Innocent Loverboy

Review: Emmanuelle (2024)

December 8, 2024 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

Poster featuring Noémie Merlant in "Emmanuelle" (2024)

Those of you who have read my Soft Porn Sundays will know by now that I’m a big fan of Emmanuelle. I’ve put a lot of work into it, in any case. I’ve rhapsodised about Emmanuelle in Space and bemoaned the Troll 2 of softcore that is Emmanuelle in Rio. I’ve done a deep dive into Emmanuelle Through Time and I’ve even sometimes featured the unofficial stuff.

Having seen every Emmanuelle film by now, one would assume the franchise was exhausted, on account of the fact that it’s now featured love goddesses, nymphs, vampires, werewolves, aliens from outer space, ghosts, fairytale characters (in a musical!) and multiversal variants. And yet they saw fit to throw another film into the mix, this time with a full cinematic release and seemingly huge budget.

You can get away with this because the last film in the canon established the fact that Haffron opened a rift to the multiverse and revealed the fact that there are an infinite number of alternate Emmanuelles in their own universes, which explains why her face keeps changing.

This one is seemingly the first set in the most boring universe of all.

Emmanuelle (2024)
Director: Audrey Diwan
Starring: Noémie Merlant, Will Sharpe, Jamie Campbell Bower, Naomi watts, et al.

This is also the first Emmanuelle title since the very first not to be produced by Alain Siritzky, who oversaw every one from Emmanuelle 2 up until his death in 2014. It’s dedicated to his memory, but produced by completely different companies. Gone are the tongue-in-cheek pop culture references and the sci-fi elements; they have also dispensed with the stylised “E” that has appeared in every version so far, and – tragically – the wicker chair! They really should have kept that in, at least!

Reviews of this have been mixed, to say the least. Some people love it; some hate it. I was completely bemused by this… and here’s why.

It makes no sense

Noémie Merlant in "Emmanuelle" (2024) — Emmanuelle shown trying to decipher the script.

The plot uproots Emmanuelle’s globe-trotting adventures and places her in Hong Kong for the entirety of the one hour and forty-seven minutes’ runtime. No longer is she a reporter or a photojournalist or a diplomat’s wife; here she works for a hotel chain, seemingly here to review the hotel itself but truthfully to dig up some dirt on hotel owner Margot Parson (Naomi Watts). Her boss (voiced with malevolence by an unknown actor) wants to fire Margot for reason or reasons unknown…

…oh, and there’s some stuff about yoghurt. I don’t know, I wasn’t really paying attention.

And that’s it. That’s the plot. There are multiple subplots involving escorts, actors, tapping rhythms and illegal mahjong, but they all come and go with such little context that they may as well be salad dressing for all the relevance they have. The main story doesn’t even have a climax, or a resolution… suggesting, that the writers changed their mind halfway through and put something else in there!

My OH would like to add that there is very little emotional truth in it, either. The film continues apace with people saying and doing things but there’s no rhyme or reason behind them. It’s like watching soulless automatons acting out a script written by AI.

The cast is odd AF

Noémie Merlant and Chacha Huang in "Emmanuelle" (2024) — Zelda’s not really into it. She’s just fascinated by Emmanuelle’s inhumanly long neck.

Let’s get this one out of the way first. Noémie Merlant is an incredibly beautiful woman. Is she a good actress? Yes. Does she have a nice voice? Yes. Does she have an innate sensuality for such an iconic role? Sure, why not. Is she Emmanuelle? No. There’s something about the character that she does not have. It’s difficult to pinpoint, but she doesn’t really have the X-factor that Sylvia Kristel, Krista Allen, Holly Sampson and Allie Haze all had.

The rest of the cast are fine. Will Sharpe is originally intriguing as the mysterious Kei, although more annoying later on as he suddenly becomes important; Bower is good as advertising executive Sir John, but he vanishes with no real explanation. Perhaps the best character, Zelda (Chacha Huang), is written out before the ending seemingly just to give Emmanuelle some detective work to do.

