LOVE FOR THE FIRST TIME

The first Michael Raven movie I ever saw was "The Visitors" and it was great, but then I watched two more Michael Raven movies: "Black Widow" and "Watchers" and neither one impressed me very much. Since Love For The First Time was directed and written by Michael Raven, I was a little bit skeptical about renting it; but, I thought I would take a chance, since it starred two of my favorite adult actors: Carmen Hart and Randy Spears. To my surprise I found that Love For The First Time (LFFT) was one of the better XXX features I have viewed in quite a while.

The movie is loosely based on The 40 Year Old Virgin. LFFT opens with Randy Spears waking up alone in his bed and riding his bike to work. We know Randy is a nerd because he has repaired his glasses with tape (ok that's a really a cliched short hand way to identify a nerd). At work, we meet Randy's co-workers: chronic masturbator Mr Marcus and "wigger" Barrett Blade. Randy's two co-workers "out" him as a virgin and decide they will do some charity work by getting Randy laid. We also get the feeling that even though Mr Marcus and Barrett talk a good game of sex, a lot of it is just talk and they may not be as experienced as they want everyone to think.


LFFT cuts to Carmen Hart who is alone in her bed having a sex dream. It was refreshing that the movie had opened with plot and comedy instead of rushing right into a sex scene. This first sex scene is shot with a hazy look and only runs around 12 minutes (which most of the sex scenes do). What a relief to have sex scenes that didn't run into mind-numbing length. I would like to mention, without getting too "Sex In The City" on you, that Carmen wears a pair of spiked heeled boots in this scene and, I swear, I saw these same boots or similar ones on other performers throughout the movie.


The boys take Randy to a bar where Barrett, still trying to do good deeds, finds that you can't buy a man a drink or he'll think you're gay. This also sets the stage for us seeing Carmen Hart at work as the bartender. Barrett returns to the table and barmaid Ryder Skye comes over for their order. Mr Marcus is gobsmacked by her and can't say a word....and we see the sexual fantasy he is having about her.


The guys take Randy to a strip club where his path crosses once again with Carmen. Lindsey Meadows, Carmen's roommate, has also taken Carmen to the strip club with her. It's amateur night and Lindsey is going to show Carmen how to loosen up in hopes of getting Carmen laid.....it seems Carmen is also a Virgin! It should be noted that Lindsey plays a very understated role as the best friend/roommate and she's so good that you might not even notice that fact.

After a sex scene in the movie where the boys buy Randy a VIP lap dance that turns into a bj, the guys head out for a party and of course Carmen and Lindsey are at the same party. To Barrett's surprise, Lindsey is actually agreeable to having sex with him. He's stunned but tells her he'll have to stop by his place first to get his hair products. A sex scene then follows.


At the party, Randy follows the guys advice: make the girl feel uncomfortable, then he will be able to feel comfortable in any situation. This isn't working on Carmen and whens she tells Randy that he's making her uncomfortable, he apologizes and becomes himself. This leads to the duo dating for six months and Carmen finally having to tell Randy that she's ready to have sex. Carmen asks Randy if he has any protection and he pulls out a LARGE handful of condoms. As she goes off to get ready, there's a funny bit where Randy experiments with the rubbers. Carmen returns and we have a 20 minute sex scene, but since this is what the movie has been building up to, it seems logical to let this scene run on a little longer.

LFFT had great writing from start to finish, the plot made logical sense and the sex scenes fit into the flow of the movie and, as mentioned previously, weren't mind numbingly long. All the actors were way more than good in their roles and Barrett Blade provided the movie with a lots of comic moments. There's even a cameo by Ron Jeremy in a non-sex role, and while unnecessary for the movie, I seem to never tire of seeing The Legend. The only very slight problem I had with the movie was some of the music used an organ (no pun intended) that sounded like Ray Manzarek of The Doors was let loose to jam (which would never be a good idea), but even with that minor quibble I'm still rating this one a solid A

Love For The First Time, written and directed by Michael Raven and starring Mr Marcus, Carmen Hart, Ryder Skye, Lindsey Meadows, TJ Cummings, Abbey Brooks, Randy Spears, Barrett Blade

BIG BANG THEORY: A XXX PARODY

It looks like Lee Roy Myers is never going to be able make a parody as good as Will Ryder. I keep thinking that Lee Roy has it in him, but with each successive parody of his that I watch, Lee Roy appears to be unable to get it all together. Big Bang Theory: A XXX Parody (BBT) is no exception to the rule.

