay for a lesbian live show in his hotel.  

Similar jibes are made in movies as far afield as Who’s Naylin’ Paylin and This Ain’t Fox News, but the photography here is a class above most, and I’m still celebrating a scene that allows the visuals and a well-chosen soundtrack to lead the way, and not the over-wrought yowling of an alley-cat in heat.  Sorry, I mean the “fuck-me-fuck-me-fuck-me” bleatings of the average XXX hottie.  Hmm... looks like there isn’t a nice way of saying that, is there?

read more at Eden Fantasys

The Clit-erion Collection: Gia - Portrait of a Porn Star (2010)

Building the ultimate porn library, one great flick at a time


First things first. If you want your porn to have a happy ending, Gia is not for you. If you want it to tell no more story than can fit on a pinhead; if you think character and personality are decoded by how many cocks a girl can take at once; and if you want to get down to all those nasty things that your own partner won’t let you try... you guessed it. Gia is not for you.

If, on the the hand, you watched and maybe wept through Angelina Jolie’s performance as Gia Marie Carangi... yeah, a porno version of that struck me as a fairly gruesome prospect too, so rest assured, the name really is the only similarity. Well, that and the story arc, following a beautiful young model (Sunny Leone) from her so tentative introduction to the worlds first of glamor modeling, through topless and nude, into porn, onto stardom - and then the classic Hollywood ABC: addiction, burn out, collapse and death. None of which is portrayed with anything less than sensitivity, drama and, dare I say it, class?
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The Clit-erion Collection: Girl Pirates 2 (2006)

Building the ultimate porn library, one great flick at a time
You might not believe it, but Girl Pirates 2 isn’t simply a great movie. It’s also two great ideas fighting to get out of the same couple of hours worth of DVD time, and both of them doing a terrific job of it, too.

The first great idea, of course, is the pirates. Ever since Johnny Depp established swashbuckling as the single hottest pursuit in 21st century mainstream cinema, and Jesse Jane et al confirmed that for the XXX crowd, it’s been hard to go wrong with some high seas hijinks, and director Bridgette Kerkove knows it. Expect seven seas swimming with sumptuous costuming, a lexicon packed with period dialogue, and - of course - enough cum to float a flotilla of galleons.

But the second great idea might be even better. Anybody with an eye for the prehistory of porn will immediately see where Kerkove’s heart lies, spooling back to the days before color and sound and opening each of Girl Pirates 2’s five sex scenes with a black and white vignette, complete with old time caption cards. Each dissolves into full color after an introductory few minutes, but those minutes are significant because they set the scene perfectly. Plus, they allow the players to save their breath for the action.

READ THE REST AT EDEN FANTASYS

The Clit-erion Collection: The Four (2012)

Building the ultimate porn library, one great flick at a time
Remind me, please, should I ever become a movie star (something I have no intention of doing, by the way), never to agree to appear in the accompanying Behind The Scenes documentary.

Because having just invested 200 minutes in Michael Ninn’s The Four, luxuriatingly in positively the most sumptuous, scrumptious XXX movie I have ever seen, I then put on the “making of” disc, and all those warm fuzzy feelings flew straight out of the window. Especially knowing that four years of delays and disappointment having held it back from its original 2008 release date. Now that could have been a great story. Instead....

It’s not that you hate to see an actor admit that he has not yet learned his lines, and simply grimace at the (omg, this dude is so patronizing) interviewer’s demand for an impromptu chunk of dialogue. It’s not that you squirm when one of the principle actresses admits she doesn’t yet know how to pronounce her character’s name. It’s not even that you actually feel embarrassed for the interviewer’s sad attempts to ingratiate himself with one of the other actresses, talking to her like Your Dad’s Creepy Friend asking what class is your favorite at school. It’s just that the whole thing reduces a magical movie to a series of talking heads, out of context stunts and very, very little else. In the context of a four disc box set, this is a cum stain splashed across one quarter of the packaging. Eject!


The Four, for anyone who has missed the upfront palaver, is Ninn’s long-delayed but so-worth-the-wait imagining of a sequel to The 300, mainstream Hollywood’s 2007 reimagining of the Battle of Thermopylae, three hundred Spartans following King Leonidas in a doomed quest to destroy the invading Persian King Xerxes. All three hundred were slaughtered, but what about the wives they left behind? Four, led by Leonidas’ widow Queen Gorgo (played here by Brea Bennett), strike a deal with the Gods. Give us the strength of 300 men each. And we will finish our dead menfolk’s job.

If you’ve seen The 300, you will recognize the same techniques here, with the framing voice over continuing on. The fight scenes are just as proficient, and the lighting and costuming might even be better - pulling off a first for an adult movie, Ninn tapped mainstream studios and staffers for talent, including the stunt teams who pull off some of the more spectacular moves. Indeed, so stunning are these sequences that the sex scenes (of which there are plenty) almost let the side down a little, as the cast... and maybe they can’t even help themselves anymore, so many adult films have they made... lapse into the same old dialogue that every movie uses, and the same old routine of positions as well.

