Author: William Bibbiani

Welcome to Geekscape After Dark, where the remake is always better than the original. Despite the fact that horror relies on the unexpected and unfamiliar, horror remakes are all the rage in Hollywood these days. But for every decent re-imagining like Friday the 13th or My Bloody Valentine there are a half dozen remakes like The Wicker Man or Halloween that miss the point of the original entirely. So it’s a curious thing that Stuart Canterbury’s The Whores Have Eyes, a remake of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes and possibly Alexandre Aja’s remake of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes, manages to both miss the point entirely and be a great film in its own right.

Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes was released to much critical acclaim in 1977… at least, as much critical acclaim as a horror movie could get back in those days (or these, for that matter). His original tale of a sheltered American family besieged by a family of feral desert-dwelling mutants called into question many of the assumptions Americans have of their culture. By the end of the film the wholesome family unit had turned as violent and morally compromised as their attackers (a theme he had originally explored, in less detail, in 1972’s Last House on the Left), but they had also become empowered. By violently lashing out in the throws of post-traumatic stress they finally took charge of their own lives, something even Craven seemed unwilling to clarify as a positive development. Alexandre Aja’s 2006 remake of the film stayed true to the film’s plotline and many of its themes, but in keeping with his oeuvre intensified the original’s already powerful portrayal of man’s cruelty to man. While technically a “good film,” Aja’s remake wallows in its own violent crapulence, and remains an effective cinematic experience but also frequently difficult to watch.

Horror remakes…? Patooey!

In contrast, Stuart Canterbury’s 2009 remake – now cleverly titled “The Whores Have Eyes” – is a highly entertaining affair, thoroughly watchable to anyone with eyes, whether they’re whores or not. Director Stuart Canterbury (This Ain’t Hell’s Kitchen XXX, The Secret of Harlot Hill) brings a significantly more playful air to his tale of a dysfunctional family unit driving through an irradiated desert and beset from all sides by radioactive nymphomaniacs who, if their costume design is any indication, still haven’t gotten beyond Thunderdome.

Marcus London (Busted in the Badlands, This Ain’t Hell’s Kitchen XXX) stars as… someone whose name we never quite catch, but apparently he’s the alpha male of a suburban family taking their camper on an extended road trip. After driving past a really rather clearly marked sign indicating “Restricted Area” and “DANGER” they stop at a gas station to ask for directions. The creepy gas station attendant played by Eric Swiss (The Texas Vibrator Massacre, This Ain’t the Partridge Family XXX) warns London’s character that “No one takes this road anymore, not since the government started doing their radioactive tests” (emphasis mine), but in the interest of getting the movie started London’s character decides not to ask any follow-up questions, including but not limited to why anyone would keep a gas station open on a radioactive testing ground. He then brilliantly chooses not to fill up on gas before making the long and perilous journey through the abandoned and radioactive desert, because hey, gas is expensive. “I’ll take my chances,” he says.

The ultra-violence of the original Hills Have Eyes has here been replaced by some light shoving.

After Marcus London leaves, the gas station attendant is confronted by a disarmingly attractive Twisted Sister fan with an unusually large purple dot between her eyes played by Britney Amber (Get Smartass, Imperfect Angels 1). “You’re back,” he says. “Like you said,” she replies. “You’re not my last chance. You’re my only chance.” They then proceed to fornicate avidly outside the gas station. This scene raises a lot of questions. Who is this woman? Why is the gas station attendant her only chance? And does her wanton sexual deviancy contradict her clearly intense dedication to Hindu enlightenment, as implied by her engorged third eye?

Soon, the camper breaks down in the middle of the desert, and Marcus London’s character becomes the target of passive-aggressive attacks on the part of his family. Defending himself, he suggests that they sprang a leak, to which his daughter or perhaps son’s girlfriend, played by Ryder Skye (MiLF Soup 6, Son of Blackzilla) classily replies, “I’d like to spring a leak except for the toilet’s broken.” London looks happy to walk away from his vague family in pursuit of gas (none of his “children” appear to have picked up a hint of his British accent, nor are their relationships explicitly codified except a general reference to Marcus London being the group’s “father” figure). In his absence his wife, played by Claudia Valentine (Cougars 2, Kinky Cougars 1), retreats to the comfort of their camper while Todd, played by Alan Stafford (Boot Camp: Sex Survival, Night of the Giving Head) “goes off exploring.” Meanwhile, Ryder Skye and her boyfriend, or possibly stepbrother (Chris Cannon – Sex & Violins, School of Hard Knockers 2) have sex while Mom is five feet away inside the camper with fully functional windows, yet offering no objections. Making the scene vaguely creepy is the fact that we know Ryder Skye really, really had to go to the bathroom, but this subplot remains inexplicably unresolved.

When are you all going to stop fighting and realize you love each other?!

Marcus London arrives at the gas station by nightfall, only to find Kenzi Marie (Flying Solo, Tickle Torture 1), who appears to have smudged her make-up slightly. “Did you run out of gas,” he asks? “No, honey. I’ll never run out of gas. My engine will stay running until the end of time.” Once again, London’s character neglects to ask the obvious questions – like how Kenzi Marie achieved immortality (I know I’d be curious) – and instead has sex with her while his family worries that neither he nor Todd have returned yet. Ryder Skye and Chris Cannon decide to go off searching for Todd (never to return, for some reason), while Claudia Black is surprised to find Tricia Oaks (It Takes Two 5, More Dirty Debutantes 303) inside her camper with anachronistically big hair and seeking love and affection, which she then receives… sexually. Then Todd comes back, apparently having rather enjoyed his long walk in the desert, only to find that the camper is now guarded by three female raiders from the Fallout series, played by Aiden Starr (This Ain’t Hell’s Kitchen XXX, This Ain’t the Munsters XXX), Jackie Avalon (My Secret Girlfriend, Sex Cult Scenesters) and Lilly Kingston (Fresh Outta High School 12, 14 & 15). “I was just out exploring,” he says. “Explore this,” they say, apparently meaning his sexuality, because sex ensues.

“What… is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?”

The next morning, Marcus London wakes up at the gas station to find the attendant, now shirtless for some reason, looming over him.

“What the hell happened?”

“Space aliens… Or, seduced by one of the local nymphomaniacs… The military did these tests out here, turned all the local girls into nymphomaniacs… They’re always watching for fresh meat. The Whores Have Eyes.”

Also, the whores have binoculars.

While this subtle revelation wraps the film up quite nicely, answering every question clearly and elegantly, thematically the remake seems somehow less substantial than Wes Craven’s original film. By replacing the sadistic violence with hardcore sexuality the filmmakers made the film more fun, but also less terrifying. If anything, these hills seem like a pretty neat place to live, which explains why Eric Swiss’s character would keep a gas station open there despite some obviously low profit margins. Perhaps if more effort had been made to demonstrate how the family had been changed by these events (sexually restrained beforehand, sexually liberated afterwards) then The Whores Have Eyes could be seen as a significant improvement on the original, timeless horror classic. Instead, it is merely a small improvement. The only new element appears to be a radically different take on nuclear testing, perceived in the original as the creator of hideously violent mutants, and here seen as a reasonably harmless sexual stimulant (and if the dialogue is any indication, possibly the key to human immortality). Canterbury’s film therefore takes its own unlikely place in cinematic history as one of the very few pro-nuclear weaponry propaganda pornographic horror movie remakes.

Still, the Whores Have Eyes remains one of the better horror remakes in recent years, leagues above such God awful entries as Halloween and When a Stranger Calls, and only a few steps below such modern classics as Dawn of the Dead and The Ring. If you’re looking for something with eyes, then Geekscape After Dark heartily recommends these particular whores.

The Whores Have Eyes is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Hustler Video.

Welcome to Geekscape After Dark, where you can always work on your hand-eye coordination. This week, we are pleased to review the 2008 “multi-racial gaming experience” Race 2 Race, a game which no doubt inspired Valve’s critically acclaimed Left 4 Dead through its misleading title. Race 2 Race is not, as one would assume, the sequel to (the non-existent) Race 1 Race, but rather a new interactive experience that takes the genre trappings of the fighting game genre and brilliantly replaces the body slams, fetish outfits and “finishing moves” with something sexual instead!

Unlike most of Geekscape After Dark’s subject matter, Race 2 Race demands to be reviewed as a videogame. As such, we will divide the review into the traditional, arbitrary categories: Story, Presentation, Functionality, and finally Overall Entertainment Value.

Race 2 Race’s Haus is a very, very, very fine Haus.

Story:

There isn’t one. Like many games that belong to the “fighting game” genre, the plot is merely a device that brings disparate characters into a single location and forces them into physical conflict. Although the box purports that 17 characters have entered into a contest to earn the title of “World’s Best (Person with Whom to Fornicate),” no mention is made of this within gameplay. Colorful characters are merely beamed into an arena, look around in a vaguely confused fashion before locking eyes with their opponent and… settling their differences.

It’s not Neil Simon, but it will do. Fighting games are not about convoluted plotlines, they’re about strong characters (something the makers of movies based on fighting games have yet to figure out). In good fighting games, every character is distinct from their costuming to their fighting style, and while there is little in the way of narrative development throughout any given game, each character has a dramatic back story that strongly motivates them to participate in a given contest. Sometimes their motivation is fame and glory, other times it’s the desire to defeat or defend another contestant, while for others the contest is merely a means of proving their own self-worth.

And I suppose E. Honda, Zangief and Dhalsim were politically correct?

While the various characters in Race 2 Race follow some of these tenets closely – they all adhere to specific racial stereotypes, ranging from Soccer Hooligan to Rwandan Genocidist – their motivations for entering the game are so unimportant that they are relegated to a supplemental disc. Some characters were raised by monks and went off to see the world while others, like Zimbabwe’s King Zutu, are looking for a worthy mate, but judging from the brief character bios none of them stand to gain terribly much from the competition, resulting in little empathy from the player.

As such, despite a considerable handicap based on the lowered expectations towards fighting games, Race 2 Race earns only average marks in the story department. But it’s still a fighting game in which people have sex with each other instead of actually fighting, so the more hardcore audience probably won’t care too much about the story anyway.

At last, the long-standing rivalry between Turkey, Spain and Kenya will be resolved.

PRESENTATION:

If you’re looking at the screenshots in this review you have probably already noticed that the character modeling in Race 2 Race is outstanding. Every single character is photorealistic, drool-worthy and modeled after real pornographic actors. Killer Quan is the spitting image of Mia Smiles (Color Blind) and if I didn’t know better I’d think was watching actual footage of Victoria Sin (Last Whorehouse on the Left) as Gretchen “The Gunner” Goodhaus, the game’s answer to Soul Calibur’s Ivy. Unlike Soul Calibur, and for that matter just about any fighting game these days, Race 2 Race makes no concessions towards character customization. Each character’s broad stereotype of a costume is the only one they get, although during gameplay these outfits can be torn off to reveal equally impressive skin and even bodily fluid effects!

Regrettably, the incredible character modeling does not entirely make up for the extremely poor environmental design. Most fighting games provide at least as many arenas as there are characters (frequently with each arena corresponding to a specific character – Blanka’s swamp, for example, or Vega’s cage match). In Race 2 Race there is very little variety in each environment: it’s always a room containing a series of couches, often in different locations around the room, and occasionally different colors of curtains or – if we’re really, really lucky – a gong. Whoop-de-doo. Admittedly there’s a decent amount of character interaction within these environments (each couch can and will be used, for example), but evidently so much time was spent on the character and costume modeling that there was simply no time left over to render unique environments.

Race 2 Race’s developers show off their innovative “Couch Reassignment” engine.

As for sound, well… there is sound. It’s not a terribly dynamic soundtrack nor are the audio effects terribly engaging. The voice-acting is decent, but frankly if the premise of the game to depict characters of different cultural backgrounds interacting physically with one another, then at least some effort should have gone into accurate accents for their dialogue. Still, the characters are so beautiful that we can’t help but give the presentation a passing grade, low though it may be.

FUNCTIONALITY:

When playing Race 2 Race one thing becomes readily apparent: Hideo Kojima worships this game. If you think Metal Gear Solid 4 had too many cinematics then stay far, far away from Race 2 Race. If, on the other hand, you’re a diehard MSG fan you’ll probably love “playing” Race 2 Race. Unfortunately, I stand on the other side – far, far on the other side – of that fence.

“Sex Style: Sand Storm.” Just as painful as it sounds.

Interactivity in Race 2 Race sadly seems limited to the “Character Select” screen. The player selects their character and the computer “randomly” selects an opponent for them. I put “randomly” in quotes because no matter how many times I selected each character, the computer would always select the same opponent(s). If Race 2 Race didn’t clearly call itself a “gaming experience” I would think they’d just taken a Chapter Select screen from a Fighting Game-themed pornographic movie and changed the captions. At first I just assumed the game was selecting characters based on whose ethnic backgrounds would be in the most conflict, but what grievances do Saudi Arabians and Australians have to work out? And why pair a Nazi with a Rwandan mercenary? Their mutual histories of genocide?

Admittedly, Race 2 Race does feature some innovative grappling moves.

As the characters have been selected, the player then watches a cut scene of their character having various kinds of sex with their opponent. Some variety comes into play when characters are sometimes chosen to face off against two or even three opponents (Nigera’s Princess Penwa always seems to fight Raven Heart, Adam “The All-American” Anderson and The Austrian Assassin, for example), but aside from merely requesting that their character have sex the player has no control over the events. I never thought I’d say this, but as a gamer I would have killed for a Quicktime Event! Seriously, if Race 2 Race is really a videogame then you’d think they’d give us something to do with our hands!

OVERALL ENTERTAINMENT VALUE (NOT AN AVERAGE):

Despite its many admirable qualities (did you check out those realistic heaving effects? Wow…), Race 2 Race barely qualifies as a videogame… again, much like Metal Gear Solid 4. And like Metal Gear Solid 4 it’s bound to have its hardcore detractors and hardcore fans. Some people like to have their games played for them, I suppose, but personally I just call that just watching a movie. Race 2 Race would probably be a very good movie, but as a “gaming experience” it’s a little underwhelming. It’s highly recommended for people who would rather watch people have sex than play a fighting game, but honestly… who would want to do that?

Race 2 Race is currently available on DVD from Wicked Pictures.

Jazz hands, people! Jazz hands!

Welcome to Geekscape After Dark, where your mind is about to get blown. For years now, “Reality” television has been the backbone of the entertainment industry. Reality TV, for the layperson, consists of television programs that represent a wholly accurate portrayal of reality – hence the name. But is “reality” programming really “real?” The answer, as posited by Hustler Video’s This Ain’t Hell’s Kitchen XXX, will shock you to your very core.

If critically-acclaimed writer/producer/director Stuart Canterbury (Gov Love: The Eliot Splitz-er Story, Topless Marathon Runner, Quantum Deep) is to be believed, there exists beneath the wholesome world of reality television – now stick with me for a minute – a seamy underbelly. Some of these television series may not actually be “found footage” documentaries of, for example, sociological experiments in which disparate individuals travel to a deserted island in an effort to start a perfect communal life in which those who fail to meet the standards of the new utopian society are democratically chosen to return to their previous existence. And perhaps, just perhaps, Lauren Conrad’s highly coveted employment opportunities in the fashion world aren’t the result of years of toil, passion and paying her dues, but instead have – and again, just stick with me on this – just a little bit more to do with the fact that she’s on television?

Can you believe director Stuart Canterbury has the audacity to question
Chef Jordan Rams’Em’s motivations?!

The vehicle for Mr. Canterbury’s exposé is his latest film, This Ain’t Hell’s Kitchen XXX. Unlike other entries in the “This Ain’t…” franchise, the title indicates more than the fact that the film in question isn’t meant to be associated with its source material (even though it obviously is). This Ain’t Hell’s Kitchen XXX also cleverly parodies the fact that both it and the original “Hell’s Kitchen” never seem to take place in Manhattan’s “Hell’s Kitchen” at all! Already our preconceived notions of reality television are being challenged… after all, even the title of a so-called “reality” television series is lying to us. And as an added bonus, it also informs the audience that, sadly, no… Daredevil will not be making a cameo appearance.

In the film, Marcus London (Cougar Club: The Hunt is On, Lippstixxx and Dipstixxx) plays “Jordan Rams’Em,” a brilliant parody of the name of “Gordon Ramsay,” the original Hell’s Kitchen’s star and creator. In case any of our readers are failing to pick up on the subtle complexities of this joke, Stuart Canterbury changed “Gordon” to “Jordan,” doubtless in an homage to the famous song by Buckethead which is renowned for its complexity in both “reality” and the videogame “Guitar Hero II.” In this way we come to understand that beneath his perhaps phoney exterior lies a man with the exceptional talent necessary to earn his vaunted position. His second name, “Rams’Em,” is a significantly less obvious reference, but probably mostly refers to the fact that, because This Ain’t Hell’s Kitchen XXX is a pornographic enterprise, his character will most likely being having some kind of sex at some point in the film’s narrative. Skeptical readers may doubt the veracity of this claim, instead choosing to believe that Mr. Canterbury simply made a “gaff” and “got” the illustrious Mr. Ramsay’s last name “wrong,” but indeed it is these skeptics who are in fact mistaken, as the obviously inaccurate placement of the apostrophe in the middle of the protagonist’s last name clues the audience in to the filmmakers’ actual intentions.