The problem is that practically none of them serve any purpose. There isn’t much of a story to advance and (apart from Kei) none of them are relevant to it. You may as well have a film just featuring Emmanuelle and Kei and you could still get the same film.

The cinematographer should be fired

I have no explanation for this.

I don’t know why there are so many slow zooms to end in close-up of Merlant’s head. I’m not sure why some bits are so light whereas some are so dark and there’s absolutely nothing in between. I’m clueless as to the bits where Emmanuelle’s talking to another character and you can’t see who she’s talking to.

I’m also not sure where the wicker chair has gone.

And then there’s the music. Zounds, the music. Emmanuelle films have often featured some of the best and most iconic scores softcore has ever seen. The score here is moody, dour and sparse; there’s very little to it. It doesn’t even fit the sex scenes, which is usually a big part of them. Speaking of which…

It isn’t sexy, genuinely

And it really isn’t. Yes, there is sex in this film. but for something with so much sex – and, come to think of it, gratuitous nudity – it certainly isn’t particularly arousing. Maybe it isn’t meant to be. Handled differently, or given different camera and atmosphere work, these could be sizzling hot sex scenes. But these aren’t. These are attractive enough people going through the motions, turning titillation into tedium.

And that’s really frustrating. This could have saved the film. There’s a scene partway through where a completely naked Emmanuelle masturbates to orgasm in her hotel room. There’s a lesbian encounter between her and Zelda in a shed hidden in the grounds. There’s even a sex scene with a stranger in an aeroplane bathroom…

…none of which are particularly arousing! I saw this in a cinema with an audience, so I’m not supposed to be fapping to this or anything, but why are they devoid of any emotion?

And the sad part is…

The final, most crushing thing I can say about Emmanuelle is that it has so many elements of a good film in it somewhere. It’s well-intentioned, the cast is great and trying hard, it certainly looks pretty, and some aspects are genuinely compelling. Notably a “storm” scene, which happens about midway through, is handled incredibly well, is appropriately atmospheric, and even serves to advance what little there is of a plot.

There isn’t genuinely a lot of sex, but what there is isn’t bad; it’s a little lacklustre, but they are trying. In fact, the final sex scene (also the last scene of the movie) is explicit, different, long and even managed to turn me on a little. But that was such a rarity.

Emmanuelle manages to disappoint on so many levels because it is empty. There’s nothing here: it is a hollow shell of a film which shows how little thought went into it. It is completely emotionless, limp, devoid of a comprehensible story and completely wasteful of a talented cast. It does nothing to entertain or arouse, has practically no link to the character as previously established in either movie or book, and feels nothing other than soporific at points, derisory or cringe-inducing at others.

Alain Siritzky would be insulted, I’m sure… but I most certainly am too.

I may have licked her tit, or whatever

December 2, 2024 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

I was sitting at a bus stop earlier today, a birthday present for my cousin clutched in my hand, shivering slightly. I hadn’t put a coat on – a jumper, yes, but even that was a struggle – but my sojourn to Haringey and back had been agreeable enough. It was only now, at the dusky 3pm, that things were starting to get cold.

And my nipples were hardening up. But not for the good reason.

It’s been a long time since I sucked a nipple on a breast. Of course, I did so the last time I had any sort of sexual contact, but that itself was a while ago. The fact remains, however, that I used to do it. I used to do it a lot.

I’ve never really thought of myself as a breast fetishist, to the point that exactly half of those I’ve slept with had larger than average breasts and the other half smaller than – although I suppose it depends on what you count as “average”, really. Sucking on a nipple, though, has long been something I’m into. Having it done on me certainly gets me going (I find it difficult to orgasm now without some sort of breast stimulation. Both hands are active when I wank.), so…

So I do it. I’ve done it to more than the eight people I’ve slept with. I even fancy that I may be quite good at it, although I’m not entirely sure what that is.