Which is not to say you’ll be forwarding through them. Renne Perez serves up a blowjob for the ages just past the halfway mark, while absolutely any scene featuring Xerxes High Priestess (Jennifer Dark) will reduce you to some form of jello as she curls and coils that so hot Euro accent around everything that she touches. Marco Banderas, as Xerxes, is alternately terrifying, awesome and volcano-hot, Jana Jordan, as the Oracle, pulls off a fantastic lesbian scene with Amber Rayne (plus she has a Texan accent to die for), and there’s another blazing blowjob bestowed by Salamis (Cassidey), on a night so chill you can see the steam rising.

I dunno, though. You just wonder if a Spartan Queen and her three chosen warrior nympho might have something slightly more classical-sounding than “oh my god, yes yes yes, fuck that pussy ohhhhhh.” Especially when the rest of the dialogue is so beautifully poised around the action, scenery and scheming, and even the computer animation (which aroused so much hostility when the first trailers appeared four years ago), looks good enough to eat.

But that’s a grumble for another day, and perhaps a different context. The Four, at long last, is here, and it looks as good as it should. Just don’t ask yourself what went on behind the scenes. It really doesn’t matter.

The Clit-erion Collection: The Passions of Carol (1975)

Building the ultimate porn library, one great flick at a time


What do you mean, it’s the beginning of spring? In a corner of our hearts, it is always Christmas - or, at least, it had better be. Otherwise there’s a triptych of night terrors just waiting in the darkness, to show what will become of us if we don’t celebrate the season, all year round.

Or so said Charles Dickens, and so says Shaun Costello, director of what remains, thirty-seven years after it was made, the greatest XXX Christmas movie of them all, an adaptation of the old scribe’s A Christmas Carol that is as faithful as it ought to be, and as hot as you would hope.

Mary Stuart is Carol Scrooge, the hardbitten publisher of a low rent flesh mag called Biva. Hardbitten and hopelessly unsentimental as well. When her lay-out guy Bob Hatchet (an adorable Jamie Gillis), protests that he should not have to work late on Christmas Eve, she threatens to dismiss him. When her house cleaner makes the same request, she too finds the axe hanging over her. Even the Elvis impersonator who stops by the office to drop off some photographs finds himself forced to perform for his rapacious would-be employer, although a lengthy threesome with Scrooge and her receptionist probably wasn’t too demanding for him, even on this most hallowed of days.

Ah, but then Scrooge goes to bed that night, and things take a turn for the terrifying. A former partner, Lance Marley (Marc Stevens), rises from his grave to warn Carol of her upcoming visitors, and oh my God, the make-up department excelled themselves here. Cobwebbed and off color, bedecked in chains and rolling his eyes, Marley cares for just one thing - the redemption of Scrooge’s soul. Oh, and getting a decent blowjob. Apparently nobody in Heaven knows how to do them properly.

And who are these visitors who will shatter Scrooge’s sleep? The Ghost of Christmas Past, who transports Scrooge back to a childhood holiday, as she coerced two of her friends into having sex with her. The Ghost of Christmas Present, who shows her a scene of red hot tender passion between Bob Hatchet and his wife Tiny Kim (Kim Pope). And the Ghost of Christmas Future, who reveals the horrors that await an unrepentant Scrooge - turning cheap tricks in a shoddy motel room for whichever lowlife has the necessary bucks.

With dialogue lifted wholesale from the original story, and a soundtrack that may or may not have asked permission to excerpt great swathes of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells (but does so anyway), exquisite sets and some genuinely strong performances from its cast, The Passions of Carol emerged into the world exactly thirty-seven years ago this month - an odd time for a Christmas movie to open, and one that was rewarded with no reward at all. Director Costello, writing in the booklet that accompanies the movie’s most recent DVD release, recalls opening at two theaters. One, a traditional porn venue, returned a “disappointing” box office; the other, a mainstream venue, was “downright disastrous.”

And that was it. The Passions of Carol slipped back beneath the waves, a favorite of a handful of cult movie enthusiasts (Cinema Sewer raves about it, and I’ve watched it most Christmases since I discovered it about five years ago), but forgotten until...

Until Distribpix took the tired old tapes and brought them back to life with a stunning restoration, a part of their newly launched Platinum Elite Series (Blonde Ambition and Maraschino Cherry, of recent review, have similar editions), complete with an often hilarious audio commentary from Costello, and a bonus featurette, The Deuce, looking back on how Times Square used to be before fast food, megastores and trendy parking lots slung the area’s traditional clientele out on their asses. (Although there is a certain wry amusement to be had from knowing you can now buy your hot creamy coffee from the same place where hot cream of a very different sort once flowed so copiously.)

