A WOLF'S TAIL

This is the second part of a triolgy, the first part is called "A Witch's Tail" and the third part is called "A Devil's Tail", neither of which I have seen.

The plot: Asia Carrera is writing a new chapter for her book about Vampires....WTF....I thought his was about Wolves or at least a Wolfman! In Asia's mind we see the scene she is writing...cue sex scene. Next up, Asia's agent calls to check on how the book is coming. She tells him she is going to get some information from a vampire expert. When the phone call ends, we get the cliched boss and secretary setup..cue sex scene. Asia has gotten an old diary from the vampire expert. This diary was written by an ancient vampire (Herschel Savage). He's pissed about his diary being stolen and sends a couple of his minions to take care of Asia's expert. Asia meanwhile has been magically transported by reading the diary and has met a vampire...cue sex scene...after having sex the vamp is going to bite her, but at the last minute, she is saved by a wolf. Thank Goodness, finally a wolf has appeared in A Wolf's Tail. The wolf eventually turns into Evan Stone...cue sex scene. Asia finds out that she has great powers and that the wolf is her protector...cue next part of Triolgy.

A Wolf's Tail had only very brief moments of storyline to hold together what was basically a bunch of vignettes (I didn't mention all of the sex scenes in the plot outline above). Although I'm not that big of a fan of director Bud Lee, I have seen a couple of his other features that I liked: Blue Angel and Love At First Byte were both pretty good. However, A Wolf's Tail left a lot to be desired in a feature XXX movie in my opinion and I have no interest in seeing the first or third installments of this triolgy. Even with the lovely Asia Carrer as the star, I still rate this one a D+

A Wolf's Tail starring Sydnee Steele, Asia Carrera, Dee, Allysin Chaynes, Alexandra Nice, George Kaplan, Elizabeth X., Evan Stone, Herschel Savage, Joel Lawrence, Alec Metro, Dillion Day, Devin Wolf and directed by Bud Lee

WATCHERS

Even though I had only seen one good Michael Raven movie in the past (The Visitors), when I saw that Watchers had won 2001 AVN Awards for Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Supporting Actor (Randy Spears), I guessed that this must be one hell of a movie. Well guess again, Bucko!

Watchers turned out to be a grainy film with Randy Spears in one his worst acting jobs ever. Randy was over dramatic in delivering his lines from the badly written script. As far as the editing award, I can only guess it was awarded for the quick in and out cuts of little bits of the storyline into some of the sex scenes.

The movie begins with Mike Horner, not the greatest actor in porn but usually not too bad, managing to achieve a career high in bad acting. After the titles, Watchers moves fairly quickly to the first sex scene. After this first sex scene, we get maybe two lines of dialogue before the next sex scene. I was starting to think that there wasn't going to be much of a plot; however, Watchers actually got plot heavier for the rest of the movie. I'm assuming Michael Raven wanted to get the viewer hooked in with the sex scenes, before trying to get them hooked into the story. This almost worked backwards on me, since I was about to give up, thinking there wasn't any plot at all.

The plot of Watchers is about the forces of good and evil battling over one woman's soul and once the plot finally kicked in, Watchers gave me lots of laughs. The unfortunate part is that Watchers is a drama! My first big laugh came when Syndee Steele goes to the police because she thinks the bad dreams she has been having are connected to some cult killings that are happening. When she's in the police station, Randy Spears (who no one is suppose to be able to see) is crouching (yes crouching) on a file cabinet in the background. That was my first laugh out loud moment, with many more to follow. Now that I think about it, Randy crouches several more times in the movie, heck maybe it was in the direction he was given. There's also a lot of slow walking and creeping about in Watchers, so I can see where crouching could also be a directorial decision.

Next up, Syndee is in the tub and considering suicide and we see Randy (sort of crouching on the couch) in the background. Randy talks Syndee out of killing herself. Amazingly, Syndee shows little concern that someone is inside her locked apartment, although she does ask him about it later.

The next scene we find Mike Horner walking back and forth in front of a prostitute, who turns out to be a demon. Why was Mike just walking back and forth in front of this one hooker... oh, I'd call that bad direction. Anyway the demon tries to attract him sexually but Mike resists and the demon responds in "demon talk" and we get subtitles for a translation (yes, subtitles, why not throw in another bad element).

A couple of cops have been put on the cult case killings, Julie Meadows and Dillon Day, although they don't get a lot to do. Julie is the best actor in Watchers and she also has the only really good line in the movie: "I can't believe they shot a girl". They do participate in a big shootout with Julie and Dillon and Mike against the demons. You did read that correctly, for some reason the demons or maybe they're just minions all have weapons and can be killed with bullets.