I watched the "party" version of BBT, which was almost two hours in length. This is only about 40 minutes shorter than the regular version. The other party versions I have watched clocked in around the 60 minute mark. It's a mystery to me why this party version is so long. There are no "pop shots" which is consistent with other party versions and I'm assuming the sex scenes are somewhat shorter; but most of the sex scenes in this version still clock in at the 20-25 minute mark, I can't imagine how long they must be in the original version.


The movie begins on a bad note as we find Leonard ( Joey Brass) imagining a slutty Princess Leia (Briana Blair). So instead of story, we immediately get the first sex scene. In a XXX porn feature, I think the normal audience for this type of film (which includes me) is interested in story with sex....NOT sex with story. Even though it was a pretty decent sex scene (that included one terrific camera shot from overhead), I had already hit FF a couple of times. I really shouldn't have been too surprised since Lee Roy often starts his parodies with this method of movie making.

Luckily, when we get to the story, written by Bensen Hearst, I found a very decent Big Bang plot with very sharply written lines that for the most part fit the characters. Whoever Bensen Hearst is could easily be a writer on the real CBS show, that's how good the writing is in BBT. It seems that Comic Con is going to be in town, but the guys didn't get tickets; however Leonard has made some counterfeit tickets on his computer. To see if they will pass for the real thing, they decide to go to the comic book store and show them to the other nerds (a plot point that was never played out). On the way out the door, they see their neighbor Penny (Ashlynn Brooke) bent over locking her door. This was very reminiscent of the CBS show where Penny always seems, for the most part, to be unaware of her sexiness (OR at least pretends to be). It should be noted that in BBT, Ashlynn had the same body language as Penny from the TV show. Either this was deliberate on Ashlynn's part and she should be commended OR it was just a darn lucky accident that Ashlynn deports herself in the same manner.


Penny has a couple of neighbor girls (Kristina Rose & Halie James) over to her apartment and I guess I don't have to tell you that they're not there to make a quilt! Little do the girls know that when Howard (Vin Vericose) was repairing Penney's computer he installed a camera he could hack into. "Luckily", for the movie, Penny must have the computer trained on her bed, since the guys are watching all of the action across the hall on their computer. I will have to say this was a very hot g/g/g scene for the first 3/4 of the scene. However, when the director started posing the trio (I assume, in order to get better shots for the camera), the FF button became my friend once again.


We next find Raj (Gabriel D'Alessandro) and Sheldon (Rocco Reed) in the cafeteria at work where they are wishing they could get access to a certain computer controlled by Leslie Winkle (Beverly Hills). She agrees to give them computer access, if they will have sex with her....which of course they do....right there in the cafeteria.....WTF, this was so unbelievable that it removed me from the story and made the whole scene uninteresting. Would it have been that hard to have them move to another set - i.e. an office or lab?

In the meantime, Howard has picked up a girl (Charley Chase) and taken her home. They are in his bedroom and just like on the TV show Howard's mother is yelling to "keep it down" and "no more sleepovers". Surprisingly, we never hear another peep out ouf his mother, despite all the noise that's made during the sex scene. This could have been a lot funnier scene, IF Howard's mother would have continued to yell at different intervals.

Penny skipped the first day of Comic Con. When the guys come home dressed in their costumes, they find Penny dressed in the costume that she plans to wear the next day. Penny then takes Leonard into her bedroom for the final sex scene, which is the end of the movie.


BBT had a laugh track that DID NOT fit. It sounded more like the laugh track from Three's Company or Not Married With Children with the audience "whooping" it up at regular intervals. Most of the sex scenes fit ok with the plot, with the exception of the cafeteria scene. The sex scenes were of course too long, but everyone seemed, more or less, to stay in character during their sex scenes and most of the scenes generated some heat.