So no, it’s not Christmas and many of you reading this might not celebrate it anyway. It doesn’t matter. The Passions of Carol might not slot effortlessly into the pantheon of true festive traditions, the Grinch and Heatmiser, Santa Claus the Movie and It’s A Wonderful Life.

But when I want to be warmed by something more than chestnuts, and the yule log has blurred through too much eggnog... I don’t even have to reach into my stocking. The Passions of Carol are already in the DVD player.

The Clit-erion Collection - Maraschino Cherry (1978)

Building the ultimate porn library, one great flick at a time

I doubt many people will argue when I say The Opening of Misty Beethoven rises so far above the remainder of 1970s (and beyond) XXX fare that any movie that even glances in its direction will automatically attract some attention, by force of association alone. Certainly that is the case with Maraschino Cherry, a glorious reunion for director Radley Metzger and co-stars Gloria Leonard and Constance Money, and once again built around the conceit of teaching the tricks of the sexy trade to a young ingenue. In this case, the country girl younger sister of the Madame of a high class New York brothel.

Leonard is Maraschino, Jenny Baxter is sister Penny, sent up from the sticks by her parents to discover whether big sis really is the successful model she claims to be - or if, as the parents reckon, she’s just a very successful whore. And they’re hoping for the latter, because the homestead is deep in the late 70s recession, but there’s one commodity that always sells, even when times are hard. Because cocks are always hard as well.

That is the set up, and a handful of linking scenes make sure your eye stays on the ball. But the heart of the movie is a series of vignettes revolving around a day in the life of Maraschino and her staff - strange fetishes, peculiar urges, odd demands.... There is a slave in the basement, CJ Laing, and her scenes are absolutely fabulous - in fact one, involving out-stretched arms, two glasses of whiskey and a dildo up the ass, is drop dead delirious. Constance Money is as delectable as ever, although her screen time (comprising out-takes from Misty Beethoven) is short; Wade Nichols and Eric Edwards, on the other hand, are anything but short, and then there’s Susan McBain, who keeps up the best running gag in the entire movie, with her portrayal of a clock. Yes, a clock.


And it’s that which personally, raises this movie so high in my estimation; looking at the full “Henry Paris” catalog of director Metzger, I was never a fan of Barbara Broadcast, no matter how much I enjoy the restaurant scene, while The Afternoons of Pamela Mann was so-so at best. Maraschino Cherry, while leagues below either Misty Beethoven or Naked Came A Stranger, is nevertheless one of those movies that constantly surprises, and the newly remastered print that is on the shelves now is a delight, even without the second disc of bonus material that accompanies it.

And that’s all I have time for because... well, two glasses of whiskey, two out-stretched arms... I’m going to be busy for the next few hours....

The Clit-erion Collection - Blonde Ambition (1981)

Building the ultimate porn library, one great flick at a time
One of my favorite features of the Internet is the way it will blithely recommend one product to me on the strength of my purchasing, or showing an interest in another. So, I buy a Pink Floyd CD for the bf, and suddenly all Amazon want to do is bombard me with multitudinous variations on The Dark Side Of The Moon. I will Google my name, and discover that I can find Jenny Swallows at e-Bay. And I go to IMDB to check some details on a movie I just watched, and discover that people who liked Blonde Ambition (1981) also liked Blonde Ambition (2007). And maybe they do. But something tells me that the only thing the two really have in common is... oh, see if you can guess.

First things first. The successor to the Amero brothers’ Every Inch A Lady, Blonde Ambition (1981) dates from the very tail end of the XXX industry’s attempts to make movies that could conceivably “cross over” into something approaching the mainstream, albeit without much hope of that ever happening.

Originally to be titled White Tie and Tails, Blonde Ambition is similar in style and format to that string of stylish farces turned out of the UK at the end of the 1970s, led off by Mary Millington’s Come Play With Me - which, coincidentally, also features Blonde Ambition’s guiding beauty, British-born Suzy Mandel. Blonde Ambition is, therefore, very much a light-hearted family-comedy, into which a succession of XXX scenes have been inserted , primarily because they can be. It might be a stray remark or an off-the-cuff gesture, it might even be a long cock sticking through a hole in the fence... whatever, it’s incentive enough for Suzy (or at least, a convincing double - which we’ll get to shortly) and co-star Dory Devon to send the temperature soaring.


But wait, there’s a plot! A good one, too, as the Kane Sisters, Sugar and Candy (Mandel and Devon), the world’s worst burlesque act, find themselves catapulted out of a dead-end bar job in Coyote Fang, Montana, into the glitz of New York City. Into which are thrust a misunderstanding over a priceless broach, a dowager that could have stepped out of Downton Abbey (the equally priceless Molly Malone), a lot of Eric Edwards, a little Jamie Gillis, a Village People-meets-Gone With The Wind dance sequence, and an hysterical scene in a militant gay bar as the girls try and pass themselves off as a drag act.

