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-

The SEX FILES: A DARK XXX PARODY

Anthony Rosano and Kimberly Kane play Mulder and Scully and just as Eric Swiss made the perfect Al Bundy and Rachel Love made the perfect Kitty from The 70s Show, Kimberly Kane was obviously born to play Scully.

I'll skip over the opening scene, since it has a little bit of a twist, but after that scene The Sex Files has the opening credits, including theme music, that are very reminiscent of the original X-Files.

We find Mulder bored and throwing pencils into the ceiling of his office, just as he did on X-Files. Thankfully Mulder and Scully get an assignment - There has been a rash of killings in Los Angeles which have some similarities to ritual and/or Satanic murders and this requires the expertise of Mulder and Scully. After getting their assignment, they leave and we are treated to our first sex scene. The boss summons his secretary and they have sex. How inventive, don't think I've ever seen that......... except for about 100 times.


At the crime scene, we are shown a pretty decent F/X corpse, but then the scene is ruined when a very white sheet with markings was supposedly removed from the victim's body and we are told it was stuffed all the way down to his stomach....doubtful, unless the victim had the cleanest innards of anyone known to man. But Mulder decides this is a sex magic case, and he's off and running. This scene is then followed by Mulder and Scully driving in their car while Mulder advances the plot with some information about the British Occultist Alistair Crowley, and also about Lillith, the Biblical Adam's first wife, who is now an evil demon bitch.

Later that night, Mulder is alone in his room and decides he wants a pizza. Not being able to get Scully to answer, he walks into her room to see if she wants something to eat and finds her coming out of the shower completely naked. Yay! Fanboys shriek in delight...finally Scully nude. Well not actually Scully, but Kimberly Kane looks so much like her with the red wig, who wants to split hairs (pubic or otherwise). After Mulder takes a good long look and is told she has already eaten, he returns to his room. Later that night, we see Mulder watching porn on his TV and here comes the next sex scene in the movie. Wow, how inventive, inserting a porn movie into a porn movie, don't think I've ever seen that...... except for about a 100 times.


The next day Mulder and Scully go see Andrew Barsons (Ralph Long), since he is the supposed leader of a group that is into sex magic, which Barsons denies. Ralph Long drags this scene and the later scene he is in down with his non-acting ability, plus he seems to have the same effect on Mulder and Scully, since all three appear to be reading from cue cards at this point in the movie. Later that night Mulder and Scully go back and examine Barsons' house and find definite clues that prove Barsons was lying and that he does still head up the group.

Next up is a nightclub scene with Audrey Bitoni and Evan Stone on the prowl for an extra woman to take home. They enter the club and since we see no one else around, I either assume that the club has just opened or that this is just a suck-ass club. But as luck would have it (or as twisting the plot to fit would have it) Lilith (Ashlynn Brooke) is there and comes up to Bitoni and Stone and they start having sex right away. Good thing there's not anybody else in the club or this might draw a crowd! But at least our old friend folding chair, who from now on I will call Porno Folding Chair or PFC, as last seen in the elevator in Missionary Position Impossible (click here for review), is in the back ground and we know PFC will be seeing some action before this scene is over. Needless to say, Audrey and Evan wind up dead, as the next scene shows us Mulder looking at two bloody sheets with bodies underneath, which are now outside the club for some odd reason (maybe the light was better for filming!).


At the autopsy, Scully finds that Evan's heart was taken from his body, the word "Fox" carved into it and then it was replaced back into Evan's body. While Scully has been doing the autopsy, Mulder has gone back to Barsons and we find that he has been drugged and tied up - SPOILER ALERT - Scully gets there just in time to save him. After the rescue, we are then treated to another Ralph Long scene as he explains everything that has been going on. This results in a flashback orgy scene..gee, a flashback to insert a sex scene, I've never seen that..... except for about 100 times. The orgy scene is followed by the final non sex scene in The Sex Files and I won't reveal it for those who haven't seen the movie, but there is a morph scene here with F/X equal to any non-XXX production you will most likely see. I even rewound the movie at this point to look at the scene again to see if I could tell how they did it.


After reporting back to headquarters, Scully and Mulder go their separate ways. Mulder comes over to Scully's later that night and tells her he's always bummed out and thinking about his sister (this refers back to the original series) but he has thought over what is really important to him. This leads to (Fanboys start shrieking) Mulder and Scully having sex. Ok, once again, it's not really Scully, but who wants to split red hairs!

I thought this was one of the better XXX takes on a regular TV show, since the characters and the plot both remained true to the original spirit of The X-Files. The direction and writing by Sam Hain was top-notch and I hope to see his name attached to some future projects. Sure there's some hackneyed plot points that are used in order to get a couple of the sex scenes inserted, but they mainly stand out because the rest of the movie is so well plotted; and even taking into account Ralph Long's bad dramatic acting ( his sitcum acting is much better), he mainly stands out since everyone else does such a good job, so it's easy to rate this one an A-

The Sex Files: A Dark XXX Parody starring Aurora Snow, Anthony Rosano, Charley Chase, Audrey Bitoni, Kimberly Kane, Ashlynn Brooke, Ralph Long, Gracie Glam, Pike Nelson, Jackie Daniels, Angelica Raven, Evan Stone, Rod Fontana and written and directed by Sam Hain

SHAGNET

This movie was made in 2001 before the current new wave of parodies and Shagnet illustrates the right way to make a XXX spoof/parody unlike some of the newer stabs at this genre. While doing some research on Shagnet, I found some evidence that Joe Thursday was also a character in "Pleasureville" and that Thursday and Blannon were also in "Desperately Seeking Shay". Unfortunately, I have not seen either of those two movies and cannot confirm those facts. However, both of those movies were also directed and written by Cash Markman, so it appears those facts are probably correct.