Speaking of the characters, Sheldon is the character least like his TV counterpart. On the TV show, Sheldon is Super Nerd among the nerds. There probably could have been some great comedy mined from this fact if his character had been written a little more accurately. As it is, in BBT he just seems no different than the other three nerds. I personally think that they should have had Sheldon as a non-sex role, but as The Dude would say: "Hey Man..That's Just Like Your Opinion"


There really wasn't a weak actor among the cast (which is often the case), but Gabriel D'Alessandro, while not looking like Raj, had the performance that stood out as just a little bit better than everyone else's. I usually get to pick one person in these parodies who gets stuck with the bad wig, but the wig on Howard, pretty much looked like the bad hair that Howard has on the TV show. Although the plot was skimpy, it could easily have been a plot from the TV show (which is character driven anyway), and as I previously stated, the comic writing was great. Maybe someday Lee Roy will get everything right and move up to the level of Will Ryder, as it is, it looks like he must be comfortable with being a runner up. I rate this one a B-

TRU: A XXX PARODY

I wouldn't call Tru a parody of True Blood, instead I would call it a XXX reimagining of the original. The opening credits of the movie are very similar to True Blood's opening credits and set the scene for what I hoped was going to be a really good movie. Too bad that instead of getting to the story, we're jumped right to a long sex scene between Vanessa Naughty and Johnny Castle. This is obviously Lee Roy Myers' idea of how to open a movie, since he did the same thing in a couple of his other parodies that I have seen. At the end of the sex scene, Vanessa wants to know where Sookie Stackhouse is, when Johnny can't tell her, we hear a scream and see some blood spurting from his dead body.

Tru's next scene is between Sam (Evan Stone) and Sookie (Ashlynn Brooke). Sookie wants to get off work early to surprise Bill (James Deen) when he wakes up and Sam reluctantly agrees. Vanessa Naughty shows up in Sam's office and we now find out that she's Maryann. She wants to know where she can find Sookie, but Sam doesn't want to tell her. When Mary Ann goes into her vibration mode, which would cause Sam to shape shift (I only know this from watching the HBO series), he relents and says he'll tell her. Maryann is going to reward him with sex, but there's a scream from the parking lot. Sam realizes it sounds like Sookie and he rushes out to see what is wrong. SURPRISE! No sex scene.


Sookie has found someone dead inside a car and it will be revealed later that it's Lafayette, gay cousin of Tara (Misty Stone). We get a look inside the car when the cops arrive and we see Lafayette with his heart ripped out. Sookie promises Tara that she'll find out you killed Lafayette and she calls Bill to help her. Sookie tells him to come quick and in a funny bit, he arrives in a flash at super vampire speed and tells Sookie "he got there as quick as he could!".

Sookie and Bill go to see Eric (Bill Bailey) to see what they can find out. As I have mentioned many times, each XXX parody always has one person in a bad wig. Bill Bailey's wig looks like they just grabbed the first blond wig they could find and socked it on his head.


Cut back to the bar where Sookie's brother Jason (Levi Cash) has come to offer Tara his sympathies; but she gets mad when he starts talking about his support group and Misty gets to deliver the best line of the movie.....which I won't spoil here, but it includes Kayne West. Jason starts to leave but Tara tells him she doesn't want to be alone and you guessed it, this leads to the next sex scene. Misty Stone not only does a good job with Tara's accent and characterization, but also stays in character during the sex scene often referring to Levi as Jason.


Back at Eric's, Sookie is having trouble reading his mind. Which makes me have to say WTF.....didn't Ashlynn Brooke watch True Blood before writing this movie....Sookie CAN'T read vampires' minds, that's one of the reasons she is so attracted to Bill. Anyway, Sookie and Bill return to the bar and Sookie's not real pleased about what has gone on between Tara and Jason, but more importantly she wants to know what Jason has told the people in his support group. Before we get too much about the support group, Tru makes its next bad move with a flashback sex scene between Levi Cash and Gracie Glam, who are both high on "V" (vampire blood). There are only two explanations for this scene: forcing another sex scene into the movie OR someone just wanted to play with the color palette on their camera/editing machine (you'll have to watch the movie to see what I'm talking about). Either way, it grinds the storyline of Tru to a complete halt. It would have been better to have had the sex scene missed earlier between Sam and Maryann, at least it would have flowed with the story.

When we get back to the story of the support group, we find a couple of the women (Lana Violet, Lindy Lane) are very interested in Jason's story about buying vampire blood. The two women go to Eric's bar in order to find some V. Eric is astounded that they would ask a vampire directly for blood, but wants to know how they found out about V and he tells them that they'll have to answer a few questions as Shay Sights leads them to a red couch against a very black background (this made for a very dull set) and of course this starts as a g/g/g scene but Eric eventually joins the trio. After the sex scene, Eric finds out that Jason was the one who told them about V and then both girls are killed.