This Ain’t Hell’s Kitchen XXX is fascinatingly structured not like a film, with a “beginning,” “middle,” and “end,” but like an “episode” of a “television series.” But – and this is the brilliant part – this “episode” is neither at the beginning nor the end of the “season.” In this way the filmmakers can effectively sideline the leaden exposition and dramatically inert denouements that so frequently drag down even the most talented of filmmakers’ best intentions. It’s an exceptionally smart device that is surprisingly only rarely used, but has proved essential to the success of such classic films as “The Matrix Reloaded,” “Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones,” and, of course, “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eight Dimension.” At the beginning of the “episode” we are informed via a disembodied narrator that only six contestants remain on the show “after last week’s grueling episode,” which doubtless explains why Mr. Canterbury chose this particular episode to focus on. After all, who wants to see a film about porn stars making gruel?

If you can’t stand the heat, then get out of the This Ain’t Hell’s Kitchen!

With only two male contestants and four female contestants left, competition seems fierce, but although this sense of competition will remain the film’s most prominent theme, the filmmakers take a brief moment at the beginning to establish the sacrifices these noble contestants are making. On the “Blue” (read: male) team, Chef Frank (Kris Slater – Bikini Babes from Burbank, This Ain’t the Partridge Family XXX) expresses his desire for the competition to be over so he can return to his beloved girlfriend’s side. But although this establishes his character’s more empathetic qualities, he immediately points out that he’s on the “Blue” team because he hasn’t had sexual intercourse in an extended period of time. This fascination with human sexuality will remain a recurring motif throughout This Ain’t Hell’s Kitchen XXX’s narrative, as we shall soon discover.

When Chef Rams’Em arrives he announces that tonight’s challenge with be “the toughest they’ve ever faced,” to which Chef Annie (Kagney Linn Carter – Confessions of a Cheating Housewife, P.O.V. Centerfolds 8) mouths off, “I don’t know, I’ve faced some pretty hard ones,” Chef Rams’Em gets “all up in her grill,” if you will excuse the pun, with a series of sexist and profanity-laced insults including, “You’ve got a smart mouth for some stupid tart,” “I’ve seen chickens with better breasts than you,” and “In fact, the tables in my restaurant have better legs than you! You disgust me!” Ordinarily, broadcast television would censor these kinds of remarks, but leave it to pornography to reveal the truth behind our most innocent illusions. By not sugarcoating the host’s tirades we as an audience begin to suspect that he may, in fact, not be using this television series for the betterment of mankind(’s cookery) after all. Might the host of Hell’s Kitchen not be a very nice person?!

“Your challenge tonight is to cook Sir Robin’s minstrels.”
“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay…!”

The challenge for tonight, Chef Rams’em says, is that a food critic will be amongst the diners, and that whichever team’s cooking she likes the least will lose one of their contestants… forever. Chef Annie, the source of the host’s spite, confesses to the camera after the announcement that, “I deserved everything he said to me… I just wanted Chef’s attention.” This is a fascinating revelation on the part of the filmmakers, but one that deserves close scrutiny. Are reality television stars really just “seeking attention?” Surely there are other, less complicated ways to achieve personal fulfillment than by going on television, like an accomplished career as a professional chef for example, but Chef Annie proves that she’s less interested in pursuing her culinary career than in seeking Chef Rams’Em’s approval in the following scene in which she – and get ready for a bombshell – has sex with him!

Yes, the following sequence begins with Chef Annie miming the act of cooking, an ingenious visual representation of the fact that her character is simply “going through the motions” before Chef Rams’Em enters and gives her an opportunity to redeem herself via her cooking prowess. “I would like to see what you could do with this bit of English sausage,” he requests, but instead of chopping it into little pieces like you would expect, Chef Annie ignores his culinary request and instead has sex with him right in the middle of the kitchen! What’s worse is that Chef Rams’Em has sex right back, meaning both of these supposed culinary professionals are performing highly unsanitary acts in a supposedly sterile food preparation area. In this way, Stuart Canterbury asks a serious and outright scandalous question: Are reality television stars, if you will forgive the expression, whores?!

Chef Jordan Rams’Em really chews Chef Annie out for her inappropriate kitchen attire.

That night, the customers at the restaurant await their food. The implication is that because the contestants are having sex in the kitchen, the service at the restaurant is technically inadequate. This is a truly insightful observation on the part of the filmmakers. Certainly audiences around the world are entertained by their backstage shenanigans, but the result is often a sacrifice in the quality of their craft. The issue comes to a head when two customers – Mike (Billy Glide – Milfology, Terminally Blonde) and Nancy (Aiden Starr – Celebrity Pornhab with Dr. Screw, Eight is Enough) – become so impatient that they decide to skip the dinner aspect of their date and proceed directly to the fornication! The fact that the other diners are forced to watch beautifully illustrates the consequences of the reality stars’ actions. Are they not encouraging inappropriate behavior with their poor example?

Meanwhile, the food critic (Veronica Rayne – Bossy Boss 4, Your Mom), sets herself up for disaster when she tells the waiter, “I’ll have the cream of asparagus soup to start, then I’ll have the chicken with cream and caper sauce, and a salad on the side.” Further, when prompted for her choice of dressing, she requests the “creamy Italian.” Naturally, this places considerable strain on the kitchen’s cream supply, forcing Chef Giuseppi (Anthony Rosano  – Gluteus Maximass, Hearts and Minds 2: Modern Warfare) to improvise, despite Chef Frank’s more responsible protests. His solution to the problem harkens back to the actions of Fight Club’s Tyler Durden, creating an intriguing parallel between stardom and cult leadership. Like the previous scene, it forces the viewer to question the moral responsibilities of reality stars. Maybe they’re not all saints? Further, Chef Giuseppi is actually rewarded for his behavior when the food critic enjoys his new recipe for cream to such a significant extent that later, as the restaurant closes, she privately requests seconds! The message is clear: we as an audience are not so much condoning this irresponsible behavior in pursuit of personal gain as we are rewarding it. For shame…

Chef Giuseppi is Cream of Italian Dressing! He’s a cop who doesn’t play by society’s rules…

But not everyone is willing to sleep with a member of the opposite sex in pursuit of fame and glory. Others, like Chef Barbie (Kylee Reese – Talk Show Tarts, Beyond the Cyber Door) and Chef Cherry (Toe Service #4) choose not to prostitute themselves to Chef Rams’Em or some random food critic out of some misguided obsession with competition. No, instead they prostitute themselves to each other while Chef Rams’Em watches. The road to hell(‘s kitchen) is apparently paved with good intentions, and the irony of their attempts to maintain their dignity by making questionable moral compromises is completely lost on every character, but not – thanks to the expert filmmaking of Stuart Canterbury – to the audience.

After dinner has finally been served, the contestants are greeted by Jordan Rams’Em who is in such a foul mood (surprising, given the amount of endorphins that must be circulating through his system by now) that he even interrupts the disembodied voice-over guy by screaming, “Come on! Quicken it up!” Despite his screaming, his insults, and even his angry demands for applause he finally manages to announce that the winner for the evening was the blue team, and that Chef Frank has to decide with member of the pink team is going home… forever. No mention is made as to why Chef Frank gets to make this monumental decision, raising the issue of reality television’s arbitrary system of rules. Can they really be considered rules if the host can break them at any time?

Chef Frank, heretofore This Ain’t Hell’s Kitchen’s voice of reason and a devoted boyfriend, finds himself in a quandary over his new task until Chef Diane (Missy Stone – Breakroom Betties, Scrubs: A XXX Parody) enters and begs him not to vote her off of the show. Ordinarily, one would assume that the heroic Chef Frank would be resistant to her sexual advances, but the weeks/months of competition and celibacy appear to have finally gotten the better of him. Chef Diane finally corrupts Chef Frank with the promise (and realization) of physical delights, even placing her own pink chef’s hat on his head to symbolize that he is now one of “them.“ He has officially become a reality star, but in the process he has been filmed cheating on his girlfriend, thus doubtless ruining a meaningful, “real” relationship in favor of momentary “reality” gratification.

Despite her supposedly sophisticated “Chef’s Palate,” Chef Diane seems unaware
that all green bottle beers taste alike.

The message is as bold as it is clear: reality stars are whores, seeking attention and personal satisfaction at the cost of respectability and moral decency (except those “Jon & Kate” folks – being married, they’re probably immune to these effects). It’s a strong moral stance being made by Stuart Canterbury and Hustler Video, one only reinforced by the fact that the film never reveals who exactly is getting voted off of This Ain’t Hell’s Kitchen XXX. To the audience, all of these morally compromised and disgusting people will be on TV forever because, you see, in Hell’s Kitchen… there is no exit.

This Ain’t Hell’s Kitchen XXX is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Hustler Video, and comes highly recommended from Geekscape After Dark.

Welcome to Geekscape After Dark. Racism is bad. (SPOILER ALERT!) There… Now you don’t have to see Crash. (END SPOILERS.) Instead, allow me to recommend a film that portrays a truly penetrating look at prejudice, one that dares burrow deep inside the dark gaping holes in all of us to uncover that universal truth: That underneath our clothes, we are all beautiful creatures who should spend our time loving each other. The film, of course, is Adam & Eve’s Color Blind, directed by AVN Award-nominee Nick Orleans (Naughty Co-Ed Caper, Tailgunners), and it is a brilliantly conceived film about a racist who loses his vision… only to gain a lack of racism.

Steven St. Croix (Rawhide, Any Dorm in a Storm) stars at Trent Grossman, a cleverly fitting name since, because of his racism, he is gross… man. Yes, despite his enormous success at “a multi-million dollar company,” Trent still suffers from racism which, given his networking-heavy occupation, would seem to qualify as a disability. It’s inspirational, really. Trent must have to work three times as hard as any of his peers just to compensate for his poor office politics. When he discovers that his assistant Jimmy (Ian Daniels – The Slutty Professor, Breastman Does the Twin Towers) is dating Trent’s secretary (Gina Ryder – Sensually Haunted, The Sopornos 7), a self-professed Latino, his words are strong: “People like that, they lie, cheat or are deceitful. You get them pregnant – ‘knocked up’ – they stay home, they spit out kids and collect welfare.” Despite the obvious strength of conviction in Trent’s voice, Jimmy ignores his friend’s warnings, earning him a sexual escapade with not just Trent’s secretary but also a European co-worker played by Nikita Denise (La Femme Nikita Denise 1 & 2), who happens to be European. In this way we as an audience see not just the moral advantages to racial tolerance, but the practical advantages as well!

If you pay close attention to the shadows behind Trent’s desk, you will see that
they place Trent in the center of a spiderweb of his own devising, spun from his own racism.
(Or at least, they would if he had a chair.)

When Jimmy tells Trent of his recent exploits, Trent’s reaction once again confirms his racism. “I want you to go home, I want you to take a shower – actually, I want you to take two showers – then I want you to clean your **** with hydrogen peroxide, have some hot milk, and then get into bed between clean white sheets. I don’t want to have to worry about you.” But really, it’s the audience who is worrying about Trent: How can a man this dedicated to his racism possibly learn a valuable lesson about tolerance? It’s a seemingly impossible plotline to concoct, but by God, the makers of Color Blind did it: Trent the Racist goes blind after a car accident, which in turn was caused by racism (he was yelling epithets while driving and talking on a cellular phone). You see, Trent judges people based on the color of their skin, but when he goes blind he will be unable to distinguish one race from another! For marketing purposes it might have been nice if he simply went Color Blind (you know, like the title), but as Geekscape After Dark has illustrated time and again, in pornography the story always comes first. His struggle is much more cinematic if he has to relearn how to live, rather than learn how to distinguish between shades of grey.

Trent’s journey of self-discovery begins when, while lying comatose in his hospital bed, he becomes a victim of racism: Racism towards Racists. A doctor played by Mr. Marcus (Othello: Dangerous Desire, Pornocide), who happens to be black, even says, “He’s one of those. You’d hope the world would be more advanced.” Ouch. The dehumanization continues when he proceeds to have interracial sex with a fellow doctor, who happens to be white, played by Caroline Pierce (Bullets & Burlesque, Fashionistas Savado: The Challenge) right in Trent’s room! Trent would almost certainly not approve of this beautiful symbol of love without boundaries, but he’s too busy complaining that, if he’s in heaven, it should be whiter (what with the clouds, and such). When the bandages are removed, Trent discovers that he is in fact completely blind and begins screaming requests for his sight to return. Requests… which go unheeded.

Trent Grossman’s life may not have been “turned upside down,” but it sure is canted.

At this point the film segues into Trent’s home life with his wife Christina (Jasmin Klein – Midnight Librarians, Cleopatra Does Hollywood), which is on the rocks. As if Trent’s new disability wasn’t enough, he now has to deal with his wife’s incessant faux pas, like “You should see yourself” and “You can watch if you’d like.” After pleading with Trent to get help, he finally takes a long think while standing on the precipice of the most photogenic, thoughtful landmark available – the swimming pool – and tells Christina, “Move on with your life.” She accepts his offer and agrees to a divorce, but not before fooling around with her lawyer Mr. Breckenridge (Dillon Day – Amish Daughters, Shakespeare Revealed) right in front of her husband’s back. Although she doesn’t want to “castigate” him, Christina has obviously lost her feelings for Trent. Clever viewers could tell from her very first scene, in which a close-up clearly designed to symbolize their marriage reveals that she wears her wedding ring on the wrong finger.

A ring on her little finger implies that Christina is not actually married, but rather that
she belongs to “The Order of the Engineer.”

Jimmy arrives to read Trent the divorce papers and to cheer his doubly troubled friend up by getting together with some girls and having a party, but Trent refuses on the off-chance that Jimmy would bring some of his minority friends. Jimmy tries to express the irony of a blind man judging people based on how they look, but Trent just blows him off, saying, “You watch way too much TV, college boy.” The irony of his statement speaks volumes: accusing Jimmy of watching way too much television implies his lack of education, an insult which is immediately contradicted by calling him “college boy,” which frequently implies an abundance thereof. Trent’s opinions are hereby illustrated as being illogical. He still has room to grow. At least, a part of him does.

Don’t do it, Trent! You’ll ruin your sweater!

The growing part of the movie begins in earnest when Christina requires that he seek professional assistance in the divorce proceedings… an unusual request, to be certain, but apparently you can do that. Trent acquiesces and two beautiful tutors arrive at Trent’s house silhouetted by the most powerful lens flare ever filmed (until J. J. Abram’s Star Trek, of course – Abrams obviously saw and was inspired by Color Blind to make his film about a future where all races exist in harmony, and it’s time to give credit where credit is due). It’s a clever, possibly even fantastically ingenious way of disguising the fact that neither character is white until just the right moment in the narrative – i.e. the next shot. But establishing shots are lost on the blind, and Trent mistakes both Ashley Smith (Mia Smiles – Mobster’s Ball, Terms of Enslavement), who happens to be of Korean descent, and Karen Lockwood (Dee – Dee Licious, I Know Who You Did Last Summer), who happens to be of Latino descent, for white people, doubtless based on their vaguely misleading names.

Proof that J.J. Abrams watches pornography? We think so.

Ashley and Karen begin instructing Trent on how to read Braille, walk with a cane and do basic household chores which he probably took for granted or something. Steven St. Croix’s heretofore perpetually aggravated performance takes a subtle turn here towards charming goofiness, and comparing this delightful sequence in the film to the more subtle works of Will Ferrell would not be inappropriate. (It’s fun to imagine Ferrell’s character from Melinda & Melinda playing Trent with a limp.) Though they clearly care for Trent as a human being, they are also both human themselves and eventually decide to amuse themselves by going about their days in various states of undress, and even teasing each other with lewd acts while Trent is in the room. Once again Trent is dehumanized, although this time it’s not for his beliefs but rather his disability. Again, ouch. Like Crash, which brilliantly showed that every race conforms to every negative stereotype imaginable even when they claim not to, these moments are masterpieces of irony. Finally their games blossom into a three-way love affair that culminates when Trent asks them – both of them – to marry him. Ashley and Karen are so touched and in love that they both agree immediately without even considering the legal or even social implications of polygamy in America. Perhaps Color Blind was an early inspiration for Big Love?