Alicia used to like it when I would find the very tip – about a millimetre of skin, if that – and vibrate my jaw rapidly, producing something like a cross between a bite and a buzz. The Seamstress liked having my tongue running circles around her areolae, getting closer and closer to the tip before closing my lips around it. Rebecca just liked it in general, having her nipple sucked having been the first sort of foreplay we engaged in. Louise, who basically liked everything sexual, was more keen on sucking me off than having me suck her, but gave me a thumbs-up (a real one!) when I did so. I seem to remember snowdrop requesting a genuine bite.

As for me, I just like it. I like the feeling of sealing my lips around a pert tip. I like feeling it grow harder under my ministrations and the sensation of their heartbeat thudding through the skin. I like the taste, breathing them in. I like how I can flick my tongue against it, wind it around and around, or just give it a genuine suck.

I like to suck boobs and I am not ashamed to say it.

Do I sound predatory? I don’t mean to. I’m not automatically looking at your boobs and imagining how they feel in my mouth. I was always doing it to deliver pleasure – the fact that I liked it was a secondary concern. I’ve even got a lot of pregnant women at my workplace and I’ve never even looked at any of those boobs. I mean, c’mon, I’m married.

But my nipples getting hard made me think about it, and now I can practically feel one in my mouth and it’s becoming more of a need than a want and…

…do you know what? I really dislike the word “nipple”. Let’s go with “breast tip”.

Stranger Things

November 25, 2024 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

Worn down by strangers
All you need’s a friend
You’ve been worn down by strangers
This is not the end
This is the end

This weekend just gone, I spent some time travelling to and from Manchester. The reason I did so is relatively immaterial (although if you follow me on social media you may have seen an explanatory picture), but (rationale behind it notwithstanding) I was in Manchester, at least for a day, bookended by travels.

Maybe it’s kinder to breeze over the main leg of the journey (a train’s a train; neither were as comfortable as other journeys have been, but they would do), but getting through London was much more of an adventure – even though it looked very simple as the crow flies.

I’ve done this before, even when dragging a wheeled suitcase with me (as I was on Friday). Get on the Weaver line, transfer to the Victoria and up the escalator at Euston. It’s simple. It looks simple and it feels simple. Hell, I’ve been to Manchester enough times to know that it is simple. But it quickly became apparent to me that it is, suddenly, no longer simple.

Getting onto the train on the Weaver line required no less than three strangers offering me hands to push/pull me over the gap and onto the train. I was one inch from falling into the gap one is advised to mind on the Victoria line before a kindly stranger offered to take my case for me. No less than three times did I drop said case, once down an entire flight of stairs I was taking due to a broken escalator, and once on an escalator itself. Yet another stranger caught it deftly.

I even managed to injure my leg at one point by walking into something I really should have seen.

I got to Euston by a miracle, feeling a huge and uncomfortable combination of grateful and guilty. For the first time since diagnosis I genuinely felt ashamed of my disability, whether or not it inconvenienced a kindly stranger. Meeting my wife and continuing on our travails was fine, but for the entire time I was abundantly aware that I had been beholden to other citizens of London to have made my journey. They didn’t fail to do so, of course – around ever corner there was somebody ready to hold something, point a way, steady my balance, or offer generic, well-meaning help.

And if they hadn’t, I may well have seriously hurt myself. I certainly felt close to doing so more than a fair few times, and the way back from Manchester was particularly unpleasant, having to do most of this in reverse having picked up cramp and IBS pains along the way.

This is a new and unexpected complication. Up until now I have been rather blasé about having myotonic dystrophy. No longer being able to play a full-size guitar is something I am struggling with coming to terms with, but I can do that. Fine, the lift at work is broken; it’s painful getting up the stairs, but I can do that. Okay, I drop things a lot, including my mobility aid; my body screams in pain when I bend down to retrieve them, but I can do that.

But I am going to have to accept that, strangers or not being present, there are some things I can not do.

And I’m going to think about this.

The Seven O’Clock Itch

November 16, 2024 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

It is a sad fact that my alarm goes off at half past six in the morning, and even more so that I set three more – six forty-five, seven o’clock and a “you’re late!” sort of mockery at ten past. It’s my reminder to get up, pick up the first clothes that I see, make some sort of assemblage of myself and then go to join the milieu of drudging humanity.