A few interesting asides featured in the accompanying booklet include Mandel’s iron-clad refusal to perform any sexual acts whatsoever, simulated oral included. Inserts got around that, and very well too - the double disc deluxe edition that remasters Blonde Ambition from the 35mm print includes both the hard- and softcore versions of the movie, and do so skillfully enough that you cannot spot the joins. I found it interesting, too, that there’s little more than a minute’s worth of running time to choose between the two. Compare that to the multi-hour features of today, which can be trimmed down to sit-com-with-commercials length for the “clean” bonus feature. And which are usually rubbish!


I’m not going to push this as a lost treasure or forgotten gem. But it is a lot of fun, the cast are clearly having a whale of a time, the sex steams and the jokes are good. There’s also a neat homage to Behind The Green Door, but I’ll leave you to find that for yourselves.

The Clit-erion Collection - Batfxxx - A Dark Night Parody (2011)

Building the ultimate porn library, one great flick at a time
Maybe it’s the fact that I watched it while grappling with a pinched nerve in my shoulder. Maybe it’s the knowledge that Batman has already been parodied well, and any return to those pastures can only try to compete. Or maybe it’s the fact that Batfxxx: A Dark Night Parody effectively comprises the same over-choreographed stag film being reshown again and again, with just a quick change of costume to differentiate a few of the players. But in the already over-egged pudding of parody porn, this is one more (insert your favorite cooking allegory here) too far.

The plot. The J-Kerr (Paul Chaplin - the true star of the movie) has stolen a sex potion from Poison Ivy, and is planning to release it on the population of Gothard City. Batfxxx (Nick Manning), presumably, wants to stop him, and maybe if his role had remained aloof from the fucking and sucking that inevitably ensues, his mission would have felt believable. But he’s as horny as everybody else, so why is he even bothering?


A cool cast wanders through the movie, with Robina the Girl Wonder (Krissy Lynn) and Batchick (Isis Love) both taking on all the meat they can chew. And then there’s Katwoman (Madelyn Marie) who may not quite deliver on all her character’s promise, but is certainly devoted to raising the temperature. Young and fun and full of cum, she is the one saving grace throughout this movie.

The question is - why? Why does this movie adhere so firmly to very poor porn stereotype? That’s probably a question that only director Nicholas Steele can answer, but here’s a few thoughts.

Remove Jo-Kerr from the equation and nobody in this film has a well-defined role, nobody even has a purpose. And direction that seems to view plot as simply a line or two of irrelevant dialog that leads into the next sex scene seriously detracts from the obvious care and attention that went into the sets and (some of) the costumes.


None of which would matter if the sex wasn’t so samey, orgy after orgy after orgy. On and on it goes and if you watch it with a few friends, you will actually have more fun playing “guess the next position”... at least until you realize there’s not that much guesswork involved. You just remember what happened the last time. And the time before. And the time before. This movie earned sixteen nominations at the AVN awards. How?

Because everyone loves clowns?

It’s difficult to put into words how disappointing this movie was, and it certainly doesn’t bode well for the same team’s sequel Katwoman XXX, which was next on my viewing pile. Maybe I’ll hold off for a while... wait for the nerve to unpinch itself or watch an old favorite instead. This was meant to be a porn parody of Batman. When in fact, it’s Batman parodying porn.

The Clit-erion Collection - Neu Wave Hookers (2006)

Building the ultimate porn library, one great flick at a time


Imagine, if you can, a mid-70s art movie... getting gang-banged by early 80s MTV... then being transported to modern-day Los Angeles... and sent out onto the streets to earn its living. Well done, you have just invited yourself into the world of Neu Wave Hookers, one of the most refreshingly avant-garde XXXs of the 21st century, and all the more so because it "avant garde" a clue that that is what it is destined to become.



The cast... Riley Mason, Joanne Angel, Justine Joli, Tiger, Sierra Sin, Felix Vicious and Nyomi Zen... nobody’s notion of your typical street girls, all the more so when they hit the ropes in full-on eighties drag. But we start at a yard sale where they are sweet-talked into buying an old VCR and a handful of vintage pornos, including what has since become one of the most infamous of them all, the original New Wave Hookers. That, you may or may not remember, is the movie that launched Traci Lords to fame - at an age when the law insists she should have been sitting at home with her legs tightly crossed and her mouth sealed shut. Sweet seventeen, with a fake ID... yes, you can Google the ensuing fall-out once that little nugget became public knowledge.

The movie was pulled, Lord’s role expunged... but it forms a fascinating subtext to this film, an homage of sorts that revolves, in a very very circular manner, around the efforts of the titular sextet to discover more about the original film. To the extent of breaking into the film-maker’s offices and unearthing the original paperwork.