Before the marriage, there’s something Ashley and Karen need to mention: their associate Lena Fields (Flick Shagwell – Being Porn Again, From Lust Till Dawn) has developed a new treatment that gives the blind their sight back… for 2-3 minutes… and which then causes them to go blind permanently. (My research was limited but for all the blind people reading this article, be aware that this process is expensive, and possibly even fictitious, so ask your doctor.) Trent jumps at the chance to actually see his brides before the wedding, so they hook him up to a contraption that looks like a combination of the Weapon X project and a Maxell commercial. As his vision slowly returns, he sees that the two women he fell in love with so much that he couldn’t marry just one are actually… people that he hates?!

They unblinded him with science!

Karen and Ashley are both very confused by his behavior and deeply hurt by his accusations of deceitfulness, which is ironic since the whole “walking around naked because he can’t see us because it’s fun” subplot does seem disingenuous at best. But Trent orders them to leave his house and spends his last minute of sight staring out at his property. Earlier in the film, Trent said that his house “represents everything that I worked for my entire life,” subtly implying that his house actually represents what he worked for his entire life. But now what he worked for his entire life is empty, and that’s the last thing he will ever see. Frankly, if you’re not crying by the end of Color Blind then you are less than a human being… and I hate you.

Practically dripping with regret, Trent makes a painful and desperate awkward walk down a hallway in a bravura sequence (detailed below) in which he makes not one but three slow-motion pratfalls down the hallway. Ordinarily this sequence would be hilarious, but in the proper context (he’s unhappy/a racist) it’s a devastating scene that doles out enough punishment on our protagonist to make even that heartless foreigner Lars Von Trier squirm. Trent falls, and apparently can’t get up until that evening when Ashley and Karen return. They’re angry, but still responsible for Trent’s well-being. Trent actually apologizes with a heartfelt “I’m sorry.” (Astute viewers can probably sense a sequel in his phrasing… he’s sorry for what exactly?) Ashley and Karen immediately accept his apology and his love, over and over again, all night long. With sex. The End.

Porn star Steven St. Croix is renowned for his extremely physical performances.

Pornography is often viewed by negatively by audiences sight unseen (ironically) because it is viewed as an artistically inert genre that has little to contribute to society, but these people by definition have not seen Color Blind, and as such they’re missing out on an exceptional piece of filmmaking. This film about blindness, for example, opens and closes with a close-up of an eye, which most storytellers would probably not have thought about. Next, we see that same close-up in black and white photography, followed by negative black and white photography, followed by color negative photography. You see, these transitions imply that the owner of that eye will have their perceptions altered three times throughout the film, from racist, to blind and racist, to temporarily not-blind and learning a valuable lesson, and then back to blind, only now less racist, and all in one shot!

Color Blind is an exceptional film with an exceptional moral: that racism is bad because it cuts down on potential sexual conquests. In contrast, Paul Haggis spent so much time in Crash focusing on the first half of that message that he completely ignored the second, which is a shame (I can only imagine how many Oscars he would have won). You’ll laugh (at blindness), you’ll cry (at blindness), and you may even become aroused (despite blindness) at Color Blind, available now from Adam & Eve.

Color Blind is full of brilliant sequences that film aficionados will drool over.

Welcome to Geekscape After Dark, where we talk about golf. For the uninitiated, golf is a sport perhaps best described by the greatest philosopher of the 20th century – George Carlin – as “hitting a ball with a crooked stick and then… walking after it. And then hitting it again.” He also equated the act of watching golf to watching flies fornicate with each other, which probably explains why there are relatively few movies about golf compared to movies about football, baseball, basketball, hockey, martial arts tournaments, ping pong, or practically any other professional sporting event.

Which is not to say that there aren’t some notable entries in the golfing sub-genre: The Greatest Game Ever Played was a well-made if formulaic inspirational drama, Tin Cup was a charmingly well-crafted romp (and arguably Kevin Kostner’s last great film) and The Legend of Bagger Vance had Will Smith in it, so it’s probably not all bad. But for years the only golf movie that managed to penetrate the public consciousness was Caddyshack, a hilarious comedy classic that is perhaps most memorable for having the least memorable protagonist in film history since… well, actually I can’t remember. (In the interest of irony, I will completely neglect to mention Caddyshack II.) So it only stands to reason that hot on the heels of the Caddyshack’s breakaway success – only six years later! – the pornographic industry would come up with their own golfing classic, Caddy Shack-Up.

This establishing shot establishes the presence of shots.

Geekscape After Dark reviews have occasionally been accused of hyperbole, which is ridiculous. (I mean, we hardly know ‘erbole!) But in the interest of fairness the following must be stated: Caddy Shack-Up may be one of the greatest golfing movies of all time (it’s in the Top 100, easily), but it’s not without its flaws. The decision to shoot on video can, with hindsight, be viewed as a poor choice, as it lends the film a very grungy veneer that feels ill-suited to a story set in a high-class country club. Budgetary concerns probably won out here – 70mm was probably never even considered – so the choice is completely understandable, but the result is a film that feels permanently rooted in its time period, forcing viewers to keep historical context in mind throughout the film’s entire running time. In this respect, Caddy Shack-Up is just like Norman Jewison’s The Thomas Crown Affair, or John Badham’s Saturday Night Fever.

But perhaps least forgivable is the film’s almost complete lack of any actual golfing. Like the original Caddyshack (and to a lesser extent Caddyshack II, although frankly everything is to a lesser extent in Caddyshack II), we are confronted with caddies who are, as one character describes, completely sex-crazed. “Sometimes I wonder how they have the energy to make it to the links.” Short answer: They don’t. Everyone appears to be too busy to actually do their jobs, and the one character who actually values their employment is portrayed as a “stuffed shirt,” which in the popular culture of the 1980’s was apparently the next worst thing to being Hitler.

Krysta Lane (Empire of the Sins, Mammary Lane) stars as Kathy Saunders, the daughter of a legendary golf pro who has, she modestly declares, “followed (her) dad around enough to know which golf clubs to use and when to use them.” As this skill set seems somewhat suited to the art of caddying, she has decided to become a caddy. But as she tells her new co-worker Stephanie (Tanya Foxx – Beverly Hills Copulator, The Ghostess with the Mostess), “I’m looking for a bigger game, more than a few trophies and a little bit of prize money.” i.e. She’s looking to marry one of the rich members, or even better, the president of the club. Being the industrious and independent young woman that she is, Kathy immediately gets to work, which involves far more sex with Stephanie than you’d expect, and far less golfing than the average viewer would think. Still, Stephanie isn’t a millionaire, and they wouldn’t be legally allowed to marry in California until a few short months in 2008 anyway, so we know that this isn’t the end of Kathy’s story. Will she find true lo… um, financial stability in exchange for sexual favors?

Meanwhile, one of the club members, Sam (Frank James – La Bimbo, Riding Miss Daisy) is offered putting lessons by his caddy Jo Anne (Purple Passion – National Pornographic, Sex She Wrote). Once again, however, Caddy Shack-Up cruelly teases its audience with the possibility of actually watching some golf, only to turn into something sordid. A putter does make an appearance, but is not used according to regulations.  But when mean ol’ Mr. Moss (Buddy Love – Backside to the Future 2, Laid in the USA), the president of country club, shows up and is about to catch Jo Anne giving putting lessons that would almost certainly make of Sam a pariah at any professional tournament (“He’s on the green. Sam needs this shot for the birdy. He’s taking out his putter… OH DEAR SWEET GOD IN HEAVEN, WHAT IS HE DOING?!”), it’s up to Kathy and her co-worker Mindy (Paula Harlow – Lust At Sea, Sky Foxes) to create a distraction. “Follow my lead,” Kathy says before taking her clothes off, which is a lot to ask of someone you’ve just met. But Kathy’s gambit works, and some very distracting sex ensues, so apparently you can get anyone to do just about anything if you just preface it with “Follow my lead.” Remind me to try it the next time I’m near a sorority car wash.

So Kathy successfully seduces the president of the country club, but for some reason the movie isn’t over. We soon discover why: Steve the Golf Pro, played by Steve Drake (Flamenco Ecstasy, Joannie Pneumatic), has fallen for Kathy, but she seems completely uninterested. He expresses his pain to his caddy Jimmy (F.M. Bradley – In and Out of Africa, Tail House Rock), who has similar problems wooing Stephanie. But all this talk of love once again distracts from the complete lack of golf in Caddy Shack-Up. Hope for the audience arrives in the shapely shape of Heidi (Lorrie Lovett – Broadway Fanny Rose, Sex Aliens), who swings the topic of conversation towards – mercifully – golfing! Steve the Golf Pro specifies that they have lots of golfing equipment – “We’ve got clubs and we’ve got balls and we’ve got divots” – while Jimmy suggests a 9-iron for her “short strokes.” When Heidi asks who’s going to tee off, Jimmy says, “We both are. No waiting in this establishment.” Which, of course, sounds great! It sounds like we’re in for a hell of a round of golf! But somehow everyone in the room misinterprets all of this golf lingo as some kind of sexual invitation and they all end up fornicating together instead, which is a little ridiculous. You’d think at least Steve the Golf Pro would know what he was talking about.

The plot takes an unforeseen turn when Kathy gets a cold shoulder from Mr. Moss, who insists that their relationship remain professional, causing Kathy to leave in a huff. We’re supposed to be sympathize with Kathy, but really, Mr. Moss is being the mature one in the relationship. Besides, we’re all secretly hoping she’ll end up with the more emotionally-available Steve the Golf Pro anyway. At the very least, Jimmy and Stephanie relationship finds a bit of closure when they take a break from golfing (yup – that’s the closest we get, folks) to have sex.

As Caddy Shack-Up brings itself to a close we find Steve the Golf Pro writing in his journal, his deepest thoughts pouring onto the page (thoughts which may or may not be about golf). But he’s distracted by Kathy, who looks sad. She’s thinking of quitting. Steve the Golf Pro tries to talk her out of it, pointing out that “Golfing’s in our blood” (just not, apparently, in the script). But Kathy admits that her backswing is off. Steve the Golf Pro offers to give her some pointers, assuming the proper teaching position behind her in order to coach her into… having sex?!

Now, if you’re anything like me, you’re probably thinking that Caddy Shack-Up is a complete rip-off, teasing the audience endlessly with promises of hardcore golfing action and instead delivering everything but the actual “golfing” part. But right at the end of the film, Steve the Golf Pro says something that may change your mind. After consummating his love for Kathy, he turns to her and says, “You know what? Golf is a lot like (fornicating). You don’t have to be great to do it.” On the surface, that sounds like a horrible thing to say to someone with whom you have just been fornicating with. But if you look deep down you’ll find that it beautifully illustrates the film’s underlying dichotomy of…

Wait, you see, the movie was great at sex, meaning that it’s okay that it was bad at golf… No, wait… Was the sex bad? Maybe the point was to have fun. Yeah, that’s it. But golf is kind of fun, and they didn’t actually have any golf, but the sex was…

Hmmm…

Maybe Caddy Shack-Up is a lot like golf. After all, as Arthur Daley said, “If you don’t take it seriously, it’s no fun. If you do take it seriously, it breaks your heart.” That’s the review in a nutshell. Caddy Shack-Up is a heartbreaking sports classic for the ages. But I still can’t quite shake the feeling that if Caddy Shack-Up actually had some golfing in it, I might have at least learned who Arthur Daley is.

In any case, at least it’s better than Caddyshack II.

Caddy Shack-Up is available on DVD from Caballero Classics.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out what movie is being advertised on the back of this newspaper.
Is it some kind of caucasian Cool Runnings?

Welcome to Geekscape After Dark, where not too long ago we were asked to visit the set of one of the year’s most hotly anticipated movies: Star Trek. Although we were scheduled to visit on April 1st, we would have been foolish not to take the opportunity to watch movie history. Now that the film has been released and the critical acclaim has come rushing by at Warp Nine, we can tell our story… The story of how two internet journalists – myself and Brian Gilmore – watched Captain Kirk fornicate with a Vulcan.

Oh wait, This Ain’t Star Trek. Directed by Axel Braun. (Scroll down for the official Geekscape After Dark review.)

I think it was Francois Truffaut who said that it is impossible to watch a movie shot where you live without being distracted. If so, life must be extremely frustrating for anyone living at Larry Flynt Production Studios, what with the recent spate of high quality productions from the studio over the past several months. Of course, Truffaut also said that the Film of Tomorrow will be directed by “artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure.” If the makers of This Ain’t Star Trek XXX are any indication, then Truffaut is two for two.

Welcoming us with open arms to the illustrious Larry Flynt Production Studio are writer/director Axel Braun and star of over 2,000 movies Evan Stone. Evan Stone has made headlines with This Ain’t Star Trek XXX by agreeing to cut his iconic blonde locks for the role. While they could have used a wig, both Stone and Braun agreed that the effect would have been distracting, even disrespectful to fans of Star Trek. Besides, Stone wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of a dream role. “Ten years ago, if you’d asked me when I got into the business, ‘I’m doing Star Trek and I want you to play Kirk. But you’ve got to cut your hair.’ I would have said, ‘Fine, no problem! Cut it!’ And if you’d told me later, ‘Oh by the way, it’s a porn,’ I’d have ripped it out at the roots!”

Our first treat was a tour of the set by none other than Evan Stone himself, testing our geek credibility by showing us first a small room with lifepods along the walls, one containing a skeleton. When he asked if we recognized anything, Gilmore and I shared that same nod that William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones shared in Rolling Thunder. Only instead of indicating an understanding that we were, in fact, finally going to exact vengeance on the men who killed my wife and son and mutilated my hand, this nod meant only that we knew where we were: The Botany Bay. This Ain’t Star Trek XXX isn’t just an adaptation of the Star Trek original series, it’s a very close adaptation of one of the best Trek episodes ever: Space Seed, which introduced the world to the man who would turn out to be quite wrathful, Khan Noonien Singh.

Despite the remarkable accuracy to the original costume design, Luke Cage still called.
He wants the 1970’s back.

After passing through Khan’s quarters, the sick bay and the transporter room, we found ourselves on an impressive reproduction of the original bridge of the Enterprise, complete with large sparkly buttons that closer inspection revealed to be made out of tiling samples and super balls that have been cut in half. Much like George Lucas’s iconic “found art” approach to the production design of the first Star Wars, no effort was spared to make This Ain’t The Enterprise look authentically low-budget but classy, just like the original series. Evan Stone offers me the Captain’s chair, which I take (pausing only briefly to wonder what Evan Stone may have done on said chair days if not hours prior). I’m only human, and cannot resist the opportunity to say “Engage.”

Before long, we are ourselves engaged in a brief interview with superstar Evan Stone.

William Bibbiani (WB): Are you an original series or a TNG guy?

Evan Stone (ES): Original series.

WB: Did you watch the Khan episode to prepare (for this role)?

ES: Yes. re-watched it.

WB: What’s your take on Captain Kirk, as a character? What are you emphasizing in your portrayal?

ES: Some of his major mannerisms, but not all of them. I could do Shatner straight up, but that would be (too) easy…

WB: We didn’t get a chance to be here when you were filming scenes with Tony De Sergio (playing Spock), but I understand that he has a sex scene. Is he going through Pon Farr?

ES: Well, no, actually he’s drugged. He’s drugged inside the Enterprise, and he’s forced to have sex in order to get the drug out of his system.

WB: That is clever. That gets you out of sticky situation (Hindsight is 20/20 Note: And ironically, into an ever stickier one).

ES: I know, but he is half-human. He has to deal with that, and actually De Sergio, when he played the part, played it phenomenally because, it seems like he’s struggling between trying to get a grip on the emotions he’s having, and just trying to get the thing done. You see that sometimes he’s trying to get a grip on what’s going on, and I’m like… (Evan Stone smiles like a maniac).

Brian Gilmore (BG): We’ve never interviewed someone in this industry before, and I’ve always been wondering how much improvisation goes into it?

ES: It depends on what movie. If it’s a comedy, a lot more goes into improv and stuff. The serious stuff – usually, it’s the director who writes the script and they like it word for word. This movie has been straight-up script. A couple changes were made not because the storyline was weak (but because there were last minute shooting changes).

WB: How far in advance are these films usually cast? How long ago did you know you were going to be playing Kirk?

ES: Three weeks ago. They built this in two weeks. They just decided to do it, and it was “Go!” Boom-boom-boom-boom, this got done. I did a reading… and we had another meeting but I’m not sure what the meeting was for. I was late. They served coffee, so I was happy.

WB: So I was looking at the Internet Adult Film Database, which I am certain is 100% reliable, and they list you as (having) 1,002 titles as an actor.

ES: Wow. More like two thousand. I’ve done stuff out of the country, and…

WB: That’s a lot of on-camera experience. That’s more than Daniel Day Lewis.

ES: And even if I sucked when I first started, which I’m sure I did, I would have to be a little better by now.

Star Trek communicators were the model for modern cellular phone technology, from the flip case all the way to being unable to get a signal whenever it’s convenient for the plot.

BG: As a director, what made you want to stay so faithful to the original series, as opposed to just making a parody?