As I was saying to my pretty colleague the other day, that’s the hard part. Once you’ve done that, the rest is easy.

I am, of course, awake well before those alarms go off. I’m not a good sleeper, as we all know, and I wake up with the slightest of disturbances. Sometimes this is for a good reason – midnight sex is always welcome, as is a 4am departure for a cross-country sojourn to Eroticon 2012 – but, sadly, the majority of times it is not. I merely wake up and then find it impossible to go back to sleep.

I’ve also been finding it difficult to be horny for the past few weeks. It’s been happening, of course (this is, after all, me we are talking about), but at the most inopportune of moments – while in the general mess of human society to which I am tethered, for example, or while in conversation with others, or at my table at work attempting to battle off the sleep that evaded me the previous night. It’s much less easy, for example, to suddenly be struck by arousal when sitting in my computer chair in an otherwise-empty flat. In that situation, as one can imagine, the blinds go down while bits of me go up, and there’s a rather efficacious conclusion to events.

But that’s not been happening either.

I’ve been getting horny in the early mornings. If I’m awake at five, or six, I’ll inevitably be doing so with a very noticeable version of morning wood (despite the fact that it is not, yet, the morning). I’m even finding it easier to remember the dreams which are getting me there – not exactly the traditional ‘wet dream’ (although I’ve had one of those in the past year, which only ever happened once in my teenage years), but close enough to. They’re not my usual rambunctious, plot-driven rollicking adventure stories either: just a short vignette with mainly sex.

It’s so unfair.

Do I sound ungrateful? Perhaps. In a way, I should be a little relieved that this happens; it shows that the important bits of me are functional and that I remain the sexual being I worked hard to become. It’s also possible that I shouldn’t be worrying about this in my late thirties and focusing more on such priorities as “getting the fuck back to sleep”.

But in the early mornings, what can I really do? I have excess horn and I can’t really deal with it. I’m not enough of a dick to wake my wife up to show her my penis, nor am I brave enough to venture out of bed (into the cold – and my flat, I’m finding, is very cold), get onto my computer, masturbate to orgasm and then return to my bed for slumber. The logistics of doing all this, alone, would be a knightmare. I’d probably end up halfway through Scandal: Sex@Students.edu when my alarm goes off, and that’s my cue to stop doing everything else and scream.

I have no other choice. I listen to what my body says and jeopardise everything else for a cheap and dirty orgasm (or several), or I wait with my throbbing erection until my alarm shocks me back to reality.

As I scrabble around to make myself presentable, I remind myself of why I’m doing this. My co-workers are waiting for me. My clients rely on me. Even my pretty colleague is probably stocking up on coconut milk so we can make our coffees at the same time in the morning.

Where does my horn go?

I genuinely have no idea. But, by the time I’ve left and vanished into the amorphous mass of British urban throng, it too has gone its way.

Bolt from the Blue

November 7, 2024 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

I didn’t, initially, remember the scene I had a dream about. I was only really vaguely aware that I had dreamed about anything at all, and when vague things drift around in the milieu of miscellany in my head, it’s often difficult to place them. If I’m unconscious, of course, it’s nigh on impossible.

What I did remember, however, is watching a scene, being turned on, and then briefly waking up, my physical body quivering and my penis so hard I could have (and would have) had an orgasm right there and then with any amount of stimulation. But, alas, I must have slipped off, because no orgasms were had, and when my morning alarm went of, I barely remembered the dream at all.

So when I got to a PC with the time and energy to explore myself, I was dumbfounded. What was Dreamy ILB watching? Emmanuelle? No. Something by Surrender? No. Love Street, maybe? No. Passion Cove?

And about a nanosecond before I abandoned my search as fruitless – maybe I hadn’t been dreaming about watching porn; maybe I’d just been horny in bed, that happens – I remembered.

And I remembered why and exactly where to find it.

And I got up VLC and cued up the scene and, even before it was finished, I had had the most blissful and satisfying orgasm I’ve experienced for months.

Which was nice.

Invisible

October 29, 2024 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

Let’s all eat naked!
The Erotic Adventures of the Invisible Man (2003)

Can anyone see me?