But in and around that, Neu Wave Hookers dances around some stunning cinematography, excellent sets and even - and this is so rare for a modern prono - a devastating soundtrack, fittingly glued into the modern era’s fascination with retro-eighties synthi sounds. Dirty Sanchez, familiar to my long time readers (“Fucking On The Dancefloor”) appear with a wonderfully staged “I Dig It,” and the verse about being caught masturbating by your mother is Grammy material on its own. Avenue D’s “O-Tron” and Electrocute’s “Fun Is A Floppy Bitch” are the highlights, with director Eon McKai putting on his best pop video director’s hat and wearing it better than most of the crap that’s on TV these days.



The hottest scenes... the DVD box credits Dana DeArmond, playing Traci Lords, with giving “perhaps the most provocative blowjob in DVD history.” And it’s not bad (although it would have helped if Tommy Pistol, playing the Greg Dark character, at least had a full erection). But there are better - Joanna Angel maybe spends too much time spitting on Kurt Lockwood’s cock for their sequence to be truly memorable, but Riley Mason and James Deen (plus a swing set) are great to watch.

And then comes the true piece de resistance, Riley and Nyomi tagteaming, and reminding us that the Olympics are just a few months away. Believe me, that’s not an easy position to hold for any amount of time but fuck it’s worth it. If you’ve never felt your own blood rush to your head while making sure your partner’s keeps rushing to his other head... well, you should. Oh, and if you dig into the Behind The Scenes sequences on disc two, the shadowy couple getting to know one another backstage is a beauty, too. Which raises my one criticism of Neu Wave Hookers - in a movie that works so hard to disavow the common cliches and set pieces of modern porn, why then conclude so many scenes with the stand “jerking into the girl’s open mouth” sequence?

Yes, viewers expect it, blah blah blah. But they expect a lot of things that Neu Wave Hookers does not deliver, and the movie is all the more powerful because of that. Which brings me to what sundry Internet reviewers seem to feel is the most controversial element of all, a series of sequences in which our hooker heroines find themselves in the clutches of an uber-slimey old man, whose entreaties are alternately pitiful and sinister, and are so exquisitely discomforting that more than a few viewers apparently fast forwarded through his appearances.

Don’t. Yes, they are uncomfortable, and yes, they are creepy. But they also serve as reminders of the realities of hooking, the fact that a girl cannot always choose just the hunkiest customers, and that occasionally things get out of control. Here the slimeball is simply cajoling, and the scenes never slide into violence. But they could, and in and around the rest of the movie, they offer a chilling counterpoint to the fantasies played out elsewhere.

Because they are fantasies. The sets are amazing, but you never lose sight of the fact that they are artful artifice, lurking somewhere between Warholian Pop Art and Grade School set design. Backdrops are deliberately rendered as obvious theater props, and the Traci Lords car wash scene is decorated with little more than a hand-drawn sign that says, indeed, “car wash.”

Sweet too is the ease with which sequences arise out of fantasies; Sierra Sin wondering what DP might feel like, and immediately finding herself sandwiched between James Deen and Tommy Pistol. And finally, there is the climactic scenes, all the girls together and not a cock in sight. Up there with the cat-women squawling through that memorable scene in The 8th Day (and maybe the orgy in Not Bewitched XXX), one of the finest lesbian action scenes around.

So, a magnificent movie, a stunning production and all in all, one that is effortlessly up there with that select handful of other modern offerings in which the sex drives the action, as opposed to interrupting it. In other words... I wanna be a Neu Wave Hooker too!

The Clit-erion Collection - Rocki Whore Picture Show (2011)

Building the ultimate porn library, one great flick at a time
You would be right to surrender to a despairing groan when confronted with the prospect of a porno remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Partly because it’s been done at least once before, and what a mess that turned out to be; but also because the original was sexually charged enough that a little more flesh really shouldn’t make much difference. It would be like ripping off the bed clothes in that infamous scene in Mick Jagger’s Performance, to see if he and Anita Pallenberg are truly performing, like the scuttlebutt reckons. Sometimes, less is more.

read more at Eden Fantasys.



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The Clit-erion Collection - Voodoo Lust - the Possession (1989)

There are not, so far as I’m aware, too many movies set specifically on the island of Haiti in 1936. And even fewer of these demand a XXX billing. But Voodoo Lust - The Possession is one of those films that more than compensates for the lack of competition, by virtue of being so much fun that nobody else could even touch it.

Released in 1989, Voodoo Lust was the work of Peter Davy, at the very dawn of his career - Dreams In The Forbidden Zone was his only major work beforehand. Yet in terms of cinematography, it has a quality that modern directors would do well to emulate, a not-quite-soft focus sheen that transforms every set into a sensual palace, and then transports the cast in a similar direction. Indeed, if it were not for hairstyles that reduce at least half of the cast into body doubles for either Stevie Nicks or one of Kajagoogoo (Peter North, I’m talking about you), it would be difficult to fault any aspect of the production, adult fare or otherwise.