Axel Braun (AB): I’ve been shooting porn for over twenty years, and this is the second parody I’ve done. The first one was a month ago. I shot the parody of Happy Days, and I wanted to do Happy Days because I grew up watching the show and was a huge fan… It’s the only way that I can do it. I can’t do it any other way.

BG: (Agreeing) – When you have a fan base as strong as the Star Trek fan base, and it’s not like they’re mutually exclusive – everyone who watches Star Trek watches porn – there’s no bigger audience than the geek audience.

AB: The whole parody thing started in the eighties – Edward Penishands – they were really cheesy. I want to do movies, but the reason we’re really sticking to television right now is a budget issue… We’re not making (Star Trek) for the money. We could make the same amount of money shooting something in a day. It’s a labor of love.

Axel Braun goes on to explain that older television shows were shot predominantly on sound stages, allowing the look to be more effectively (and inexpensively) approximated by the pornographic industry. More expensive movies and television series would require prohibitively more effort for the production to pay homage faithfully. When we press him for other shows that he’s interested in adapting, he stays mum, reasonably mentioning that he doesn’t want to give the competition any ideas, but he does turn the question around, asking us, “What would you guys like to see done?”

Not missing a beat, we rush into a flurry of geek-related projects: This Ain’t Quantum Leap. This Ain’t Highlander. This Ain’t The Incredible Hulk. This Ain’t Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This Ain’t Jag. This Aini’t Airwolf. This Ain’t Dinosaurs. This Ain’t Land of the Lost. This Ain’t Small Wonder. Monty Python’s Flying Circus. (“How do you make something funnier than Monty Python?” Evan Stone asks me. “You have to make it really serious,” I reply. “Like Cries & Whispers.”) Finally, we come to the Holy Grail: Battlestar Galactica.

All the critics agree! The new Star Trek movie is “action-packed!”

Suddenly, AVN Award-winning director Axel Braun completely geeks out and we spend freakish amounts of time debating, criticizing and in general totally spazzing over the recently-aired finale. (I recorded the conversation, and had to fast forward for several minutes before reaching the end of our nerd-off.) Like all good-hearted people, the cast and crew of This Ain’t Star Trek XXX are BSG fans. And like all casts and crews, they spend a large portion of the day fiddling with their I-Phone applications. While Evan Stone plays the piano and listens to police band radio from Murrieta, Axel uses his handy dandy Cylon scanner to test the reporters in his midst. Brian got off Scot Free (which you’ll find ironic in a minute), but after he scans me there’s an ominous beeping noise. Suddenly he shouts, “HE’S A CYLON!!! He’s a FRAKKING CYLON! Take this ****ing skinjob out of my sight!”

At one point during The Great Porn Set Geek Out of 2009, Axel Braun looks at Gilmore funny. “Hey,” he says. “We’re shooting this scene today with Kirk and this alien girl Sasha Grey in the transporter room, and we kind of need to see the back of Scotty. Would you like to be a body double for a minute?”

Brian Gilmore: Second porn star to the right, and presumably straight on till morning.

And just like that, Brian Gilmore became a porn star, if by “porn star” you mean appearing with his back to the camera in one shot. But that doesn’t matter. Brian Gilmore is going to beam a Vulcan up to the Enterprise, and he’s going to need a porn star’s costume to do it. Fun Fact: Porn star costumes are just like regular costumes, but with one vital difference… The zippers are twice as long. Brian and I marveled at the practicality of the thing while pondering what pseudonyms we should use in the credits, should we appear in them. Is it “Middle Name plus Street You Grew Up On,” or “First Pet’s Name plus Street You Grew Up On?” Even the crew on a pornographic film cannot come to a consensus. Someone helpfully suggests “Lazarus Cunningham,” a good one, but after much debate, Gilmore finally decides on Jaimez Doohan, a Star Trek reference, while I come up with “Drake Tungsten,” an extremely obscure Mystery Science Theater 3000 reference.

While Gilmore gets ready to close his eyes and think of the Federation, I spend time with the crew, including make up designer Marianne, who herself used to be a porn star under the name of Kelly Nichols (Ten Handed Tickle Team, Great Sexpectations), who impressed me with her own geek credibility. She actually knows  Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers better than I do. Before long we are ushered onto the set, ready to shoot. The scene goes off without a hitch (although granted there are a few delays), but shortly after the clothes come off the hitches suddenly appear. Gilmore and I have to leave the set, although in all fairness so does most of the crew. Still, it’s hard not to feel a little rejected. What does it say about me that I made a porn star uncomfortable? Just as importantly, what does it say about Gilmore?

In the Star Trek universe, this is what you’d call a “Romulan Standoff.”

As we left the set, wondering what to say, I found myself once again pondering the words of Francois Truffaut, who asked “Is cinema more important than life?” Of course not, I reply. They are one and the same.

THIS AIN’T STAR TREK XXX

Brian Gilmore makes Geekscape history as the first ‘Scapist to board the Enterprise (in canon, that is).

Every critic in the world seems to be heaping critical praise on that new Star Trek movie that’s come out. USA Today called it “an energetic sci-fi extravaganza” and the Toronto Star said, “This is the Star Trek true fans have been missing, but barely dared hope for: a return to the original characters, in all their giddy glory and with all their hilarious hubris.” I didn’t actually read any of these articles, but unless there’s some other Star Trek movie making the rounds right now that somehow escaped my attention, one thing is for certain: They liked This Ain’t Star Trek XXX as much as I did.

Space. The Ultimate Frontier. These are the journeys of the starship Enterprise. Our mission: to explore new worlds; to peacefully unite, blend and merge with strange new life forms. To boldly arrive, again and again, where no man has come before.

These stirring words set the stage for the greatest television reboot of all time. Faithful down the finest details of the performances, costumes and sets, This Ain’t Star Trek XXX masterfully re-envisions Space Seed, one of the greatest Trek episodes ever produced, with a sly and humorous bent that never belies the inherent drama. Evan Stone (Rawhide, Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?) plays James T. Kirk, captain of the Enterprise, who stumbles across the S.S. Botany Bay, a space ship that has been stranded for hundreds of years. He revives one Khan Noonien Singh (Nick Manning – This Ain’t the Partridge Family XXX, High Infidelity), a survivor of the Eugenics Wars and the perfect human being. Before long he has threatened the entire Enterprise with the PSI 2000 virus, which can only be cured by a sudden, powerful release of endorphins. Will Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the iconic crew find a way to release their endorphins powerfully? And how could they possibly do it?

There’s a joke here somewhere about taking on iconic roles and not choking, but I can’t seem to find it.

The addition of hardcore sexual activity to the Star Trek mythos is hardly new, but in Axel Braun’s latest film it certainly feels fresh. Evan Stone, perfectly cast as Captain Kirk, lends an honest but sardonic air to the proceedings with his cocksure charisma. It’s easy to think of This Ain’t Star Trek XXX as the film Zap Brannigan would make about his own life.

“Set a parabolic course that will keep us from the entering the neutral zone,” he tells Mr. Sulu.

“Sir, a straight line will do.”

“Parabolic, Mr. Sulu.” He pauses, pointedly.

“Wait,” he says, finally changing his mind.

“Elliptical.”

It’s a hilarious exchange in a film full of amusing and often tenderly awkward moments based on character. After Mr. Spock (Tony De Sergio – Bimbo Bangers from Barcelona, From Dusk Till Down), has been forced into intercourse with Uhura (Jada Fire – Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?, Inner City Black Cheerleader Search 22) alongside Kirk, he’s charmingly befuddled by the illogic of the situation, as neither he nor Uhura seemed to have been affected by the PSI-2000 virus. Kirk comforts him with the classic line, “Don’t worry, Spock. I won’t tell anyone.”

Actually, playful self-reverence abounds in This Ain’t Star Trek XXX. Much of Khan’s dialogue will seem familiar: “Go! Or stay,” he tells historian Marla MacGyvers (Aurora Snow – Not the Bradys XXX, Sexspeare). “But do so because it is what you wish to do!” The famous line from Space Seed suddenly feels new coming from the mouth of Nick Manning. He adds a disarming petulance to the character. For the first time, it feels like Khan actually needs the love he requires of his faithful subjects. When he finally meets his match in Captain Kirk, Khan seems genuinely offended that a man exists who does not recognize his greatness. It is fitting in this reboot that shortly after Evan Stone screams the timeless “KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!” in a reading rivaling if not surpassing even the great William Shatner’s, Khan feels the need to steal the limelight himself with a much-needed “KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRK!!!”

This Ain’t Star Trek XXX is available on DVD from Hustler Video, and comes highly recommended from Geekscape After Dark.

Gilmore’s fingers are physically incapable of Vulcan salutations. This was his third attempt.

Welcome to Geekscape After Dark, where a film student who can barely balance his own checkbook is going to talk about the economy the only way he knows how: by reviewing pornography.

I have absolutely no experience or expertise in economics, but since the economic collapse something-something months ago it’s been inescapable. The news, the movies, and even the once blissfully ignorant internet are all tripping over themselves to provide information and analysis about the latest way that people are getting screwed, making it only natural to give it a whirl in a pornographic review. In the interest of starting off on the right foot, let’s start with what I’ve been able to glean from various blogs:

The economy, it turns out, is bad. It used to be good, but now it’s bad. Democrats say it’s because of Republicans, and that we can solve all of our problems by doing democratic things from now on. Republicans are a little hazy on whose fault it is, exactly, but they do know that everything will change for the better if we don’t do anything differently.

Porno movies frequently contain improper colon use.

We know the economy is bad because of the stock market, which according to The Daily Show is a completely meaningless system when viewed objectively. Of course, The Daily Show also says that about the economy itself, which means that all of our problems might just go away if we can get everyone in the world to read the Wikipedia page for Schrodinger’s Cat (which has less to do with that kid who plays the piano in Peanuts than I originally thought).

All of our economic problems, according to Huffington Post, originated in the 1980’s as a result of something called Reaganomics, which we were apparently hooked on even though apparently it didn’t work for any of us. Oliver Stone’s Academy Award-winning film Wall Street was released in 1987 at the height of Reaganomics, which would ordinarily make it the perfect film from which to analyze all of our economic woes. But since Larry Revene’s Deep Inside Trading was released three years earlier in 1984 we can safely assume that Oliver Stone’s film was merely a retread and can safely be ignored (which is a good thing because Wall Street has a lot less sex in it).

Another day, another gun lobbyist.

Deep Inside Trading’s title has two meanings. First, it indicates that the film is about trading, and that during its brief running time (barely an hour) we will venture deep inside of this mysterious world of trading, which the economy itself is supposedly based on. Second, the title suggests that not only is the film about “inside trading,” but that “inside trading” itself is “deep,” and therefore rife with philosophical complexity.

It is important to remember that Deep Inside Trading was made during the 1980’s, when certain things were different than they are today. People listened to rap music, for example. Foreign relations with Iran were prominent in the news and Nintendo videogame consoles were outselling all of their competitors. The flashy CGI-heavy title sequences that dazzle us so consistently today were predated in Deep Inside Trading by an opening title sequence that was also computer generated, albeit apparently by a Speak & Spell.

“How about a nice game of chess?”
“No thanks. Let’s play Thermonuclear Economic Meltdown.”

The film opens with two Wall Street traders (Krista Lane – Mad Jack Beyond Thunderbone; Rick Savage – The Porn Birds) engaging in the now-common act of multitasking, fornicating with vague passion while fielding calls on their separate phone lines. Apparently, depending on the situation, these traders need things to be “bought” (gained via the exchange of currency) or “sold” (given away in exchange for currency). The economy, we can determine, is driven by rich white people intent on screwing each other, as evidenced by their dialogue, which contains expressions like “controlling interest,” “when the merger goes through,” and “Tell the Ayatollah that we’ll get him the Migs by Friday and he can have the blonde girl he likes from the movie.” Which movie? Well, the highest grossing films of 1984 were Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but since only the latter featured a blonde actress prominently, we can safely say that 1984 was a bittersweet year for Kate Capshaw.

Our suspicions that inside trading, deep or otherwise, is a bad thing are quickly confirmed when a series of newspaper articles rush at the camera. (Take a moment to appreciate this once-glorious trend in exposition, because thanks to “the economy” we are unlikely to see it ever again.) Apparently a number of stock market people are killing themselves because of things happening on the stock market. My personal favorite is the guy lying face-down on his desk next to some bullets to indicate that he shot himself (apparently a prop gun would have been too expensive, what with “the economy”).

We then find our heroes in a hospital. John (Rugby Rhodes – Love Hammer) tried to kill himself by jumping out of a second story window, which his fiancé Monica (Sheri St. Clair – Miami Spice 1 & 2) thinks is pretty funny, although I’m relatively confident that he still could have died. Like the audience, neither of our heroes understands the economy well enough to figure out the plot of the movie, as they have no idea what happened to their money. They decide to hire the Haywood Detective Agency to find out what happened before the movie started.

Another perfect example of flawed economic practices: They have an advertisement
on the window of their 40th floor office. Who do they expect to see that?

The all-female Haywood Detective Agency has also hit hard times. Judging from the art direction by someone credited as “Senor Huevos” (sic), they recently had to sell all the paintings from their walls. They can’t even afford to pay for their coffee delivery, and are forced to “buy” the coffee by allowing the delivery boy (Scott Baker – The Adventures of Bedman & Throbbin’) to “sharpen their pencils.” But I don’t think they fully understand how euphemisms work because apparently “sharpen their pencils” is their code for cunnilingus.

These women, with their incomplete knowledge of “the economy,” are perfect surrogates for the equally ignorant members of the audience. When the Stock Exchange is mentioned, Suzette (Tara Blake – Moonlusting) asks “What’s that?” Her boss, Jane (the beautifully big-haired Rachel Royce, in a tragically non-sex performance) says “Never mind that,” even though she really should mind a lot more often. Jane explicitly states that they don’t even do matrimonial cases at their private detective agency in favor of big-business-related clients (which, of course, also helps demonstrate their poor grasp on how business works).

Despite her naïvete, Suzette nevertheless goes to the Stock Exchange, which apparently consists of an Amiga computer shared by four community high school voting booths. Once again, the historical significance of Deep Inside Trading rises to the fore as we get this unparalleled glimpse into “the economy’s” early days. By sleeping with a stock broker in an elevator, she’s able to steal some files, which contain information in code. Jane then sends Georgette (Siobhan Hunter – 10 ½ Weeks) to locate a codebreaker, which she does by sleeping with someone and threatening to send naked polaroids of him to the newspapers. “Do you want your picture on the cover of every newspaper in town?” she asks, once again tragically reminding us of “the economy’s” effects on the newspaper industry. There was a time when polaroids of a naked man that no one even knows would have sold like hotcakes all around the world. These days, we can find naked pictures of men we don’t know on the internet for free. Tragic.

Unfortunately, the codebreaker needs a codebreaker, so Jane sends Suzette to sleep with someone else to read more files. The code, now broken, reveals that in order to catch the culprit (who by now we understand to have done… something) they have to read the files of Irving Boaster, that guy from the first scene, who Jane says has a “computer.” As the film is set in 1984, this “computer” requires an explanation. “In other words,” Jane says, “He has all the information before anyone else does.” This throws illumination on our current economic woes. Everybody now has a computer, so everybody knows everything before everyone else. Ipso facto, nobody knows anything. Insightful… Very insightful.

Suzette and Monica sleep with Irving in order to read his files (although they’re not terribly organized, given that they both sneak away to read the exact same files), and discover that Stella DuBois, also from the first scene, is the one really pulling the strings. Jane gets a friend of hers to seduce Stella with his opulent car phone and illegally get her to sign away all of the stock that she illegally obtained from our heroes. Our final lesson in economics: Two wrongs make a right (the only explanation for all those bailouts).

If the plot seems boring to you, then you are wrong and stupid. If I may shift gears from the message to the medium for a moment, Deep Inside Trading has the same inherent structure as Chinatown, or any other “classic” mystery story. A mystery presents itself, forcing a detective (professional or not) to seek information. At first, the information raises more questions, requiring the detective to seek even more information, which then requires the detective to seek more information. In even the best mysteries, this process is repeated ad nauseum. The writer usually tries to make the later attempts to retrieve information more interesting by forcing the protagonist to backtrack after discovering information that contradicts information they had discovered earlier, but ultimately this just means that the hero has to learn more information from a character we’ve already met, which is potentially even less interesting. Deep Inside Trading avoids this obvious pitfall by sprucing up the narrative with hardcore sex instead, making it infinitely better than Chinatown. Therefore, Deep Inside Trading is the greatest mystery movie of all time.

As if any further proof of Deep Inside Trading’s “classic” status was needed, this film about inside trading (deeply) ends with Stella and Irving setting up a Three Card Monte table outside on Wall Street before running from the cops. In the interest of brevity, I’ll just let you assume that I can get three thousand words out of this brilliant metaphor. (Hint: It’s about the economy.)