Back at Sam's bar, Jason finishes his flashback story and Sookie thinks Eric must be responsible for the death of Lafayette. Sookie goes alone to confront Eric. He tells her that he had wanted to kill Jason's source of V - Lafayette, but Lafayette was already dead when he got there. Eric is really into Sookie's mind reading and he's about to make her his, but as his fangs come out, Bill shows up and stops him. Sookie refuses to tell Eric where Jason is and Eric says there'll be a price to pay later.


Winding up the day (or night actually) Sookie and Bill take to her bed and we have the final sex scene. When Sookie wakes up the next morning, Bill is gone, but she hears a voice calling "Sookie, Sookie, Sookie" (could it be John Kay? - if you don't get that reference, too bad, it amuses me). She thinks Bill might be in trouble and goes to investigate and finds out it's actually Maryann using Bill's voice. She tells Sookie that she's the one who killed Lafayette and that she is now going to kill her. Maryann dips her hands into the dirt and comes up with claws instead of hands. This is true to the HBO series, where Maryann did a similar thing. Sookie makes a run for the woods as Maryann chases her. When Sookie falls, both women hear something coming towards them, while Mary Ann is distracted, Sookie takes a log and runs it through Mary Ann killing her. If you watched True Blood on HBO, you would know that this wasn't possible and is the second biggest mistake in the plot. We then find out what was rushing toward them was a dog, which morphs into Evan Stone! This is the end of movie and looks like the set up for a sequel, which I would definitely watch.

A lot of this plot may or may not sound confusing if you have never watched True Blood on HBO. Since I've watched all of the True Bloods (we're big vamp fans here at the House of X-Ray), the plot basically made sense to me. I think Ashylnn Brooke, who is credited as the writer, did a pretty good job of condensing most of the plots from the first two seasons of True Blood. IF, she had only paid a little more attention to some details and not gotten a couple of major plot points wrong, this would have been a great script. With those few plot flaws, the first long sex scene, the let's play with colors sex scene, and the red couch sex scene.....you know, after I think about it, most of the sex scenes pulled Tru down. So, I'll grade Tru this way: Sex Scenes: C- , Plot: B+, Average: B-

THIS AIN'T STAR TREK XXX #2 The Butterfly Effect

I've seen one terrible Axel Braun movie - Letterman's Nailin' Palin and one very good Axel Braun movie - This Ain't Star Trek XXX. Considering that sequels are hardly ever as good as the original, I knew that watching This Ain't Star Trek XXX - 2 (ST2) would be taking a chance on seeing another bad porn parody. Surprisingly, while it didn't live up to the first Star Trek parody, it wasn't totally bad......but it also wasn't totally good.

Bones, Spock, and Captain Kirk beam down to the planet Butterfly 8 to investigate a missing mining vessel. The trio are captured with Captain Kirk (Evan Stone) being separated from Bones (Cheyne Collins) and Spock (Tony DeSergio). Two creatures come to interrogate Bones and Spock, Bones tells them that he's just a doctor and that Spock has all the info they might need. The two creatures take off their heads and we see they're actually two babes (Kagney Linn Karter and Madison Scott), who continue to take off stuff until their butterfly wings (cheap ass looking cardboard) are revealed. Looks like Bones has messed up, since now he has to sit in the corner while Spock has sex with the two maidens. From what I could understand, having sex is the way they drain the information from their opponents. Why Spock was susceptible to their charms, I can only guess it was "The Butterfly Effect", otherwise, this is quite illogical.


Back on the Enterprise, Sulu (Keni Styles) and Checkov (Joey Brass) are concerned that they can't contact the landing party. They also can't get a hold of the senior officer on board, Scotty (Anthony Roasano). The reason, they can't get Scotty is he's busy having sex with Uhura (Jada Fire). Conveniently, they find Scotty and Uhura just as they finish their sex scene! Scotty asks them to keep this quiet and he'll beam them down to find the landing party. Scotty is still distracted thinking about Uhura and accidentally beams Sulu and Checkov to 1963, where they find President Kennedy (Johnny Castle) having sex with Marilyn Monroe (Alexis Texas), the night before he is supposed to leave for Dallas.