Scenes blend together seamlessly; native drumming and wild, evil laughter punctuate the mounting frenzy; and if you need any other aural stimulation, download Dr John’s “Walk On Gilded Splinters” and play it on a 90 minute loop. It fits the film like your favorite pants.

The plot is simple. Anthropologist Dr Robert (the leonine Jon Martin) has the hots for ace student Meg (Rachel Ryan), and in the guise of guiding her towards a doctorate thesis on voodoo, spends his time reading aloud from a diary that his father kept of a visit to Haiti in the 1930s. A visit that brought him into the clutches of the Grand Mambo, Dutches Grande (the magnificent Nina de Ponca) and her consort, the seemingly simple King Gregory (Ray Victory). Practitioners, of course, of a breed of voodoo that has no interest at all in chicken bones and blood. not when there's cocks and pussies, sucking and fucking, and orgasms-a-go-go to strive for.

Flashbacks to the hot bodied torments to which his father was subjected (OMG she's sucking his cock! How evil!) are then combined with present-day sequences in which Meg’s boyfriend Roger (North) courts her disapproval with his philandering ways, while the Grand Mambo’s grand daughter, the Dutches Petite (de Poncia again) seduces the Doctor with her own pledge that he will get the girl of his dreams.


Okay, so maybe it’s not that simple. What is undeniable, however, is the sheer strength of the sex scenes because... well, I wouldn’t swear to it. But I seriously doubt that they were scripted, and they certainly weren’t choreographed in the manner that modern directors seem to feel is so crucial. More than one scene is given whole new emphasis by one or other character’s natural responses to whatever’s going on, most notably Kassi Nova’s giggled whispers during her scene with the cheating Roger.

There is also a magnificent sequence, staged as an aside to the main plot, where a gadabout wastrel named Carl Pelletier (played by Marc Wallice) seduces the wealthy young Madame Dumont (Viper), and brings the Mambo’s wrath down upon himself in the process. Viper’s transformation from an absolute shrinking virgin when Pelletier first gets her alone, into a cock hungry vixen who downs his cum in one at the end of the scene, is played perfectly, no matter how unbelievable its reality might (and I stress, might) seem; and from there into a calculating bitch with her own temporary voodoo powers. She is phenomenal throughout, and in this scene is upstaged only by the luscious de Ponca, as she caresses and kisses a very live snake.

And again, we return to the sheer honesty of the scenes here, and remember what the XXX world was like before someone, somewhere, decided that what we really want to watch is a couple of mechanoids going through the motions, and doing exactly the same things to one another as another couple did in the film you watched last week. And a third pair will pull off in the movie you’ve planned for tomorrow night.

Avoid this movie like the plague, I say, if you want to see orifices filled with bitter spit, and cocksuckers choking on a throat full of bile. There’s no gagging or vomit, and no gaping assholes - in fact, the one scene of anal, a skillful DP, is one of the most beautiful sequences in the whole movie, and that despite there being a slew of lengthy blowjobs (Nova and North, Viper and Wallace, and any time de Ponca goes near an erection) that blow most other celluloid suckings out of the room altogether.


So that’s Voodoo Lust - which is not simply the best porn movie I’ve ever seen set in Haiti in 1936; it’s in my own Top Ten of the best XXX’s ever. And that was before Peter North got turned into rabbit. And no, not one of the battery-operated ones, either.

The Clit-erion Collection - Ghost Town (1996)

Building the ultimate porn library, one great flick at a time
Considering that the American movie industry was more or less built around the mythos of the Wild West, it is surprising how few porn movies look westwards for inspiration - and how fewer still have emerged with their dignity even half as erect as the cocks on display. We think fondly of such Seventies fare as Ramrodder and A Dirty Western, fine examples of the genre's early need to portray sex as rape and little more, and Jamie Gillis' Showdown" was as twisted as any of his post-Misty Beethoven standards. Yet even the current parody boom has yet to look in westward direction... so before you all float off in a This Ain’t Gunsmoke-shaped reverie, or start imagining A Fistful Of Titties, spare a thought for Ghost Town, a 1996 Lori Michaels effort that at least tried to catch a cowpoke-shaped wave.

The plot itself is threadbare but captivating; Michaels and her geeky boyfriend (a painfully over-acting Bobby Vitale) are driving through the desert when the radiator blows. They ease the car into a deserted huddle of semi-derelict buildings, and Michaels is just kicking off the first of the bad-tempered rants that are her main contribution to the dialogue when an old timer emerges from one of the shacks, to warn them they need to get out of Dodge.

Of course they ignore him, instead bedding down for the night in one of the buildings... and that’s when things start to happen.