To recap: the economy is bad, and has been bad since the beginning, i.e. the 1980s. The entire system is based on rich white people screwing each other in between screwing everyone else. Industries based on the economy (like detective agencies) would be more effective if they were based on basic human needs, like marital infidelity, so the economy is also particularly bad for the economy. Computers are the source of all economic crime and should therefore be eliminated at all costs, and newspapers are completely screwed even with pictures of anonymous naked men on their covers.

Deep Inside Trading heavily influenced the films of Oliver Stone and is by far the greatest mystery movie ever made. It’s available on DVD from Arrow Productions, and comes highly recommended from Geekscape After Dark.

Welcome to Geekscape After Dark, where we take pornography and emphasize the graphs. Today we’re looking at yet another in an increasingly long line of classic TV parodies from Hustler, This Ain’t the Munsters XXX. And for once, they’re right. This really, really ain’t the Munsters. Although the production values successfully replicate the show’s original aesthetic and the dialogue and performances are spot on, crafting an enjoyable homage to the original series rather than merely lampooning it (and the sex is pretty alluring, if you’re into that sort of thing), there is one thing that separates This Ain’t the Munsters XXX from its brethren, Not the Bradys XXX and This Ain’t the Partridge Family XXX, and that thing, dear readers, is a just little too much incest to be accurate to the original show.

It sure was nice of Grandpa Munster to ressurect Gregg Toland while he was at it.

The creators of the original Munsters, Allan Burns and Chris Hayward, always had what could be described as an incomplete grasp on the concept of genetics, given their stipulation that crossbreeding a Frankenstein with a vampire would result in a werewolf (when we all know it’s far more likely to result in a ghoul or Will-O-the-Wisp, depending on gender). So it’s understandable that somewhere down the line someone somehow somewhen misinterpreted Marilyn Munster’s relationship to the rest of the family, but just to make things clear: She’s Grandpa Munster’s daughter’s daughter, making the first sex sequence in the film (apart from a brief but amusing pre-credits sequence) rather off-putting because it’s between the two of them, i.e. Marilyn and her grandfather, who impersonates her boyfriend via sorcery.

Grandpa Munster: History’s Greatest Monster?

Yeah… That’s a little weird. We’ll get back to that. The film opens just before Herman Munster (a spot-on performance by Lee Stone – Beverly Hills 9021-Ho 1 &2, Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?) and Lilly Munster’s (Roxy DeVille – Craig’s List Compulsion, Scurvy Girls 2) 200th wedding anniversary. That, of course, means that they got married almost ten years before the invention of Frankensteins. This new insight on their relationship cements their love beautifully to the audience, for if Lilly and Herman were married pre-Frankensteins, then that means Lilly married him when he was still human, bridging cultural divides in a notoriously stodgy historical era. Plus, since Herman could not have been Frankensteined until 1818, that means that when he died the only means of reviving him was through Frankensteiniation, which in turn means that through all of their married years Lilly Munster was able to resist her primal bloodlust and keep her beloved husband free from a life of vampirism. True love really does conquer all when a human loves a vampire. That’s good to know. That saves me the two hours I would have had to spend watching Twilight.

It’s not necrophilia if they’re both dead…

So it’s a sweet plotline for one of history’s sweetest couples. Also sweet is Marilyn’s (Shawna Lenee – Bring Me the Head of Shawna Lenee, This Ain’t the Partridge Family XXX) affection for her boyfriend, whom she believes is back in town and eager to see her. But when her “boyfriend” arrives, he’s suspiciously mute and barely able to contain his unbridled exuberance. Despite looking suspiciously like pornographic actor Mick Blue (Glamazon, Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?), the audience is led to believe that he’s actually Grandpa Munster (Gavin Wells, in a debut performance) in disguise. They never explicitly state this, but in the next scene Grandpa pointedly comments about being exhausted, before proceeding to transform into yet another hapless boyfriend (Evan Stone – Kung Fu Nurses A Go-Go, Rawhide, Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?) in order to sleep with that poor guy’s girlfriend (Whitney Stevens – Big Sausage Pizza 15, Old Geezers Young Teasers 2), before finally commenting that he’s had “a very busy day.”

So just to reiterate: ew. At first my mind raced with theories about the fate of Marilyn Munster. What if she wasn’t born a monster, so Grandpa made her one through years of systematic abuse? Is Marilyn Munster just a young Catherine Tramell, Matty Walker or Kris Bolin – a sociopathic femme fatale raised specifically for that purpose by the malevolent Count Dracula himself (as Granda Munster was frequently implied to be)? Was the ancient evil that is Grandpa Munster the real inspiration for Charles Dickens’ villainous Miss Havisham? The answers to these questions, of course, are, “No,” “That sounds totally awesome but probably not” and “Well, obviously.”

Just stay frosty, Evan! He’s probably more scared of you than you are of him!

But like the racism in Resident Evil 5, as Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw pointed out, this kind of thing is only a real problem if the artists’ intent was malicious, and the rest of This Ain’t the Munsters is such a kindhearted delight in both spirit and craftsmanship that I suspect we can write off any unpleasantness as a harmless retcon, combined with the fundamental flaw in writing pornographic satires of iconic families: all of the characters that the audience paid to see in flagrante delicto are related to each other. Since they cannot have sex together, and the majority of the film’s running time will inevitably be devoted to the sex, several problems arise. First, obviously, you have to introduce more characters for your protagonists to fool around with, sucking away valuable screen time from the already well-endowed principle cast of characters. If you don’t want that to happen, the second problem arises: trying to get away with your protagonists fornicating together. In Not the Bradys XXX, Marcia and Greg were able to sleep together as long as there was a valid interpretation that the incident was a dream, but as we saw in a previous article, allowing for that interpretation detracted from other more dramatically satisfying conclusions which would have benefitted from a proper explanation. This Ain’t the Partridge Family even found a way to broach the subject without actually going through with it, cleverly showing the audience that, “Yes, we know none of our protagonists are sleeping together, but no, they’re not going to because, as we have just reminded you, they are very much related.”

I myself initially saw no problem with the scene in This Ain’t the Munsters XXX, having not seen an episode of The Actual Munsters Rated PG in ages and having been vaguely convinced that Marilyn was adopted (making the sequence at least as forgivable as the one in Not the Bradys XXX), only to later be corrected by my omniscient girlfriend and later by the slightly-less-omniscient internet. (They also informed me that we’re going to see Sunshine Cleaning on Thursday and that the most convenient showing is at 7:20pm, respectively, although screening times are also apparently subject to change, [which is disconcerting].) So basically, you just have to accept the fact that This AIN’T the Munsters (as stated above). It has to be a retcon to allow for further dramatic and pornographic developments. And as a retcon (again, as stated above), it’s Hustler’s best TV satire in the “This Ain’t/Not The” franchise so far… It just would have been nice if they’d been more clear about it. This review would have been about 50% shorter and I would have been able to watch Castle tonight.

In the industry, we call this a “Forced Perspective.”

Anyway, back in the film, the lovableness continues when we discover that Herman Munster, in an effort to think up the perfect anniversary gift, has thought up the perfect anniversary gift: an enormous schwanzstucker. Yes, he’s going to be very popular when Lily finds out he’s arranged for an organ donation from a recently deceased local athlete, and hilarity ensues when Grandpa suddenly seems less-than-confident right before the surgery. “Look at it this way: It should work… At this point, your body’s just a science experiment anyhow… You’re like a giant Etch-A-Sketch. If I screw up, we’ll try again!”

That’s good, clean comedy. Yes, Roger Krypton’s clever screenplay for This Ain’t the Munsters XXX is chock full of classic-sounding gags, like Herman’s line, “Good old Mockingbird Cemetary. You know, I owe a lot to the folks out there. They really made me who I am!” Or, “By now, a normal guy my age would have had a heart attack. Good thing I’m already dead!” Priceless. Remind me not to invite Krypton to my inevitable celebrity roast – that would totally blow. (Pause for laughter, spin bow tie.) But seriously, it’s rare in either pornographic or ordinarily graphic films to find a script for a television adaptation that really feels like it stands alongside the original show, even if it is a retcon.

 This perspective also looks a little forced.

Meanwhile, there’s a breaking story in the Transylvanian News, which as you can see from the screenshot looks a lot like Fox News by way of an anti-smoking commercial, or possibly the evening news in those old Beetlejuice cartoons. Eddie Munster (Trent Soluri – Burnt Fury, My Big Fake Wedding) apparently has a popular band called Eddie & The Bruisers, which I can only assume was the inspiration for the 1983 classic Eddie & The Cruisers, not to mention its superior sequel Eddie & The Cruisers II: Eddie Lives, in which Michael Paré – years after faking his own death – tires of life as a construction worker and secretly assembles a new team of Cruisers who play smaller gigs anonymously because music is more important than fame, until the very end when they learn that you can balance artistic integrity and financial success if you’re totally awesome about it and introduce the back-from-the-dead Eddie Wilson last out of respect for the rest of the band, and not for dramatic effect which would only make you that much more famous, which they totally aren’t going for at all. Thank you, The Munsters  – without you the 80’s would have totally sucked.

Mimes hate America. They’re the real monsters here.

Anyway, there’s some kind of sex tape scandal with Eddie (Munster) and a groupie (Victoria Sin – Night Shift Nurses: Escort Service, Specs Appeal 14) and an unusually open-minded waitress (Aiden Starr – Boobaholics Anonymous 3, I Scored a Soccer Mom 1) having sex, fittingly enough on tape. Although they show the tape in its entirety, I regret to announce that it appears to have no bearing whatsoever on the overarching plot. I scoured this scene over and over again, Blow Up/Out, style, and found only appealing sexual exploits instead of legitimate narrative depth. But that’s okay: No one complained when Stanley Kubrick just sat back and marveled in his technical mastery for extended periods in 2001: A Space Odyssey (except for Pauline Kael, of course), and really, it’s unfair not to compare This Ain’t the Munsters XXX to 2001, since both films spend most of their running time blowing the same thing: Our Minds. (Because they’re both good, you see.)

The film ends with Herman and Lilly’s unabashedly romantic anniversary date at Mockingbird Cemetary, where they had their first kiss. Aw… They unintentionally but hilariously scare away some of the locals (Jenna Haze – Not Bewitched XXX, XXX-Box; Voodoo – Brand New Faces 1-6, 8, 12-13, 16, The Sexorcist) who were themselves having a nice romantic night of Sub-Dom role playing before Herman finally reveals his special gift. Will Lilly Munster accept Herman’s special gift? Will they truly have the best 200th anniversary ever? Will Marilyn discover Grandpa’s deception by the end of the film and give him a stern talking to?  The answers: “Yes,” “It sure looks that way” and “No, it looks like he got away with it. Maybe in the sequel?”

It’s okay…! The cham-pain is Gore-bel!

You might have noticed that all of the screen shots from in this review are in Black & White. Well done! This Ain’t the Munsters XXX is presented in both its original, glorious Black & White transfer as well as the bright and shiny colorized version (thanks, Daniel Clamp), but we here at Geekscape After Dark believe in seeing films as they were originally intended, from color to aspect ratio (except for that one part in Crooklyn, obviously). The Black & White version is lusciously shot and more successfully approximates the look of the original show, and it only improves the already above-par make-up effects.

This Ain’t the Munsters XXX is available in a fine double-disc DVD set from Hustler, loaded with special features like director’s commentary, behind the scenes footage and a blooper reel. It’s a really adorable film (once again, as a retcon) and worth sinking your fangs into.

Because it doesn’t suck. (Exit, Stage Right.)

If she’s looking for more critical analysis, she’s sheet out of luck, because I’m outta here.

Welcome to Geekscape After Dark, a series of articles devoted to an art form that was founded on skipping them.

Last week we looked at Not the Bradys XXX, an intriguing, but admittedly unfocused, satire about the quintessential suburban family weighing the pros and cons of selling their bodies for financial gain. This week we take a look at another of director Will Ryder’s hit TV satires, This Ain’t the Partridge Family XXX, which tells the tale of the quintessential celebrity family weighing the pros and cons of using date rape drugs for personal gain. The stories couldn’t be more different. Unlike the ambiguous ending of Not the Bradys XXX, which ended on a cliffhanger that failed to resolve the Brady’s moral and financial crisis (at least until the sequel), This Ain’t the Partridge Family XXX takes a strong moral stand at the conclusion of its tale: drugging members of the opposite sex in order to take advantage of them sexually is a beautiful thing… as long as Keith Partridge writes a hit song for the U.S. Music Awards about innocence and love, and everyone learns a valuable lesson afterwards.

Pornographic movies require a lot of head room.

 The backyard from Not the Bradys XXX cameos as itself. Maybe they lost the house after all…

This Ain’t the Partridge Family XXX has a fairly straightforward plotline, from which we can glean the essentials of the premise: The Partridge Family is the unusually large brood of a single mother, Shirley Partridge (Payton Leigh – Christina Noir is Relentless, Enticed by My Friend’s Mom), who has sufficiently trained each of her children in music that they are now celebrities.  Keith Partridge (the adorable Nick Manning – Barely Legal Ski Camp, Frosty the Snow Ho), clearly the eldest, writes all of their music and gets all of the girls. Danny Partridge (Jason Sinclair – Instigator, New Whores on the Block 2 (so I can only imagine that they must be slightly less new)) is younger than Keith and a charming smart aleck who always gets into harebrained schemes that are wont to result in mischief. The youngest son Chris (Scott Lyons – Rachel’s Choice, Your Mom) plays the drums and is sweet and innocent but never gets to do very much. Laurie Partridge (Tori Black – Fresh Flesh, 1 on 1 3) is a girl and also popular, apparently, while the youngest daughter Tracy (Faye Reagan – Bring Me the Head of Shawna Lenee, Imperfect Angels 1-5) makes with the malapropisms and sleeps with pizza boys. Despite their enormous success and popularity, The Partridge Family still sticks with their small town “Hustler” music producer/agent Ruben (James Bartholet – Exxxtra Exxxtra, Real Boogie Nights), who manages to keep them both famous and performing regularly, but who seems to rely solely on the Partridge Family for both financial and personal support.

In this alternate timeline, Hustler is now a small division of Ruben’s Records.

So far, I think we’re on solid ground. The Partridge Family was about a family of quirky pop stars and their mismatched manager. In Not the Bradys XXX director Will Ryder (Barely MILF, Mya Luanna’s Sexual Disorder) kept the foundation of his source material solid. At the start of the film, each member of The Brady Bunch behaved like their corresponding member of the original Brady Bunch, and afterwards they all had sex. So the set-up for Ryder’s version of the Partridge Family is probably fairly close to the original series in character and premise.

Looks like William Wyler’s going to have to ship out another spirit level.

But what justified the producer’s decision to film The Partridge Family like a sitcom version of Last House on the Left? Perhaps we can find our answers in the film’s plotline. The central plot of Not the Bradys XXX was a familiar one: “Oh no, we might lose the house” was iconic enough to even become the structure for the major Hollywood remake (creatively entitled “The Brady Bunch Movie” [if that’s the Brady Bunch movie, then what’s Not the Bradys XXX? Not the Bradys XXX was over half an hour longer!]). The plot takes off in This Ain’t the Partridge Family XXX when Keith has trouble finding a date, making him doubt his confidence which in turn keeps him from writing any more hit songs. The Partridge Family needs more hit songs to survive – the show probably pre-dates the legal concept of “residuals” – and so the family bands together, including Ruben, to get Keith out of his funk (which is ironic, since funk was so popular in the 1970’s).

A socially awkward intervention for the socially awkward.

Despite a well-intentioned and anachronistic intervention (The Partridge Family was clearly ahead of its time), Keith’s depressed and everyone at the intervention knows there’s no cure for that. “Did you know Napoleon was depressed his entire life? And Richard Nixon, every time he wakes up in the morning and sees his wife?” Despite the unnecessary rhyming, Danny doesn’t break into a song (which audiences are probably suspecting since if you’ve heard about the Partridge Family you probably at least know that they were a band). No, instead he breaks out a magazine featuring an ad for an “elixir” that is “guaranteed to make men and women fall in love with members of the opposite sex.” It also specifies that these men and women would have a specific tendency to “go ape over each other,” which doesn’t seem like a particularly attractive euphemism but seems to serve Danny’s purposes. Keith doubts the elixir’s efficacy, if only because possible side effects include hair loss, and if there’s one thing Keith Partridge apparently values more than his sex life, it’s his luscious, luscious hair (and, admittedly, it is very luscious.)

“Mortgage troubles hit record highs?” Another reference to the clearly doomed Brady Bunch.