Okay, maybe that’s not the clearest of questions. You’re reading my blog so you probably can’t actually physically see me. Yes, there’s an avatar of me at the top of the page, but even that’s not me. In the more figurative sense, can anyone see me?

I ask because, for the past few weeks, I’ve been feeling fairly transparent. I don’t get mentioned, or talked to (or, I am assuming, talked about) by anyone (outside of my immediate circle, but even then, it’s a safe assumption that I don’t). Yes, I have gone through moments in my life when I have felt unimportant, or hopeless, or unlovable. This isn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, a new feeling.

And I don’t make any pretence towards being particularly important. I am entirely unremarkable in my civilian life and, despite the occasional titter of laughter, not particularly successful as a comedian either.

But what about ILB?

The other week I had a performance review with my boss at work. Fairly positive though it was (although less glowing than mine was last year, when I had a much younger and smilier boss), one thing came out that I wasn’t even aware I knew until I said it.

“The thing is,” I heard myself say, “because I have very low self-esteem, if you don’t tell me that what I’m doing is any good, I’m going to assume it isn’t.”
“But what you’re doing is good!”
“But you’re not telling me that! If you don’t say it, I’m going to think I’m not doing well!”
“But you’ve been doing this for ten years!”
“And I still need validation! At the very least you could make a note that I’ve told you this!”

Ralph Wiggum being a pop sensation in The Simpsons episode "New Kids on the Blecch". — Ralph gets it. Yvan eth nioj!

I don’t ask for much. In my younger years I would have… well, not exactly delusions of grandeur, but I did like to paint myself as something of a savant, or more central to a concept (or a group) than I actually was. I still needed validation, of course, but I could kid myself into thinking that I was being seen. The fact that I could write “wheeeeeeeee! I’m a pop sensation!” in my diary after a gig almost made up for the years of abuse I’d endured in the brass band I’d been in prior to taking up rock.

More than a decade later and I’m less sure. With less and less people telling me I’m awesome I am becoming more and more convinced that I am not, in fact, awesome. As ILB I feel more invisible than ever before, what with the gradual decline of the sex blog as a viable medium (and I don’t do audio porn or have a Patreon or an OnlyFans, so I’m lacking that USP as well!) and the fact that I genuinely feel extraneous anyway, sometimes this makes me wonder if I am anything of a presence at all.

Last time I went to Eroticon I had, on my way there, the curious feeling that people would have forgotten I existed until I actually turned up. I was even preparing for my translucent nature by attempting to reconcile the fact that nobody knew who I was with a joke. That Nick managed to find my lanyard without me having to remind him of my online handle was nothing short of a miracle, so sure was I that people were looking through me like glass.

Is this temporary?

Who ~~cares~~ knows? I go through moments like this; I know I do, even if nobody else is reading me enough to get that impression. I don’t even know what, in particular, brought this on, when the rest of the sex blogging community (or what remains of it…) is having a relatively self-congratulatory, mutually appreciative moment, I am feeling completely auxiliary.

What would happen, I wonder, if I disappeared? Would anyone care, or worse, would anyone actually notice?

Just something I think about, I suppose. You don’t need to do anything, gentle reader. But, if you could find it in your heart to notice me every once in a while, I’d very much appreciate that.

SaLT and Pep

October 20, 2024 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

About a decade and a half ago I had a sort of cyber thing with a slightly older lady who worked as a speech and language therapist. I say “slightly older” as she was, by her admission, but in reality she was only a couple of years my elder. (Maybe she’s reading this right now. Who knows?)

The fact that she was (and probably still is!) a SaLT is important, so keep that in mind.

When I say we had a sort of cyber thing, I want to make it clear that we did have a lot of cybersex, but – unlike the majority of cybersex I’ve had over the years – this didn’t involve me waxing lyrical, employing lexicography or adroit prose style. Those things have their place, especially if you have 45+ minutes to enjoy me rhapsodising about how well your inner walls feel surrounding my smooth, firm, throbbing cock. This lady didn’t want that. She wanted it hard, fast and urgent.