Okay, this is not a great movie. The costuming is fine, the sets are good, the sex is powerful. But the scenes simply drift without any real forethought and writer/director Toni English clearly had more fun fashioning the old timer’s lines than she did any other aspect of the movie. Indeed, the old guy doesn’t simply emerge as the movie’s most memorable character, he also has lines and timing that would put any established comedians to shame - which is a strange recommendation for a porn film, but it’s one that’s worth following up on regardless.

Peter North, billed as one of the movie’s stars, is little more than a vignette player, shoehorned into the action to tempt Michaels into staying in town, but not exactly offering one of his most virtuoso performances, and the other name players... Sahara Sands, Melissa Hill, Christi Lake... are under-used too, showgirls who put on a period show, but only really shine when they are converting Michaels from a bad-tempered stranded motorist into the star of a lesbian munch-fest.

And yet... there is something strangely lovable about this movie. Michaels, in one of her first starring roles, is always watchable, and her scene with North allows her to pull some very hot tricks out of the box. But more than that, Ghost Town appeals not for what it turned out to be, but for what it could have been. Like I said, the sets are great, and the action that takes place around the action, with the hoary old cowboys drinking and cussing and gambling, is a constant reminder of what a movie like this should be built upon.

So you forgive its faults for exactly the same reasons as you forgive those of the legion mainstream cowboy clunkers that turn up on late night television. Because it’s not just the American movie industry that was built on westerns. Modern America was as well, and like it or not, the tumbleweed, stetsons and six-shooting sheriffs are a part of our DNA. And Ghost Town is a red-blooded part of that.

The Clit-erion Collection - Librarians (2011)

Building the ultimate porn library, one great flick at a time


It was inevitable I'd pick this one up eventually. For a start, there really aren't many things hotter than having sex in the library... but you already know that if you've read my own collection of horny humping library hijinks the Nympho Librarian and Other Stories, which isn't the book of the film, but it could be.



But also because I've yet to see a Joanna Angel production that hasn't left me reaching for the towels. And this one's no exception.

Librarians focuses in on what the blurb claims is just another average day at the Clitty City Library, although I'll be honest and wonder just how average it is, being held up at gunpoint by a dude (James Deen) who you've just told cannot borrow a book because he already has 200 other overdue tomes?

No matter. The local SWAT team soon descend, headed up by Kimberley Kane, and a tense stand off ensues... with a lot of stand up as well. Deen is a genuine rarity among gun-toting criminals in that his cock is definitely bigger than his weapon, but the librarians ... Joanna Angel, Asphyxia Noir, Draven Star and Kleio Valentine ... certainly aren't cowed by it.

Neither are the library's other patrons, as Danny Wilde and Mick Blue both slip the girls a few tips (and shafts and roots) and Skin Angel shows why she is so wonderfully-named, so while you could probably grumble that the plot has got somewhat lost amidst all the fucking and sucking, I doubt you'll be stopping to complain.

Especially once Kane joins in the fun, in a final scene that milks the guys for everything they've got and definitely leaves the girls looking dewey.

A two hour movie offers little in the way of extras. But the set is phenomenal, the scripting is fine and the action is more or less non-stop. Plus, there's one scene that, personally, I've been replaying in mind from the moment I saw it, so much so that I'm kinda glad I don't have to go into work this weekend. Between Angel's Librarians and my own recent confessions, I don't think I could even look my co-workers in the eye....

The Clit-erion Collection - Lust Combo (1970)

Building the ultimate porn library, one great flick at a time
Some movies recommend themselves for their title, some for their artwork, some for their cast. And some because it is impossible to resist a film that proclaims itself to be "an expose of the record business... filmed on actual locations in and around Memphis and Nashville."

Jenny Gets On Top is such a movie. indeed, it might well be the only one that fits that particular criteria, but boy, does it do it well. Directed by Carl R Carter, maestro behind such b-movie delights as Trucker's Girl and Barbie's Hospital Affair (forget the film, you can get off on the titles!), Jenny gets On Top would appear to be another in that short run of end-of-innocence era flicks that played on the general public's fascination with groupies. But Groupie did that gig so well that anything else in the genre just got overlooked. Including the lovely Jenny.

The whole affair, for what it's worth, appears basic. Look it up on IMDB and it appears that the lovely Jenny was originally known by the distinctly less alluring name of Lust Combo - which sounds like something you'd buy from Gangstermart, looking rudely out-of-place on the Value Pack aisle. IMDB certainly shrugs it off very brusquely; "A three piece rock band called "The Three Easy Pieces" drives into Tennessee to play a gig. After the show, they meet up with three women and pair off for three one-nighters. In the morning, the band leaves."