Mr Marcus is the head demon and he escapes with Syndee, but Randy shows up to fight Mr. Marcus for her. Oh yeah, Randy is wearing a "puffy shirt" (yes, a puffy shirt) when he arrives. After he sends Mr Marcus back to hell, Syndee asks him to explain things but he tells her it is better left a mystery (I translated this to "we wrote it and we don't have a good explanation").

I cannot believe how over the top bad this movie was and the fact that it won so many awards in 2001. I can't count the times that I laughed out loud at some of the self-important overwrought dialogue in the movie. I know Ed Wood is often held up as one of the worst directors of all times (a fact I disagree with), but believe me Ed Wood doesn't have anything over Michael Raven's Watchers. Either porn movies have gotten better in the last 10 years or someone got paid off for those awards. Watchers deserves a D but since it did provide me with a lot of unintentional laughs and a lot of fun yelling WTF at the TV, I'm going kick it up to a D+

Watchers starring: Sydnee Steele, Katja Kean, Randy Spears, Mr. Marcus, Chennin Blanc, Julie Meadows, Shay Sweet, George Kaplan, Tavalia Griffin, Tracks Am7, Danny Wallace, Greg Wayne, Evan Stone, Mike Horner, Chris Cannon, Eric Masterson, Pat Myne, Dillion Day, Jim Enright and directed by Michael Raven

DARK ANGELS 1

The movie opens with a vampire (Ginger Paige) going to a club, finding a man and having sex with him in the bathroom before feeding on him. What is it with porn directors and bathrooms? It seems that over the years I have seen many sex scenes shot in bathrooms, and this scene is shot in a particulary foul looking bathroom.

The Queen vampire (Sydnee Steele) finds her and is upset because of the mess Ginger has made in a public place. Sydnee Steele gets picked up by Mike Horner, who thinks that she's a hooker, and they go park in a dark spot and have sex in his car. There's some great camera work here with different angles shot inside and from outside the car.

Jewel de Nyle runs out of gas and while walking, finds Sydnee feeding on Mike. Jewel goes to the police, who doubt her story, except for one detective who appears to take her story a little more seriously and he takes her home.

At home, Jewel falls asleep and dreams that she is having sex with Sydnee and is bitten and infected. When she awakes, she finds that it wasn't a dream, but that she has actually been bitten. She calls the police, but by the time they get to her house and get her to a hospital, she is too weak and dies and her body is taken down to the hospital morgue.

In the morgue, she awakens as a vampire and the morgue attendant has sex with her. I don't know about other people, but if I worked at a morgue and a body came back to life, I don't think having sex with that body would be the first thing on my mind. The first thing on my mind would be: "Feets do your stuff".

After killing the morgue attendant and taking his clothes, Jewel goes back home. At home she is restless so she calls a taxi, forces the driver out and drives herself to the vampire's nest. I'm assuming that since she is now a vampire she can sense where the nest is located, since no explanation is given. Little does she know that she is being followed by the detective.

At the nest, the vampires try to convince her that being a vampire is great and they show her a couple of captives they are going to have sex with and feed from. But Jewel isn't buying it and kills one of the vampires by pushing her on some sharp logs. The other vampires start to attack Jewel, but she has a gun and they back off. I'm not sure why the vampires are afraid of the gun, since in most vampire lore bullets are not a deterrent to vampires.

The detective has gotten waylaid by another vampire forcing him to have sex with her (well, I don't think he really resisted that much!). This vampire tries to bite him, but he resists and the vampire runs off. The detective meets up with Jewel and they fight and kill off the other vampires......and then???????? Sorry, don't won't to spoil the ending.

My understanding is that this movie was shot in parts over a few months and I think this gave the director much more time to realize a complete story. The first few sex scenes flow as part of the story, not something just inserted into the story, this is a refreshing change from most porn movies. While this doesn't hold up through the whole movie (the scene where the detective has to stop and have sex in the alley, being a prime example) there are enough scenes like this to make Dark Angels 1 stand out from the normal crowd.

While there are some shaky parts to the movie - the morgue scene, the vampires afraid of bullets, a vampire that is killed by glass through the heart; overall this is one of the better non-comedy features that I have seen this year. While not perfect, it comes pretty damn close. I'm giving this one an B+

Dark Angels 1 starring Sydnee Steele, April, Jewel De'Nyle, McKayla, Ginger Paige, April Flowers, George Kaplan, McKayla Matthews, Voodoo Child, Phylisha Ryder, Evan Stone, Erik Everhard, Mike Horner, Mickey G., Dillion Day and directed by Nic Andrews