Danny’s elixir arrives in the mail and works like gangbusters, who supposedly work very quickly and efficiently, which explains the ease with which he acquired the elixir. Before he knows it, he’s having various varieties of sex with an attractive groupie (Kristina Rose – 40 Inch Plus 9, Destination Tonsils 2) who would of course otherwise have been interested in Keith(interesting…). He informs Ruben of the elixir’s 100% success rate (he tried it once and it worked once, so there you go), and Ruben tries it out for himself, mercifully off-camera. Danny then hides the elixir in the last place anyone would look for a liquid to splash on their body: one of Shirley’s perfume bottles. Soon everyone is experiencing their desired quantity of intercourse, either accidentally or clandestinely, except for Keith, who is still afraid of losing his precious hair. Finally, Laurie convinces Keith to take one for the team, and invites several of her best friends (Shawna Lenee – Manaconda 3; Madison Scott – Not Three’s Company XXX; and Jaclyn Case – Female Gardener) over to Keith’s room (so sure, technically he’s taking several). Keith finally acquiesces at the thought of losing these attractive groupies to the suddenly-very-popular Danny. He splashes the elixir everywhere and proceeds to have extremely cathartic but highly carnal relations with intoxicated women who aren’t actually interested in him just in time to write a hit new song for the U.S. Music Awards.

Chris Partridge’s side career as the gangta rapper “P Treble” has been well-documented.

So the most iconic episode of The Partridge Family apparently featured a family of celebrities who experimented with date rape drugs. I buy that, and I buy that a heck of a lot more than the Brady Bunch’s descent into pornography because it feels like a plausible episode of the original series. Unlike the Bradys, who (probably) never explored the topic of pornography on-camera, the Partridge Family was a family of famous celebrities with groupies. Thanks to modern news reporting and reality TV shows, we know exactly what that’s like today, but in the 1970’s the only portrayal of the moral and social dissolution of a popular celebrity you could find on television was, apparently, The Partridge Family. Let’s take a look at these tragic icons in popular culture, whose weekly walk through the valley of the shadow of fame brought them directly into our hearts:

It’s easy to pity poor Keith Partridge. As the man of the house he’s responsible for earning all of their money with his hit music, but his fragile child celebrity psyche can barely hum a tune without constant sexual reassurance from attractive and apparently younger women. The only that keeps him from using date rape drugs to invigorate his sexual confidence is that fear that in doing so he will lose his hair. Without love, all he has is his image. Without hair, that image evaporates into what he suspects is a quivering and probably stinky pool of washed-out mediocrity. He cannot risk one to save the other. Without his superficial emotional crutches, Keith Partridge is nothing, except maybe an insufferable elitist.

Yes, Nick Manning’s sympathetic performance goes through an ugly transformation when he discovers that Laurie is dating a mere grocery store clerk. But then again, maybe it’s more than class warfare. Not the Bradys XXX mined the history of suppositions that Marcia and Greg Brady would end up in a romantic relationship – which was okay because technically, at least, they were never really related – allowing the filmmakers to portray the two characters having sex. Since Danny and Laurie Partridge are, apparently, blood relatives, this could never occur even within the pornographic narrative (I think), but the notion is definitely raised several times throughout the film (Keith’s hyper-protectiveness of his sister, for example, or Laurie’s only vague concern that the elixir will make Keith want to sleep with her). So there must have been something in the original text – subtext, if you will – to support this forbidden love for his own sister. The timing fits, so as a responsible film critic I’m going to have to call it: The Partridge Family was the inspiration for Brian DePalma’s Scarface.

To prevent her brother from accidentally sleeping with her, Laurie Partridge arranges for
Keith to drug and then take advantage of her three best friends.

Danny Partridge was apparently no less damaged. When Danny speaks of his brother Keith he barely seems able to contain his sarcasm: “He’s a shell of his once glorious self… A mere fraction of a heartthrob.” Thusly Danny Partridge expresses the two sides of his devious psyche – his hatred for his more attractive, talented and popular brother, and his Shakespearean need to appear trustworthy and loyal while parasitically leeching off of the very celebrity kin he despises. Note how Danny’s first instinct upon receiving the elixir was not to give any to his suffering brother. No, Danny’s first instinct was to use the date rape drug personally in order to steal the very groupies needed to restore his brother’s sanity. Likely, this uncontrollable urge manifested in the original Partridge Family as merely a lovable tendency to get into crazy schemes that wreak havoc amongst the family, but inside Danny Partridge was obviously a ticking time bomb waiting to go off in sociopathic alarm. Will Shirley Partridge hit the snooze in time…?!

Shirley’s parenting never comes into question in This Ain’t the Partridge Family XXX. In all fairness, she usually acts like a stern taskmaster, but that “Bad Cop” outer exterior turns to “Bad Lieutenant” if you look too closely. A single Mom with five kids trains each of them to be musicians, and then lives off of their talent? She even puts herself onstage, when any decent manager (I’m looking at you, Ruben) would know that putting someone old enough to be your young sex symbols’ Mom on stage doesn’t add to their appeal. Did it really work for Britney Spears (or Madonna for that matter)? No, her place in the band stems from hubris, pure and simple. Like Danny, her desperate need to leech off of Keith Partridge’s talent (on second thought, I reallly do feel kind of bad for the guy…) manifests in her sex scene, in which she date rapes a younger man played by Kris Slater (Camp Cuddly Pines Powertool Massacre, The Lick Clique), who earlier in the film dated her daughter Laurie off-camera. Shirley resorts to felonious assault in order to live vicariously through her children’s talent and sexual conquests (well, not vicariously through that last bit). The original Shirley Partridge must have been one sad and lonely woman, prone to lashing out at her outlandishly large family for succeeding in all the things she failed to do alone.

Laurie and Ruben are the most well-characterized other members of the Partridge brood, but they feel more like plot devices than active participants, so I’m guessing that was their original function. Laurie was pretty and popular, which as I understand it was pretty three-dimensional for a female sitcom character on TV in the early 70’s, and Ruben gets to be a self-deprecating sad sack, a “The Death of the Party,” if you will (will you?). He was the one who probably had to remind the family of their responsibilities and deadlines while they fed their relentless and pathetic need for sexual satisfaction backstage, so I imagine he was also the brunt of many jokes. Chris barely appears in the film, and he’s the only actual Partridge who apparently doesn’t deserve a complete sex scene, so I can only imagine that he barely appeared in the original show at all, and his extremely brief fling with a rather weak-willed groupie (Sarah Jessie – Dirty Over 30 2, Porn Fidelity 16) was probably a token nod out of respect for the character. Tracey’s role on the show was apparently to fling malapropisms and sleep with pizza boys (Dane Cross – Cougar Hunter, Invasion of the MILFs [and might I just add that it’s nice to see pizza boys finally represented in pornography]).

So you see, I’ve learned something today. I learned that The Partridge Family was a morbid series, shot in a gritty docudrama style that was ahead of its time but effectively conveyed the sense of despair and hopelessness found in child stars by starkly contrasting their pain with gallows humor, happy music (the original songs in the film are outstanding, incidentally – “Special Things” would have been my pick for Best Song over “Jai Ho”), and sadistic mind games masquerading as youthful escapades. And finally I learned a lot about date rape drugs, which frankly was unnecessary and undesired information.

Nick Manning serves man by recognizing the brilliant musical stylings
of Jeff Mullen & Drew Rose.

The original series inspired such beloved cultural milestones as Brian DePalma’s Scarface, The Wire and maybe even Pulp Fiction (maybe), while the much lighter (and coincidentally pornographic) version comes in a 2-disc DVD loaded with bonus features (like an optional laugh track, that for some reason never plays during the sex scenes) and a transfer that, while attractive, is probably not something you’re going to use to impress your girlfriend’s parents on your new 50 inch plasma screen. This Ain’t the Partridge Family XXX comes highly recommended from Geekscape (After Dark) as a powerful learning experience and catalogue of pop culture history, and also because there’s lots of attractive sex in it.

See you next Wednesday!

Welcome to Geekscape After Dark, where the porn is always safe for work and where I am a complete and utter failure for getting only two columns into this series and already finding myself struggling for something to say about a movie.

I had always planned for Hustler Video’s/X Play’s/Larry Flynt Publication’s (at least one of those is right) Not the Bradys XXX to be the subject of my second column because on paper it seemed like a slam dunk. An expensive pornographic satire of one of TV’s most wholesome and iconic sitcoms would seem ripe for critical examination, or at least amusing commentary, but instead I find it just sitting here like the proverbial elephant in the room, begging to be acknowledged but not over-analyzed. And like that elephant I find that watching Not the Bradys XXX for an extended period of time causes at least one part of your anatomy to feel somehow inadequate.

Yes, it’s the Brady Bunch.  The title says it’s not, but that’s just Hustler Video/X Play/Larry Flynt Publications getting cute on us (they’ll get more on us later). There’s a new trend in pornographic satires: Rather than coming up with amusing plays on words to indicate that their mainstream media adaptations are satirical, like “Mr. Holland’s Orgy” or “21 Hump Street” or “Cheeks & Thong’s Up in Stroke,” now they just put a “Not” or “This Ain’t” in front of titles like “Three’s Company” or “Bewitched,” allowing them to be exactly like those programs in every respect and even use the original program’s title on the cover and still not get sued. (Admittedly, this is pretty clever.) So every aspect of The Brady Bunch is pretty much perfectly replicated in Not the Bradys XXX except for the sex, which the pornographic version appears to have a wee bit more of.

Yup, it’s just another casual conversation with the… DUDE! THAT’S YOUR SISTER!!! 

Not the Bradys XXX plays like a pretty typical episode of Actually The Brady Bunch Rated G: Mike Brady (Mike Horner – What About Boob?, Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?) has financial trouble and the Brady Bunch (only not) bands together to raise money for their parents. Along the way, Mike and Carol (Alana Evans – Secret Suburban Sex Parties, Sex Survivor 1-6) worry that their children are growing up too fast and Marcia (Hillary Scott – Britney Rears 4: Britney Goes Gonzo, Female Gardener) debates the merits of entering the pornographic industry before getting hit in the nose with a football which then triggers a full-fledged psychotic break in which she has sex with her brother Greg (Benjamin Brat – Slant Eye for the Straight Guy 1, Heavy Handfuls 3). Or maybe that was a dream. Or maybe it was all a cunning scheme perpetrated by Marcia’s uncle/porn producer/doctor Lu Bricaté (Lu Bricaté, in a brilliant acting debut). One of the biggest problems with Not the Bradys XXX is that it eventually culminates in a twist ending that generates more mysteries than it solves. The upcoming sequel “Not the Bradys XXX: Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” may answer all of these burning questions (at least, I hope that’s what that burning sensation is…), but the first film, on its own, is strangely dissatisfying.

Certainly, it’s a beautiful production. The costume and production design are particularly well-crafted, giving the film a Technicolor “Umbrellas of Cherbourg” quality that can only be admired. Everything in general feels too good to be true: the sets, the clothes, the sex, the lack of clothes, etc. But the problem is that nothing feels REAL. The filmmaking, writing and directing are all appreciably aping the style of the classic late 60’s/early 70’s sitcom era, but unlike The Brady Bunch Movie, which used the retro style of the original show to contrast provide contrast for a less innocent but often more enlightened modern era, Not the Bradys XXX doesn’t seem confident in its timeline and tone, preventing us from becoming truly immersed in the world of the film. On one hand, the film feels like a “Lost Episode,” full of revelations about the characters and their world that were conspicuously absent from the original series. On the other, it feels like an awkward update that wants to have its cake, i.e. playing exactly like an episode of the Brady Bunch, and eat it too by insisting on including contradictory plot elements, usually involving sex for some reason.

Dating outside your ethnicity: Progressive.
Only letting the hired help see you together: Regressive.

Take Jan, for example: As in the original series, Mike and Carol are worried about her social skills. It’s okay, Alice (Lynn LeMay – Foreskin Gump, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Breast) insists. She just saw Jan’s new boyfriend going “up to her bedroom… to teach her skills.” We then cut to the backyard (which, judging from that last line, Alice apparently thinks is both upstairs and the location of Jan’s bed) where we find Jan (Aurora Snow – In & Out in Beverly Hills, Fast Times at Deep Crack High 2 & 5) making out with her boyfriend Ramone (Tee Reel – Evil Vault 1, The Whole Enchilada), who turns out to be a black guy. But as a modern, enlightened Brady, Jan overcomes racial divides that might have rocked the household in the original series and has hardcore sex with him outside by the swing set. Now the scene feels like it belongs in the swinging, progressive present, but before they can even tidy up afterwards Jan kicks him out because her “brothers and sisters might be coming.” Might? Jan seems willing to let “the help” see her interracial boyfriend, but not her actual family. To add further consternation, note that Tee Reel doesn’t even get a speaking role in the film. Progressive indeed…!

All the Brady kids are, to varying degrees, highly sexually experienced in this film, which is an unexpected creative decision. Instead of making a movie in which an innocent family learns the values of sexual liberation, Not the Bradys XXX portrays the Brady Bunch as an innocent family of sex-crazed nymphomaniacs who learn that they can make lots of money by exploiting their bodies. Cindy (Leah Luv – Booty & The Geek, A Bustful of Dollars), for example, learns from a helpful trespasser and apparent propane enthusiast (Kurt Lockwood – star of The Boobsville Hot Chocolate Shop and the director of Lords of Doggie Style Town) that he would pay more money to have sex with her than to have her wash his car. She’s intrigued by the idea, and has hardcore sex with him. She’s pretty safe about it, too – she even takes the rubber bands out of her braces and everything. (On a side note, Leah Luv’s braces seem to go through a lot wear and tear in her movies. I wonder if her orthodontist approves.)

Leah Luv’s braces become the instrument of irony, forcing her
to throw away her rubbers in order to have safe sex.

So Cindy becomes a prostitute albeit a reasonably well paid one while Marcia, Bobby (Mikey Butders – The Bush Administration, L.A. Kink, and who shares a birthday with me… Yay!) and Greg all focus on careers in pornography. Bobby gets a job right away, giving hope to legions of audience members who want to believe that it’s easier for men to break into pornography than women (perhaps falsely). This has the added bonus of giving him the opportunity to sleep with Greg’s girlfriend Katie on camera (Jasmine Byrne – Slipping Into Darkness, Grin and Bare-It), making it totally okay because it’s only acting.

Meanwhile, Marcia lets her uncle/doctor/porn producer Lu take Polaroids of her half naked and then spends the rest of the film at war with her inhibitions over having sexual intercourse for audiences in, as Uncle Lu insists, Transylvania and Tangiers. Greg tries to get a job helping Sam the Butcher (Ron Jeremy – City Lickers, I Know Who You Did Last Summer), not realizing that he’s actually applying for the same pornographic acting job that Bobby just got. Sam the Butcher assures Greg that if any part of Bobby should get cut off in a horrible on-the-job accident, Greg will be next in line. This, of course, doesn’t bode too well for Bobby, who might want to read the script before he commits to his next project.

Ron Jeremy advises his younger co-stars to “Go long.”

Greg and Marcia finally film themselves having sex on camera for the good of the family, and they seem like consummate professionals… or at least professional about consummating. But their forbidden union is not to last, because as soon as Greg finally achieves closure Marcia starts yelling out, “Greg no! This is wrong! Etc.” She wakes up in bed surrounded by her family (and Sam the Meat Man for some reason), where she is told that she just had a horrible nightmare. (No one questions why she was screaming for Greg to “stop” because what her brother was doing to her is “wrong.” I’m guessing it’s a common nightmare in the Brady house.) Considering the fact that Marcia got hit in the nose by a football just minutes before committing wholeheartedly to vague incest, the audience is probably thinking “Oh, I get it. Sleeping with her brother was just a dream.” That way the audience members who were interested in the kinda-sorta creepy stuff could have their inter-Brady coitus while audience members who find the whole affair to be in poor taste can write it off as an intriguingly Freudian dream. But then Uncle Lu shows up as Marcia’s doctor and blows the entire plotline to hell.

The film ends (SPOILER ALERT!) when Marcia sees her doctor, also played by Lu Bricaté, and recognizes him only as “Uncle Lu.” This is all the information we get (the credits roll right afterwards) but it successfully calls the entire narrative into question. Who is the real Lu Bricaté? Is he a kindly doctor whom our hallucinating heroine somehow projected into her own little sexual hell? If so, what is he doing to his patient that makes her envision him as a purveyor of pornography and sin? Or is Lu Bricaté really a porn producer whose Machiavellian schemes have finally culminated in infiltrating the Brady house to play doctor with Marcia, in confidence game worthy of even the great David Mamet?

“And you were there… And you were there…
And, wow Greg, you don’t even want to know what you were doing…”

Since the former theory has a particularly unsettling “Fire Walk With Me” quality which I don’t think the filmmakers were going for, I’m inclined to believe that director Will Ryder (Not Bewitched XXX, This Ain’t the Partridge Family XXX) was instead pulling a “House of Games” on the audience. Looking back, several plot points only make sense if Lu Bricaté was the ingenious but malevolent puppet master behind the proceedings with Katie, his loyal employee, porn star, cheerleader, Greg’s girlfriend and the captain of the debate team (making her a very busy girl), by his side.