In between times, though, the charms of Cheri Parks, Linda LaLane and Renee Dupree (Eileen, Cindy and the oddly named Chlorine), none of whom seem to have made any other movies whatsoever, are on ample display in a film whose nudity quotient was certainly justified as much by the fact that such sights were now legal, as any demands of the plot and script, while the talents of the Three Easy Pieces don't appear to have set the world afire either.

But do not let all that put you off. The band are as studalicious as a any movie rocker circa 1969 could be, and don't they know it! Motoring to their roadhouse gig, all three band members... Vince, Jim, and Mike... daydream of the dream girls who might be awaiting them after the show, and why not? They're young, they're hot, they're on the way to the top... and life doesn't get much better than this. So they scoop up the two horny housewives who took in the show while their hubbies were away, add a sexy Creole cutie to the menu for the night, and then it's back to their oddly luxurious hotel room for the heart of the movie. A game of spin the bottle, of course!

Seventies softcore is often scorned for really not delivering that much of anything. But there are moments when both cast and camera seem to have forgotten the rules of the road, especially once Vince and the blonde vixen Eileen start picking up steam. Something Weird video, which seems to be the sole repository of the magnificent Lust Combo, also makes a virtue of saucy Cindy's tits... "a joy to behold" is the precise term they use. In fact, the only question that really demands to be answered is... who the fuck is Jenny?

Good question.

Because this is where it gets interesting. It seems that IMDB - and, therefore, every other website that purports to know what it's talking about, but actually takes its info from that same single source - got it wrong! Big surprise? Maybe. Either way, the real Jenny Gets On Top is even more obscure than Lust Combo, was made a couple of years later, has a completely different cast and plot....

And it has nothing at all to do with Lust Combo. NOTHING!!!!!

In this movie, Jenny is indeed the name of the movie's star, a blonde country beauty named Jenny Palmer, who strums her guitar, sings her songs, and has no compunction whatsoever about fucking her way, of course, to the top. Oh, and I saw it mentioned on an internet thread discussing the erotic fascination of armpit hair... apparently there is a very arousing glimpse somewhere within. And that is all I've been able to discover about a movie which might be truly appalling... or it might be a lost classic begging for rediscovery.

Either way, I want it!

The Clit-erion Collection - Spiderman XXX (2011)

Building the ultimate porn library, one great flick at a time
One seriously iconic scene just became... iconic-er.

Remember in the first Spiderman movie, the moment where everyone’s favorite webslinger lowers himself from a fire escape to kiss the heroine on the lips?

Imagine if he’d continued lowering himself.

Axel Braun did.

Spiderman XXX: A Porn Parody is not the first comic book reimagining to hit the screens with a great sticky splodge, but it might be the best so far. Less indebted to the comic book than it is the more recent movies, the casting is spot-on, with even the mainstream comic forums remarking on the improvements this crew offers on the mainstream stars. So, Xander Corvus plays a seriously well-hung Spidey, Capri Anderson simmers as long-time love interest Mary Jane, Ash Hollywood is a spot-on (but sadly under-used... in every sense of the word) Gwen Stacey... but it’s the supporting characters who will get the Spiderfan’s blood pumping, as Aunt May, J Jonah Jameson and even Doctor Octopus take turns to appear, and please tell me that nobody out there has ever fantasized seeing that trio doing the dirty on film?

It’s okay, we don’t (although the comic book accompanying the DVD does include one nothing-left-to-the-imagination scene with May and Uncle Ben). What we do get, though, is a fabulously realized threesome between Flash (Seth Dickens), MJ and Gwen; the Black Widow fucking Spiderman’s brains out, before giving him head (instead, one presumes, of biting his off); and some genuinely sizzling action from Electro (Dick Delaware), as he grinds out his passions on a suitably slutty prostitute, and then zaps her with a lethal dose of electric cum.


Yes, the special effects here are both stunning and well-utilized, both in the sex scenes and the action sequences - of which there are sufficient for Braun to have included a non-sex version of the same film in the bonus features.

The story, suitably, is straightforward enough. J Jonah is still waging his war against the costumed menace who he believes is behind the city’s entire crime wave; mild-mannered Peter Parker is the photographer whose exclusive shots allow JJ to illustrate his arachnophobic tirades. Just another normal day at the Daily Globe... until crime boss the King Pin hires Electro to undertake a special job - and all hell breaks loose around them. New York is plunged into a city-wide blackout, Spidey is recruited by the Avengers; the SHIELD warehouse is burgled and something top secret is stolen; and Doc Ock is looking for a room to rent. Oh, and there’s lso time for Robbie Robertson and Betty Brant to have some meaningful discussions about sexual harassment in the corridor outside the newspaper office.


The scene that your mind will keep rewinding to, though, comes after Spiderman has saved Peter Parker’s girl from three marauding thugs, and she rewards him with a kiss that just goes deeper and deeper. A BJ from MJ... did JJ get the pics?

I can’t wait for the sequel!