Ok, this scene really didn't have anything to do with the rest of the movie, but if you remember the original Star Trek, they sometimes interacted with past historical characters. Anyway, Sulu and Chekov hide and watch Kennedy and Marilyn have sex. This actually turned out to be the best sex scene in the movie. Johnny Castle made a terrible Kennedy and his accent wasn't even close, BUT, Alexis made a great Marilyn in the white dress from "The Seven Year Itch", which she keeps on during the whole scene. Alexis also maintains her character talking to the President in her Marilyn voice throughout the whole scene, occasionally calling him Mr. President. Alexis really made this scene stand out and definitely brought some heat to the movie.


After the sex scene, Sulu and Chekov warn the President not to go to Dallas the next day because he will be assassinated. In a "You Can't Change History", we learn later, that even though Kennedy didn't go to Dallas, he was still killed the next day by Jackie, when she caught him with Marilyn.

Sulu and Chekov finally get beamed to the correct place and are immediately captured by Jennifer Dark, resulting once again in a sex scene. How will the crew get out of their predicament? I'll let you watch the movie and find out, but I will tell you, in case you haven't noticed, Captain Kirk has been missing since he was captured at the first of the movie. When ST2 finally gets back to him, we find him in the bedroom of The Queen of Butterfly 8 (Kimberly Kane)


It seemed to me that the plot of ST2 was awfully thin and was just sandwiched between very l-o-n-g sex scenes that didn't flow very good with the story. In other words, the story existed to get to the sex scenes, rather than the sex scenes existed because of the story. Besides Johnny Castle's terrible Kennedy accent, several other actor/performers also wavered with their accents throughout ST2. As far as characterization, only Evan Stone as Kirk, Anthony Roasano as Scotty and Alexis Texas as Marilyn seemed to understand their roles and made the effort to have constant accents. Taking into account all of the above, I rate this one a C+

This Ain't Star Trek 2: The Butterfly Effect starring Alexis Texas, Jada Fire, Anthony Rosano, Kimberly Kane, Kagney Linn Karter, Tony de Sergio, Johnny Castle, Jennifer Dark, Madison Scott, Joey Brass, Keni Styles and directed by Axel Braun

WRITER'S BULLPEN

The first scene of the movie we see is one that is supposed to have been written by Tommy Gunn and Chris Cannon. It's a milkman (Mr. Pete) delivering milk to Alexis Texas, and as usual in a XXX movie, the milkman delivers a lot more than milk. The owner of the movie company is fed up with such bad scripts Tommy and Chris have been turning in, like the milkman scene; so he brings in his top contract star, Kaylani Lei, who is going to show them how to write a decent XXX script. The trio then plows through different ideas for stories. These story ideas are visualized and set up as the subsequent sex scenes in the movie.

Kaylani first writes a caveman scene starring herself with Rocco Reed. This is followed by Kagney Lynn Karter in an outer space scene with Kagney bringing two cavemen ( Anthony Rosano & John West) aboard her spaceship. Events continue to get mixed together as two cowboys (Tommy and Chris) meet up with cavewoman Kaylani, which is followed by a final scene in a lab with a scientist (Chris Johnson) with Alektra Blue and Kaylani Lei.

While some of those scenes sound like they might be fun to watch, the humor is always the forced over the top "look how funny we can be" type. The use of really cheap sets for each of the scenes is used to further illustrate how clever they are and that they know they're writing schlock. The trouble is, nothing struck me as really funny and the cheap sets just looked.....well, Cheap! Jonathan Morgan comedy XXX movies are usually great productions with lots of laughs and good acting; but in the case of Writer's Bullpen, he just made a movie as bad as the ones he's lampooning. I've seen worse comedy porno movies, but not many, I'm rating this one a D and I probably would have rated it even lower, but since it was short (89 minutes) I moved it up a grade.

Writer's Bullpen starring Alektra Blue, Alexis Texas, Kaylani Lei, Kagney Linn Karter, Anthony Rosano, Rocco Reed, Chris Johnson, Tommy Gunn, Chris Cannon, Mr Pete, John West and directed by Jonathan Morgan

WHAT'S A GIRL GOTTA DO?

This movie had a couple of things going for it from the start with the combination of Stormy Daniels, one of the best light comedy actresses in XXX movies today, and Jonathan Morgan, one of the best XXX comedy directors. If What's A Girl Gotta Do? didn't contain hardcore sex scenes, but instead was an R rated movie, I think it would fall into the category of a "Madcap Sex Romp".