Using the facts given to us in the film, we can infer the following: Lu Bricaté, in an attempt to lure the Brady Bunch (and Marcia in particular) into the pornographic industry because of their wholesome yet erotic appeal, burns down Mike Brady’s office, sending him spiraling into potential bankruptcy. He then places a prominent classified ad for his modeling agency emphasizing the ease of the work and convenient proximity to the Brady’s house in the newspaper to which the Brady’s subscribe. Although he lures Bobby successfully with the dangling carrot of sex with his brother’s girlfriend, Marcia needs more convincing. Lu eases Marcia into the idea by taking some half naked Polaroids of her. Marcia then leaves, but not before “conveniently” “bumping into” Katie, who uses this opportunity to sneak the naked pictures into Marcia’s pants pocket. She then uses her debate team skills to convince Marcia of the more admirable qualities of pornography and shows her the film set, where Sam the Meat Man – already planted inside the house as Alice’s lover – is “performing” with a girl Marcia’s age, all in an effort to throw her into an easily exploited sensory overload.

The entire plot of Not the Bradys XXX hinges on this Blink-and-You’ll-Miss-It moment.

When next confronted with Sam, Marcia has trouble reconciling the Meat Man she thought she knew with the porn star she now knows him to be. Confused and desperately seeking something to latch onto, she begins seriously considering a pornographic career and starts practicing on one of the dozen brightly colored sexual aides Lu had one of his special agents place in her bedroom (I’m guessing Sam, who disappears into the house not long beforehand with a mysterious “package” for Alice).  Meanwhile, Lu uses his loyal army of porn stars to turn the rest of the Brady kids to the porn side. Peter (James Deen – Evilution 1, The Last Whore House on the Left) is seduced by both Veronique Vega (Bikini Pick Ups, 100% Prime Grade A Meat 1) and Paulina James (Beyond the Call of Booty 1, Sexed Up Superheroines 1), who notably play themselves, while Cindy is “turned” by Kurt Lockwood, as himself, working undercover as a propane enthusiast and pro bono economic adviser. We all know that Jan is sleeping with Ramone, who seems innocent enough, but we later learn that Ramone is also Katie’s brother, and since looks suspiciously like the porn star Tee Reel he’s obviously in on it too.

Mike and Carole are alerted to the sexual aides that Alice finds/steals from the girls’ bedroom, and are then exposed to the naked Polaroid (that Marcia didn’t even know was in her pocket) when they find it in the laundry. Clearly, Lu is easing the kids’ parents into the idea of seeing their children naked in multimedia. Finally, Katie “confides” in Greg, the last great piece of the Brady puzzle, and her “honesty” convinces him that pornographers are trustworthy people and that the industry is morally sound. The killing blow is struck when Bobby (the first to be indoctrinated) throws a football in Marcia’s face, knocking her already addled psyche into a state of shock, complete with a retro wavy lines effect on the screen. At her most vulnerable, Marcia finally gives in to the mounting pressure and not only agrees to sleep with Greg on camera but in fact becomes the sexual aggressor. When the effects of the head injury wear off, Marcia begins rebelling against the emotional programming imprinted by Uncle Lu. Greg then cleverly gets Marcia to swallow a sedative and she wakes up to her comforting family… and the mysterious Uncle Lu, masquerading as a doctor (a widely recognized symbol of authority). Whether Lu is Mike’s brother or Carol’s, his certainly are some dastardly deeds.

The film ends there, but if I know Will Ryder (and let’s pretend for a moment that I actually do) then I suspect that a director’s cut exists in which the final scene continues: Lu Bricaté explains his elaborate plan while keeping Marcia at bay in a cruel but ingenious deathtrap sprung by her own brainwashed Brady brood. This would then set the stage for the sequel, in which Marcia Brady must take the law into her own hands in an effort to save her precious Bunch from the charismatic and sadistic monster that is Lu Bricaté, Master of the Porn-eign Legion. (Actually, the sequel to Not the Bradys XXX – Not the Bradys XXX: Marcia, Marcia, Marcia – is out now. I haven’t seen it yet, but I have no doubt whatsoever that it’s exactly like what I’m picturing in my head.)

So if you’ve always wanted to see The Brady Bunch with (more) sex scenes and a labyrinthine plotline, Not the Bradys XXX is the way to go. It’s available in a well-produced and special features-laden DVD (Ron Jeremy has some great anecdotes from the golden age of pornography in the Behind the Scenes feature) from Hustler, X Play and/or Larry Flynt Publications (the box is a little vague about that), and I heartily recommend watching it. I just don’t recommend thinking about it as much as I have.

Three teenaged daughters, only two beds. The Brady Bunch’s obsessive-compulsive need
for symmetry rears its uglier head.

RAWHIDE
WHO’S NAILIN’ PAYLIN?

Welcome to Geekscape After Dark, where the porn is always safe for work.  In our effort to bring you serious critical analysis of cinema’s true underdog genre – hardcore pornography – we present this inaugural column, a review of Adam & Eve’s Rawhide, winner of the 2004 AVN award for Best Video.  Directed by Nicholas Steele, who also helmed Sex Island, Sex Spell, and Sex Magician (that’s three separate films, mind you), this pornographic classic – or, “Pornassic,” if you will – takes western genre conventions and puts a new and romantic spin on them…by adding lots of nudity and sex scenes.

But before we begin the review, people need to be advised of just how many cows are in this movie.  No, I’m not using an insulting euphemism for any of the members of Rawhide’s cast.  Rawhide is an epic pornographic – or “Pornic” – cowboy romance that takes place on the Torres Ranch in California during the days when people wore cowboy hats.  And since the Torres Ranch is, apparently, “the 2nd largest cattle ranch in California” and sells “over a hundred head of cattle every week,” it stands to reason that a film with a decent budget would want some footage of cows to round out their repertoire of exposition shots. Nothing, however, could prepare us for the veritable extravaganza of cows presented over the course of Rawhide’s two hour running time.  A small sampling from throughout the film:

Certainly it’s impressive from a production standpoint, but as my girlfriend said,
“They’re really milking those cows.”

Rawhide tells the story of city girl Bianca Torres, returning to the California ranch where she grew up after the tragic death of her father.  Old Man Torres left the ranch to Bianca when he died, but she feels like an outcast in her childhood home because of her fine breeding in fancy New York City.  She can honor her father’s dream by keeping the highly lucrative ranch and staying loyal to the most innocent and sexually active cowboys in history, or sell it to the greedy old cattle baron and return to her fancy dinners and exciting polo matches and funktastic poetry slams (or whatever else it is city girls do).  Old Man Torres’ loyal cattle ranchers try to convince her to stay, but she’s “so confused.”  Will Bianca keep on moving, moving, moving, though the ranchers are disapproving?  Or will she try to understand them, and perhaps even rope and throw and grab them?

Whether she heads the ranch up or moves on out is a pivotal plot point in Rawhide.  In fact, it’s the only plot point.  Rawhide’s fascinatingly sparse storyline cleverly focuses on only one external plot, emphasizing instead the interpersonal, even physical, relationships between its cast members.  It’s a fascinating device that allows for multiple interpretations of the events in Rawhide, so basically, it’s exactly like the works of David Lynch, but with cows.

At the start of the film, Bianca, played by Carmen Luvana (Jane Bond DD7, Tailgunners) arrives at the ranch with Mei Lee, played by Kaylani Lei (Se7en Deadly Sins, White on Rice), a wise but hot “companion.”  Bianca’s voice-over intones “I wonder if the ranch will look as I remember it.  What will they think of me now… Now that I am a woman!”  She feels out of place, now that she’s “refined.”  She arrives to a cold reception from Devon, played by Steven St. Croix (The Bashful Blonde from Beautiful Bendover, The Erotic Ghost Whisperer), who appears to be running things in her father’s absence.  He’s worried that Bianca is going to sell the ranch, because she is a city girl and therefore prone to do such things.

Two ranch hands watch Bianca and Mei Lee from afar.  Shaun, played by Cheyne Collins (The Boobsville Sex Academy, Double D Detectives), is instantly smitten by Mei Lee, but Leigh, played by Evan Stone, doesn’t like city women.  What does he have against city women?  “They’re too complicated.  Besides, I like to keep things simple.”  Keeping things simple isn’t really “besides” the topic of complications, but hey, he’s not one of them fancy city folk.  He’s the last person in the world who would fall in love with Bianca!  What’s going to happen?!

Bianca confirms Devon’s suspicions that she is thinking of selling the ranch when she tells him that she’s thinking of selling the ranch.  This sends Devon into a downward spiral that will carry him throughout the film.  Outside, Annie, played by Brooke Ballentyne (the star of Spin the Booty, in an AVN Award-winning performance), rolls a cigarette while wearing pants and strikes a match on, if the sudden sound of maracas is any indication, a nearby rattlesnake.  She then twirls her gun… so she’s pretty tough.  Any one of those things by itself and audiences might still have thought she was a classy lady, but combine them and you’ve got a tough, independent woman who immediately has lots of sex with Devon when it appears that his masculinity has been threatened.  “I appreciate your loyalty.  We’ll try to think of something else.”  What is Devon’s master plan?

This cigar is just a cigar.

The next day, Leigh bids his lady love, played by Taylor Rain (World Poke Her Tour, The Doctor is In… You), goodbye in a leafy glade.  She’s going to the city to be a serious actress, and wants Leigh to come with her, but he won’t leave.  The ranch is where he belongs.  He tells her to follow her dream, but when she tells him she’s afraid he all-too-quickly assures her, “You can do it on your own.  I believe in you,” before having hardcore sex with her and then never seeing her again.  Ouch.  If Leigh wasn’t the only male character in Rawhide to wear a condom, you’d almost think he was a bad guy.

Meanwhile Shaun shows Mei Lee around the ranch, which consists primarily of pointing to lots of interesting things that are off-camera.  Bianca rides to her father’s grave on a grassy hilltop and writes a letter to him in her head: “Dear Papa, I don’t know what to do with this ranch…”  But his headstone provides no answers.  On her way back she watches Leigh as he shaves the only spot on his neck with no stubble on it, and the seeds of love are born.

Devon and Annie and… some other ranchers, apparently, talk about whether Bianca is going to sell the ranch while looking at more cows.  In particular, they really don’t want her to sell to J.R., played by Randy Spears (Erectnophobia, Invasion of the Samurai Sluts from Hell), because he apparently has a habit of running ranches into the ground.  It’s an interesting take on the familiar “Railroad Baron” western clichés.  Sure he wears a black hat but he’s not a bad person, he’s just a bad rancher.  Devon tells the only other woman around for miles that she shouldn’t talk to Bianca because she doesn’t understand how women think, and leaves his crew to think of a plan to prevent Bianca from selling the ranch.  While he’s gone, Annie, who appeared for all the world to be Devon’s girl while he was having various kinds of sex with her, has various kinds of sex with another ranch hand after he compliments her stew, insisting admirably and progressively that she’s “no man’s girl.” Devon’s brainstorming session appears to consist of drinking and bitching to Leigh, who says that Bianca is “everything the old man said she was,” which, given their limited contact, can only mean that Old Man Torres told everyone his daughter was bangin’.

That night, Bianca tells Mei Lee that she doesn’t know what to do.  Mei Lee offers one of her many words of wisdom – “Destiny is not a matter of chance, it’s a matter of choice” – to help ease the mind of this sensitive and vulnerable young girl… before having hardcore pornographic sex with her.  The next day, J.R. arrives with his wife Priscilla, played by Olivia Del Rio (Ferkel 3, Luxsury Nurse) to offer Bianca more than the ranch is worth.  But now Bianca says she wants to think about it.  J.R. leaves, questioning his abilities as a negotiator.  His stagecoach driver suddenly decides to stop in the middle of nowhere, which is serendipitous because J.R. was just about to tell him to stop and take a walk while his wife makes him feel like a big man again, via sex.  We never see the stagecoach driver again.

Sex in a carriage = The Five Foot High Club?

Like every other character in Rawhide, Leigh spends most of his conversations with Bianca telling her, “your father was a good man, and this ranch was his dream.”  While he tells her that her father was a good man, and that this ranch was his dream, wise Mei Lee tells Shaun that she “can’t really describe” how she feels about him.  “Then don’t,” he replies, before having lots and lots of sex with her near the horse corral (the flies are a particularly realistic touch).  Mei Lee doesn’t want to leave Shaun and the Torres ranch.  “I thought cowboys were supposed to be so tough, but Shaun is nothing like that.”  Ouch.  It’s a good thing Shaun can’t hear her voice-over, because he’s clearly in love.

Meanwhile, the romance between Bianca and Leigh heats up as he tells her that her father is a good man, and that this ranch was his dream.  The Torres ranch holds a party, and the film gets to show off its epic side a bit, with crowds of as many as a dozen or more people filling the frame at the same time.  Characters we don’t know fall in love by the sidelines.  The sweet side of Rawhide makes an appearance as young lovers fumble over poetry (“I knew from the moment I met you, that nothing in this world could make me wanna live, except for the thought of you… giving me all you could give”) before eventually fornicating near a cow.  Another couple comes together to have exuberant sex on some hay bales after discussing what a good man Old Man Torres was, and how this farm was his dream, proving this information’s value to the audience as both a pick up line and a plot point.

Devon ruins the frivolities by revealing the master plan he’s spent the last two days meticulously devising: Drunkenly lashing out at Bianca in public, telling her that she’s “a disgrace to her father’s name.”  Bianca runs off crying and Leigh, having barely convinced her that no one would drunkenly lash out at her at this party, runs after her to remind her that her father was a good man, and that this farm was his dream.  Then, for the first time, he asks what her dream is, but she doesn’t know.  He tells her that he has something to show her tomorrow, that he knows “exactly what she needs.”  Bianca doesn’t know what Leigh wants to show her, but Mei Lee thinks she should take a look.

It turns out that what Leigh wanted to show Bianca was a montage of the actors riding horses (near cows) while the hit power ballad “Riding Home” plays in the background.  Meanwhile , Devon awakes to find Annie furious that his big plan was to humiliate himself in front of company.  He finds solace in May, played by Natalia Wood (E-Love Wanted, The Smother Sisters), who comes up with the solution to all of Devon’s problems: He should tell Bianca what a good man her father was, and how this ranch was his dream!  He gratefully has hardcore sex with May by the creek while keeping his shirt and long underwear on, which hardly seems necessary since she was doing the wash anyway.

Bianca asks Leigh to join her for a drink of what appears to be three enormous bottles of hard liquor, but he abstains.  Leigh’s love can’t be bought with booze alone.  He needs Bianca to… commit.  Specifically, a lifelong commitment to fulfilling the dreams of a dead man by keeping the ranch and, therefore, protecting Leigh’s rather lucrative job.  Later, Devon finally tells Bianca that her father was a good man, and that this ranch was his dream, only to discover that Bianca’s no longer interested in selling!  She’s going to keep all the ranch hands, and ends the film having graphic sex with Leigh on a grassy hilltop that looks suspiciously like where her father was buried and they all live happily ever after.

To make a long story short, the movie is about a protagonist who spends most of the story debating whether or not to fulfill the wishes of their dead father, making Rawhide exactly like Hamlet, but with cows.  But that’s a barebones assessment of a plot that begs for further scrutiny.  The events of Rawhide are intentionally left unexamined, leaving behind a banquet for hungry film critics (like myself).  The easy interpretation is that while Devon wasted time complaining and having his ego stroked, Leigh did what no one else could and emotionally blackmailed Bianca into giving up on her own dreams by seducing her.  There’s also plenty of evidence to suggest that Devon’s personal journey was a dark and tormented one off-screen.  He suddenly appears for no reason halfway through the film carrying a long rope, looking for all the world like he’s going to get a noose ready, only to stop when May tells him that he’s a good man.  Realizing that this ranch is his dream, he decides not to commit either suicide or murder.  That’s good drama.

There’s also an argument to be made that Leigh is Bianca’s half-brother.  I came up with this idea when I tried to reconcile three contradictory facts: Bianca grew up on the ranch, and Leigh’s been there since the ranch was purchased, but they don’t remember each other?  It only makes sense if they were intentionally kept apart, just in case they accidentally fell in love like exactly what happens during the movie.  It makes sense.  The Torres Ranch is practically a free-love compound.  That’s probably why Old Man Torres sent Bianca away to New York in the first place.  Leigh, who explicitly mentions that Old Man Torres was “like a father” to him, may not even be aware of the horrifying scandal.  When Bianca and Leigh consummate their love on that suspiciously familiar hill at the end of the film, they may, quite literally, be doing so over their father’s dead body.

It’s a period piece, so this part takes a while.