Shagnet begins just like Dragnet with a voice over by Joe and a view of the Los Angeles City Hall. It's 1970 and inside City Hall we find Joe Thursday (Steve Austin) and Officer Blannon (Anthony Crane) as they are being given their assignment to crack down on the porn films being made in the San Fernando Valley. It seems that in the past year, 12 porn movies have been made. Joe and Blannon's Captain tells them if this doesn't stop, by 2001 they could be making up to 50 porn movies a year.

Joe and Blannon are sent to investigate a complaint that has been made by Ward and June Bluepecker (Mike Horner and Elizabeth X). They have been hearing peculiar noises coming from next door. The gag in the movie is that Mike and Elizabeth are watching Shagnet on TV. They can see the cops arriving at their house and walking up to their door. Joe and Blannon investigate next door and find Cash Markman shooting a porn. Since the Bluepecker's are still watching Shagnet on their TV, they can see the porn scene that is being shot and we get two sex scenes here, one of the porn shoot and one with Ward and June, who have gotten hot from watching the action on their TV.

The pornography laws are weak and Joe and Blannon don't see any way they can arrest anyone for anything. Later, they decide to return to the house where the porn movie is being shot, but are denied entry without a warrant. They sneak around back and peek over the fence to watch another porn shoot happening outside. This scene is between a war protester (Evan Stone) and the Governor's wife (Jewel De'Nyle). Give Evan credit, since during the sex scene he tries to stay in character saying something that would fit with the scene; however, it's obvious from the odd reaction that Jewel gives him that she doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. Joe and Blannon still don't see anything that occurs during this scene that they think they can arrest anyone for, so they decide to try another tactic.

Joe and Blannon go undercover and dress as a couple of women and arrive at the porn set. At the set, they are sent to make-up and advised to apply it heavily. Joe gets a sex scene here dressed as a woman and we have to assume that his partner (Angelica Sin) just thinks he's a she/male. The funny touch comes at the end of this scene where a new performer named Ron Jeremy (remember this is suppose to be 1970) is told he needs to do a dirty hard anal scene. Ron mistakenly thinks they mean Joe, who is still dressed as a woman and Joe gets nailed from behind by Ron.

Back at the station Joe and Blannon have brought in Sunshine Love (Kate Frost) for questioning. Joe has to leave the room and rush to the bathroom, since after his anal probe from Ron he's been having a lot of trouble with his rear end. While he's gone Blannon has a sex scene with Kate, but Joe returns and breaks up the sex (no pop shot here), still Blannon states that having sex with the hippie was "groovy".

The cops finally get a stronger law and are able to bust the pornographers. Shagnet ends just like TV's Dragnet, showing what the porn people were convicted of and their sentences. Then the arm bangs "Mark Cashman" into the screen instead of "Mark VII"

Shagnet had a logical plot from start to finish, the sex scenes flowed with the story and there were a lot of really funny lines. Steve Austin and Anthony Crane understood their parts and did a great job as Joe and Blannon. They had the clipped talk, nodding at each others dialogue, and the stick up the butt walk down perfect. Shagnet also went the extra mile by placing some older cars on the street in order to make you believe it was 1970. The weakest part of Shagnet was the sex scenes, but I'm still grading this one an A-

Shagnet starring Angelica Sin, Bridgette Kerkove, Cash Markman, Elizabeth X, Jewel De'Nyle, Kate Frost, Alec Metro, Anthony Crane, Evan Stone, Frank Buckwyd, Mike Horner, Steve Austin, Ted Hunter, Ron Jeremy and directed/written by Cash Markman

AREN'T PARODIES SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY?

The basic plot of This Ain't The Partridge Family is that Keith has a songwriter's block and he thinks it's caused by his lack of dates. When Danny finds an ad for love perfume in the back of Teen Pop Magazine (the same magazine was featured in Not The Bradys: Marcia, Marcia, Marcia), he decides to order it. At some point in the movie, each member of the family tries out the perfume and of course this sets up a sex scene.

After the opening scene, the movie has only very short plot scenes, just enough to get to the next sex scene. If the sex scenes were removed, you have what would amount to a typical boring Partridge Family plot(Actually, I've seen Partridge Family shows with lots more humor). IF we were given some laughs along the way, this could be forgiven. The one thing that I expect from these parodies is a good dose of humor and This Ain't The Partridge Family just doesn't deliver.

Let's hope that the XXX TV parodies aren't running out of steam. The first of these Will Ryder parodies I saw (and I think the order I saw these in was the order of their release) was Not The Bradys, which was pretty darn good. Next was Not Bewitched, which I thought was excellent. After that one, I saw the Not The Brady sequel Marcia Marcia, Marica, which was just ok, but paled in comparison to the first Not The Bradys. And now, Not the Partridge Family, which was a waste of time. It was so dull that I fast forwarded a lot ....hoping that it would get better somewhere in the movie....NOPE, never happened. I can only guess that it was rushed out too fast in order to capitalize on the demand for XXX sitcom parodies.

Next up in the Will Ryder parodies will be Not Three's Company.....Somebody please help me if Not Three's Company continues the decline. If the next one is worst than this one, it'll probably make me jerk the dvd out of the player and fling it out the door.

Is there anything good I can say about this one....well, there were only a couple of sets of fake breasts.

Shawna Lenee, Kristina Rose, Tori Black, Payton Leigh, Faye Reagan, Dane Cross, Madison Scott, Eric Swiss, Kris Slater, Sarah Jessie, James Bartholet, Sinclair, Nick Manning, Scott Lyons. Directed by Will Ryder of the 2 Not The Bradys and Not Bewitched.