Stormy is up for a big promotion at work and is going to throw a dinner party to impress her boss, Randy Spears. Stormy has invited people to her party who she considers to be important and/or interesting. She thinks once her boss meets these people, he will be so impressed with her "crowd", he will have a higher opinion of her. As Stormy tells us about each of her guests we meet them and this sets up, for the most part, a sex scene. When the movie FINALLY gets to the actual party, Jonathan Morgan shines with his comedic story telling and Stormy shines with her adept feel for light comedy.

As the guests start to arrive at the party, everywhere you look things are starting to go pieces: VooDoo has thrown his back out while having sex and he's lying naked on the bathroom floor; the caterers have canceled at the last minute; unexpected guests are showing up; and on top of all that, the boss is thinking about skipping out early.


Everyone in What's A Girl Gotta Do? does a good acting job, there wasn't a weak actor in the cast. The person that really surprised me was VooDoo, who carries off the comic bit about his back being out, that rivals the "madcapness" you usually only see coming from Stephen St. Croix or Eric Masterson.

There's a lot of great one-liners in What's A Girl Gotta Do? included in the great comedic situations. My only complaint (other than too many boob jobs) would be that the first part of the movie was close to a vignette style, with only very short bits of dialogue, followed by long sex scenes; while the last part of the movie was a great comedy with just a couple of sex scenes. Too bad the comedy and the sex couldn't have been more evenly spaced. I rate What's A Girl Gotta Do? a B+


In what is really an "extra scene", the credits are interrupted by Eric Masterson, asking if we want to see him get his freak on. This was a pretty good way to include another sex scene in What's A Girl Gotta Do? without using some hackneyed plot device (i.e. watching a porn movie on TV in the movie) to force another scene into the plot.

What's A Girl Gotta Do? starring Nicole Sheridan, Stormy Daniels, Voodoo, Kelli Tyler, Rita Faltoyano, Alexis Malone, Evan Stone, Randy Spears, Eric Masterson, Steven St. Croix and directed by Jonathan Morgan.

NAKED ILLUSIONS

When I saw the great artwork on the front of this box and saw that Naked Illusions was directed by Randy Spears, written by Cash Markman, and starred Carmen Hart, Katie Morgan, and Eric Masterson, I was sure this was going to be a great movie. Well, I was half right!

Brad Armstrong plays a magician who has written a bestseller exposing the secrets of magic. He is performing at a club with his assistants Devon Michaels and Carmen Hart. Eric Masterson is his agent and is having an affair with Brad's wife, Katie Morgan. While Brad is performing his act on stage, Katie and Eric have sex backstage and I have to say that this was the most uninspired sex scene I have ever seen Katie perform. During part of his disappearing act on stage, Brad sneaks backstage and kills Katie while Eric is in the shower. Although, I'm somewhat a fan of Katie's, I wasn't disappointed to find she wouldn't be in the rest of the movie, since not only her sex scene was bad but her acting was also leaving something to be desired. Brad thinks he has an ironclad alibi and he plans to pin the murder on Eric.

Devon Michaels, Brad's number one assistant, has been having an affair with Brad and once the duo arrive back at Brad's, they of course celebrate by having sex. Brad next goes to see Eric's wife, August Night, and hypnotizes her by having her look in a glass of wine. If that sounds stupid, then watch the movie, because it is STUPID. While he has her under his spell he convinces her that her husband, Eric, really did kill Katie. Brad decides to have sex with August and has her imagine someone from her past that she has always been hot for. We then get a sex scene between August and Seth Dickens.

Up to this point in Naked Illusions I was pretty disappointed in the movie. The plot was just so-so and Brad Armstrong, never the best actor in XXX to begin with, was really weak in his role. I think Brad was trying to appear super egotistical, which would have fit with his character; instead he came off as just overacting. Whatever the problem, he was really pulling the movie down. I kept thinking, why didn't Randy cast himself in this role, he would have been perfect for it.

I was determined to continue watching what I was starting to consider a really poor choice in my rental selection, when the movie turned itself around. What caused this sudden switch, I can only think it was the result of one person - Carmen Hart.

Brad sends his assistant Carmen off with Van Damage as some extra compensation for Van Damage signing Brad to a Vegas contract. Van Damage remarks that he doesn't know how this happened and thinks Brad may have hypnotized him. Since Carmen tells Van Damage that Brad always gets what he wants, we have to assume he's been hypnotizing lots of people. This probably also includes us viewers, since the magic tricks Brad performs are juvenile level tricks that really aren't very convincing for the great magician he's supposed to be. Carmen brings some heat to her sex scene, which is good, since all the previous ones in Naked Illusions had just been your standard "by the numbers" scenes.