Granted, there are flaws with Rawhide.  An anachronistic modern corral is explained away when one of the characters mentions how expensive it is, which is probably true.  The future is probably very expensive (what with the inflation and all).  But Rawhide is still a handsome production from Adam & Eve Productions that comes in a classy 3-disc DVD set, including director’s commentary, behind the scenes material (including an interesting short documentary of Olivia Del Rio seducing, and then – surprisingly – fornicating with Steven St. Croix on the set), and a copy of the soundtrack for all the fans who wish to relive the romance over and over again on their I-Pods.

To sum up: Rawhide is a Pornassic Pornic Pornestern bearing striking similarities to the works of David Lynch, Francois Truffaut and William Shakespeare, but with cows.  If you’ve ever wondered what Unforgiven would have been like with less clothing (and more cows), then I encourage you to move on or, if necessary, head out… to Rawhide!

GEEKSCAPE AFTER DARK ARCHIVES:

WHO’S NAILIN’ PAYLIN?

WHO’S NAILIN’ PAYLIN: ADVENTURES OF A HOCKEY MILF
DIRECTOR: JEROME TANNER

“I think politicians are a perfectly legitimate target for satire, since porn is a fundamentally satirical medium. It’s not meant to be taken seriously.”

– Nina Hartley

That’s Nina Hartley, the undisputed Judi Dench of the porn industry, discussing Who’s Nailin’ Paylin on the behind the scenes video of the Hustler DVD. As Larry Flynt himself proved, to the Supreme Court no less, everyone can be a legitimate target for satire, but it’s hard not to take any aspect of the landmark 2008 presidential election seriously. Voters turned out in record numbers for their voices to be heard on issues ranging from economy to the constitutionality of gay marriage. Pundits from Bill O’Reilly to Stephen Colbert screamed at the top of their lungs to reach their audiences. But what about pornographers? What do they have to say about our political landscape? Nina Hartley can say porn isn’t meant to be taken seriously, but we know better. If the box office numbers are any indication, there’s a good chance that more voters are going to see Who’s Nailin’ Paylin than Oliver Stone’s W.

But what, exactly, are they going to take away from this film, rushed into production after unusually attractive Republican Sarah Palin was selected to be John McCain’s vice-presidential candidate? Watching those behind the scenes videos proves that director Jerome Tanner (For Your Thighs Only, The Da Vinci Load 1 & 2) and his cast have no love for Sarah Palin. When rehearsing her lines, one of her cast members asks Lisa Ann (Desperate House MILFS 1, Obedient Slaves of the Wild West 1 & 2) what “Jeepers” means. Her response: “It’s a stupid saying she says. She’s an idiot.”

Bold words, but the interviewer takes great pains to delve into the intelligence of the various performers. Or at least, she asks them basic questions about our government. Many of the older cast members, like Lisa Ann and Nina Hartley (Dy-Nasty, The Last Temptation of Kristi) fare well, responding correctly to questions like, “What’s the first amendment,” and “Who is the vice-president of the United States?” Their younger counterparts are more hit and miss, with Holly West (Good Morning Woody 1, Cougar Club: The Hunt is On) acquitting herself admirably, but neither SinDee Jennings (The Good, The Bad & The Slutty 3, She Only Takes Diesel) nor Jada Fire (Desperate Blackwives 3, XXX Files) could remember what the 1st amendment was; ironic, coming from performers in a Larry Flynt production. However, Jada, whose performance as Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice ironically proves to be less of a caricature than Thandie Newton’s, does show the proper respect to the politician she portrays: “She’s way smarter than me, I can tell you that much. Go girl! Shit…You are the shit! Strong black woman…”

“But you about to have sex on camera, girl.”

And indeed she is. Like Oliver Stone’s W, a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of our oft-maligned current executive officers, Who’s Nailin’ Paylin spends its hour and forty-five minute running-time showing us what these titans of the Republican Party are like behind closed doors. While perhaps not a particularly accurate portrayal, we do learn who is, in fact, nailin’ Sarah Palin. The filmmakers are. Do they succeed?

An unrelated article. In the banner headline? Many viewers are likely to be left disappointed by the fact that the “Unusual Auction-Site Crashes Because of User Overload” plotline quickly proves unresolved.

Who’s Nailin’ Paylin opens with a title montage portraying the Alaskan wilderness under a particularly patriotic score. The message is clear: Hustler is setting Sarah up before they knock her down. Sarah Palin, or as the film calls her, “Serra Paylin,” answers the door at her swank abode to find two Russian soldiers whose tank have broken down outside. They politely ask if they can use her phone to call the Kremlin. When the Governor of Alaska says that she doesn’t know what the Kremlin is, they translate it for her: it’s Russian for “tow truck.” With her trademark endearing smile and down home hospitality, she says, “In the spirit of foreign relations, I suppose there’s no harm in letting you in.” The filmmakers are off to a solid start, lampooning Sarah Palin’s oft-ridiculed remark that she’s experienced in foreign policy because she can see Russia from her house.

Sadly, the scene degenerates from political satire to a bizarre mating ritual, in which the Russian soldiers, played by Sascha (Direct Deposit 2, Taco Shop 3) and Mick Blue (In the Garden of Shadows 2: Faith, Do It Right White Boy) cobble together pick up lines that sound like they were plucked from a Russian phrase book from 1975. “If I could rearrange the letters in the alphabet, I would put U and I together,” and “Excuse me, but I think I dropped somethink (sic)… my jaw.” These lines seem lost on Paylin, but when they finally directly proposition her for sexual favors, she responds with a favorable, “You betcha.” The moral of the scene finally becomes clear: despite the McCain campaign’s statements that they would not meet with diplomats without pre-conditions, direct communication is the only way to get anywhere in foreign affairs. Serra Paylin proceeds to fornicate with these two young gentlemen, implying that Russia, and indeed all foreign administrations, are only as important as their people. Just like America. As she sees them naked for the first time, the filmmakers take an interesting opportunity to break the fourth wall. She says, “You look German.” An unusual joke that will only prove amusing to audience members who are aware that Mick Blue is German, while Sascha originally hails from Austria.

“The Orally Factor” – one of the more blunt parodies in the film.

This scene is followed by a framing device in which Mike Horner (a 31 year veteran of the porn industry and star of at least 1,299 films, including Beaverly Hillbillies, Broadway Fanny Rose, The French Conexxxion, Natural Born Thrillers and Nightmare on Porn Street) plays Bill Orally, of the Orally Factor. From here we segue to Serra Paylin being coached in public speaking by an attractive young political aide played by Holly West. She attempts to teach Paylin to use such words as, “Absolutely,” and “Definitely.” Paylin, when prompted to repeat them, responds, “You betcha!” When quizzed on an individual who “was instrumental in ending the Civil War and freeing the slaves,” she responds, “Joe Six Pack” – in one of several continuity gaffs, the filmmakers seem to have failed to realize that “six packs” were not invented until 1960, 95 years after the end of the American Civil War. The aide then attempts some free association: “H.M.O.” elicits the response, “G.A.Y.” An unusual response, since the alternatives to H.M.O. would be universal health care, a system which Republicans all but universally oppose.

Did the filmmakers sacrifice clear characterization in the pursuit of a cheap joke? Possibly, or possibly they just want their protagonist to be more relatable to their perceived audience of left-wing Democrats. As co-star Evan Stone (Kung Fu Nurses A Go-Go, Pulp Friction) says in the behind the scenes footage, “If you’re a Republican, you don’t want to watch this. If you’re a Democrat, you want to watch this. …And if you’re not voting, you’re probably a convicted felon.” Stone’s statement back in early October displays impressive foresight, given the record voter turnout on election day a month later. But it also makes Hustler’s mission statement clear – they’re making a film for people who don’t like Sarah Palin. Still, they assume that these people are attracted enough to the vice presidential candidate to want to see her having sexual intercourse. Don’t they think that conservatives considered her attractive as well? Where’s the Republican pornography, I wonder?

After Sarah leaves to get some much needed rest, her husband arrives to speak to Holly West’s unnamed character. After they each critique Sarah Palin’s perceived lack of mental acuity, they proceed with their extra-marital affair. Interestingly, Sarah Palin’s husband Todd, played by Alec Knight (Contortionista, Missionary: Impossible) goes to all the effort of sleeping with another woman, but in the act of foreplay produces glasses and has his mistress role-play as his wife. Her lines, clearly rehearsed with her married lover: “If elected, I realize the road may be hard. But no matter how nasty things get, I promise to remain extremely flexible, even if I have to resort to backdoor politics in order to achieve my goals.” His idealized version of his wife is younger, true, but also more well spoken. Combined with Holly Wells’ constant requests during the ensuing sexual intercourse for Todd to tell her “how good” something or other is, we can determine that what he really yearns for is a deeper committed relationship to his wife, whose commitment to politics has led him to feel a desire for stronger communication, and a need to be needed by a woman whom recent events have turned into, for some, a strong, independent role model for young women. Later, as we watch Todd and his mistress viewing Serra Paylin on TV, he seems supportive – perhaps their marriage can overcome the obstacles created by a heated political campaign, after all.

In one of the more thematically rich sequences, Todd “Paylin” puts his wife’s glasses on his mistress, implying a desire for a more intimate relationship with “Serra Paylin” than her political career allows.

As we transition to Serra Paylin, we discover that she sleeps in the nude, save for high heels, a tiara and a “Miss Alaska” sash. As we all know, the real Sarah Palin finished third in the Miss Alaska pageant, and would not own one of these sashes, so its inclusion reveals that she yearns to remain young and beautiful, and her sexual escapades are likely in pursuit of feeling sexually desired by men other than her husband. This has likely led to Todd’s own infidelity, as portrayed in the previous scene, and ties in nicely to the recent, comparatively minor, political scandal which revealed that $150,000 had been spent on the real Palin’s wardrobe for the election. Since this information had yet to be released to the public by the time of Who’s Nailin’ Paylin’s production, we can once again chalk this observation up to incredible foresight on the part of the filmmakers. As Sarah attempts to sleep, she mutters to herself that she’s “gotta hide the skeletons,” an unfortunate but accurate commentary on the media’s tendency to dig up unpleasant facts on public figures, which likely makes even the most saintly candidate nervous.

The following scenes are juxtaposed with Serra Paylin sleeping, implying that they might be flashbacks, and they might be dreams. If they are flashbacks, then the possibility of sexual scandals being revealed is quite real and dangerous to our heroine’s dreams of success in politics. If they are dreams, then they speak more towards her obvious yearning to be sexually desired by the very real men in her life, since they each appear later in the film watching her supportively on television. In the first flashback/dream, Serra Paylin coerces her husband’s unnamed business partner, played by Lee Stone (Federal Breast Inspectors, Mad Jaxxx: Beyond Thunderboobs) into having sex via an unusual display of emasculating homophobia. “For Criminy’s sake, why don’t you take your nuts out of your little Gucci purse, grab your noodle and act like a man?” she gripes, before adding, “Before you and your boyfriend Lance Bass head off to your next Clay Aiken concert, why don’t you feast your eyes on Momma’s (breasts)?” Perhaps this behavior serves to illustrate the right wing belief that homosexuality is a choice, and that Serra Paylin is attempting to perform a public service by bringing her husband’s business partner to what she considers socially acceptable sexuality, even at the risk of her own marriage and political career. There are those who would laud her sacrifice in that case, but even so, the rampant display of intolerance and graphic display of sexuality that follows eventually puts a bad taste in everyone’s mouths.

The following flashback/dream shows young Serra Paylin at the University of I-Da-Ho in 1982 (the real Sarah Palin attended the University of Idaho in 1982, the name of which was no doubt changed to avoid possibly scandalizing the institution with the accusation of educational impropriety in the following scene). In this scene, a history professor played by Evan Stone (no known relation to Lee) asks his students how old the planet Earth is. Only Serra, now played ably by SinDee Jennings, knows that the correct answer is 10,000 years. When he asks how long ago the Tyrannosaur’s lived, once again the students are flummoxed, despite answering with detailed historical information that, in many other classrooms, would have been considered correct. One student even attempts to placate the professor by saying 10,000 years, which of course Serra Paylin corrects when she says they “never existed, and their fossils were placed on Earth by Satan to trick mankind.” Although clearly a joke at the expense of Creationists, it’s important to note that the scene also plays to those same creationists, who are likely rooting for Serra while their Darwinist counterparts are busy shaking their heads. As the rest of the students leave, we see in a wide shot that the classroom only has enough space for five students and can’t help but wonder if this choice was more a matter of limited production values, or a statement on the part of Jerome Tanner about the popularity of this class. Serra stays behind to ask her professor if he knows “any good rituals to protect against witchcraft,” which he uses as an awkward segue into inappropriate sexual contact, which she seems to enjoy. This scene serves to motivate Serra’s sexual liaisons throughout the film, particularly the scene in which she attempts to convert her husband’s homosexual partner to heterosexuality. She learned from a reliable source that sexuality is a religious experience, and by celebrating her body she is, in fact, praising God. An unusually deep thematic context for a pornographic film, and the filmmakers should be appreciated for making an attempt at deeper subtext in a film that could have simply been a display of lewd behavior.

An amusing continuity flub – does that backpack look circa 1982 to you?

As the film returns to the present, Bill Orally presents Serra Paylin’s press conference, in which she responds to accusations of sexual misconduct. Orally’s segment provides the funniest joke of the film, in which he blames his unintentional double entendres on the fact that the teleprompter font isn’t Helvetica – his favorite font. Serra’s press conference is interesting on a variety of levels, not the least of which is that the fictional Serra Paylin, intentionally dumbed down by the filmmakers, wisely held a press conference to confront her detractors while her real life counterpart never did…a choice that many political pundits agreed was a poor political move. As stated above, the many individuals with whom she slept with during the film express their support as they watch her on TV, including the two Russians, who watch on a black & white television with poor reception. Curiously enough, they do so in Serra Paylin’s own living room, while sitting on the couch that she implies had to be removed (and subsequently burned) after the “frenzied three-way” (which she vehemently denies to the voting public). Another interesting logical flub comes when she attempts to relate to her audience by stating, “I, just like you, put on my crotchless edible panties one leg at a time.” Honestly, whose crotchless edible panties have legs on them?!

The Russian soldiers “Serra” befriends in the first scene cheer her on later in the film, although curiously from her own couch.

Of course, the big reveal of the film comes when the camera angle shifts behind the podium to reveal Hilary Clinton (played with unsurprising dignity by Nina Hartley) has been performing acts upon Serra Paylin that would have been considered highly unacceptable by the world that persecuted her husband for similar impropriety. In fact, it’s interesting to note that in the modern landscape of legitimate political scandals, the filmmakers have fallen back on the Clinton scandal, probably an attempt to humanize their protagonist. Bill Clinton has, as it is generally considered, been forgiven by the public at large for his sexual indiscretions, so why can’t Serra Paylin? By limiting her political scandal to sexual affairs, they have in fact vetted her as a candidate – how bad can she be if her biggest flaws were shared by one of the most successful presidents in recent history? The filmmakers then associate her with Hilary Clinton – who in the continuity of the film has clearly slept with both Paylin and her husband, implying that Clinton has legitimized our protagonist. They have reached across the aisle and found… each other in a particularly intimate display of feminism and femininity. When Jada Starr, playing Condoleeza Rice, interrupts their backstage shenanigans, she agrees to keep quiet provided that Serra Paylin nixes a videotape which may emerge after President Bush leaves office, which apparently portrays a woman who looks a lot like Rice is “doing things to Cheney, Rove, Wolfowitz and,” curiously enough, “Chuck Norris.” They then proceed to get in bed together, although the bed is actually an curiously placed couch, implying that bipartisan politics are truly the wave of the future, and together, we can overcome anything.

“Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?” is a fantasy. The fictional Sarah Palin even holds a press conference!

There are a number of missed opportunities in Who’s Nailin’ Paylin for political satire. The conspicuous absence of Joe the Plumber can, of course, be attributed the film’s early production date (Joe the Plumber was not introduced to the campaign until late October), but even more surprising is that the filmmakers never gave Serra any scenes with John McCain, despite her college claims that she’s “always wanted to be with an older man.” Perhaps the filmmakers thought including McCain might be disrespectful to an acknowledged war hero, or perhaps they were simply leaving room for a potential sequel. Time may tell.

The standard definition DVD comes in an attractive anamorphic transfer from Hustler Video. The picture quality is soft but not distracting, and probably the original intent of the filmmakers. Extras include the aforementioned behind the scenes footage, with some interesting, but overlong, interview with the cast (but not, curiously, the crew), production stills (does anyone actually look at those?), and previews of upcoming features. No filmmaker’s commentary, though, which these days really should be considered an industry standard, but that may just be my own opinion.

Seriously?

All told, Who’s Nailin’ Paylin will be an interesting addition to the political satire time capsule that is the early 21st century, and an interesting counterpoint to Oliver Stone’s W and Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s That’s My Bush, all of which sought to humanize Republican figures that have been traditionally demonized in the media. While the film may only warrant a purchase from more politically obsessed film fans, curious casual filmgoers will likely find it a worthwhile rental.