Carmen's up again in the next scene as she confronts Brad and tells him that she knows how he killed his wife. We then see a flashback explaining how he did it. She promises not to turn him in IF she can go back to being his number one assistant, get a raise, and they can be "bad" together. HEY! It looks like she's pretty easy to please! So Brad goes along with her. This results in another sex scene which is almost, but not quite as good as Carmen's other scene.

Brad decides to double cross Carmen and he's going to kill her onstage during a "sword through the box trick", but the detective who has been on the case from the start and has always doubted Brad, catches on in the nick of time and arrests him. In a funny moment (probably the only "intentionally" humorous moment in the film), Carmen is inside the box yelling "I'll tell everything" and "let me out". No one lets her out and the last we see of her are her eyes peeking out a slit in the box and she's still yelling over and over for somebody to please get her out.

Brad is in jail, but the very end of the movie leaves some doubt in the viewers mind that he may escape the clutches of the law, OR they were setting up for a sequel, which thank goodness never occurred.

Carmen Hart brought a "double whammy" of being a good actress in her role and a good performer in her sex scenes, both together really helped save this movie from turning into a real clunker. I have yet to see any movie where she has not been excellent in both her acting and performing, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that that trend continues.

Naked Illusions was touted as being Randy Spears first direction job for Wicked and was made a year before his excellent Off The Air. I will give Randy credit for having huge chunks of plot between the sex scenes, a nice touch. Plus, the sex scenes while long, for the most part, weren't mind numbingly long, another nice touch. In my opinion, this was the worst scripted Cash Markman movie I've ever seen. The main reason for this, I believe, is that Cash is better at writing comedy than he is at writing drama. As they say in The Big Lebowski (the real one, not that travesty of a porn parody) - " You're Out of Your Element, Donnie (Cash)"

Rating: first half: D ..... Second half: B ..... Average: C

Naked Illusions starring Van Damage, Devon Michaels, Carmen Hart, Katie Morgan, Seth Dickens, August Night, Eric Masterson, Brad Armstrong and directed by Randy Spears

MODEL BEHAVIOR

There are two storylines in Model Behavior. One storyline is about Stormy Daniels and the escort service she operates. This part of Model Behavior is used to set up a series of vignettes as different girls are sent to meet different clients. I was not very enthused with this sparse plot line and almost stopped watching. Luckily the other storyline held my interest just enough to keep me watching. This second storyline is about Stormy being stalked by a former lover, who has just gotten out of jail and blames Stormy for putting him there.

A very small bit of the stalker plot is revealed between each of the vignettes, but the stalker storyline really doesn't get rolling until the last fifteen minutes. Once the stalker (Randy Spears) finally appears in a very well directed and acted scene, the suspense really picks up and the movie kicks into high gear. It made me really want to see how things would work out in the end. Unfortunately, the box cover gives too big of a hint about the ending; however, there are still some events that will play out a little differently than you expect. I won't say any more, for those who wish to see Model Behavior and don't won't the ending completely spoiled.

Randy Spears is, as I've stated before, one of the better actors in today's XXX movies. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary with his direction of the movie, except for the one scene mentioned above; but he also wrote the movie, and even if the plot was reminiscent of some mainstream movies, I found it novel for a XXX feature. It's too bad that Model Behavior didn't build the suspense throughout the whole movie, instead of just getting tacked on at the end.

Stormy always carries her own in any movie she appears in, that's one of the reasons, besides her sex appeal, she's one of the top female actor/performers around today. Model Behavior was no exception to the rule, since Stormy was excellent in her dramatic scenes.

It's too bad that 90 minutes of Model Behavior was for the most part wasted on me (very little plot, uninspired sex scenes, fake boobs, nothing that I'm looking for in a feature XXX movie). This would normally cause a rating of at best a D, but the last 15 minutes of Model Behavior deserves an A, so I'm going to average this one out to a solid C.

Model Behavior starring Stormy Daniels, Rocco Reed, Tanya James, Kayla Paige, Randy Spears, Charisma Cappelli, Jack Vegas, Brad Armstrong, Eric Masterson and written and directed by Randy Spears.