SaLT says:
pushes u back on the bed and climbs on top of u

ILB says:
*falls back and watches you climb on me* That's a surprise too...

SaLT says:
good… lay back and enjoy ur surprises!

ILB says:
I can't wait!

I didn’t take a lot of convincing. She wanted it quick and dirty and I was ready to give it to her. In the end we stopped flirting and just started cybering whenever I saw her pop up. Neither of us seemed to have any resistance any more.

The whole arrangement (if you can call in an arrangement) was tempered slightly by the fact that she lived less than twenty miles away, or about an hour by public transport, in South London. If I could travel to Harrow to see Alicia, which took approximately the same time, I would easily be able to make it to Norwood. If I had ever managed to be in a relationship with Leaf I’d be going there anyway – as that’s where she lived – and I’d worked out a route.

But it wasn’t going to happen. She teased that it could…

SaLT says:
i would be very happy if it was real!

…but it wasn’t really a workable plan. Neither of us really entertained any fantasy that it would happen, as much as I wanted to beetle down and give her what she needed all weekend. I didn’t tell her this, of course, because I’m a coward, but it wasn’t worth risking what we had by attempting to shoot my shot.

Tempted though I was. I mean, she was pretty and funny and sexy and said things like

SaLT says:
hold onto ur sides… run my fingers down ur back… sex with u is good

and, as if to tease me further, later on she moved to the next London borough to me, rendering her fifteen minutes away by bus… except, by this point, I was in a real relationship. We talked a few times – the usual sexy discourse without any of the sex – but, after a while (and with the dearth of Windows Live! Messenger, which put the kibosh on a lot of stuff), we unconsciously uncoupled, and drifted apart.

On Monday last week my boss told me that a SaLT would be visiting our company to do a training session for some of the middle management. I’m most decidedly not middle management – because of course not, I’m a millennial – but she wondered if I would be interested in attending, so I could feed back the benefits of speech therapy to the other guttersnipes on the floor that I work directly with. I politely declined, saying that I had quite enough to do, but I also enquired, if I might, that the SaLT who visited last year would be running it?

No, she said, it wouldn’t be her; it would be…

And she gave a familiar name.

“HOLY SHIT!” I said, although I didn’t say that. “That’s the girl I used to fuck on MSN!” I also didn’t say. “I couldn’t possibly be in the same building and not speak to her, but just what would I say?” I asked the empty room. It probably wouldn’t be kosher to walk up to her and say, “hi, you once told me to fuck you like a whore, and then you put your legs on my shoulder so I could go in deeper, ANYWAY TELL ME ABOUT ARTICULATION AND PROSODY!”

I could write it down, I reasoned, but then that might get me into all sorts of trouble.

In the end, I just decided to go past the training room and have a ~~leer~~ ~~perv~~ ~~letch~~ look. Just to make sure she was real. After all, she could have been a big hairy trucker (who happened to have multiple pictures of the same lady in various outfits getting a little older in candid social situations throughout the years). I could surely have a look – just a quick one – and maybe share a smile, possibly a nod. I couldn’t communicate anything about spunking on her stomach like she asked, but I could at the very least…

It wasn’t her.

Because of course it wasn’t. I mean, it’s a very common name. There are probably hundreds of women working as a SaLT with that name. The Venn diagram of those who are called that, working as a SaLT and having had explicit sexual encounters online with ILB is probably very specific, but then again, never say never. It would have been ~~terrifying~~ funny if it was her, of course, but it wasn’t.

And the amount of relief I suddenly felt was almost as good as the orgasms.

Kitten Sex with Sex Kitten

October 13, 2024 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

Please! More cock! I love it! I want it… give me more cock!
Lavonia Shed

Two nights ago I woke up with Kitten Natividad.

No, wait, come back! This isn’t a strange fantasy I had or another dream which made me orgasm! It’s really a different kind of post, I promise. Are you still reading? ARE YOU?! Okay then.

Kitten Natividad as Lavonia Shed in "Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens" (1979). — She’s so bouncy it took me a while to take this screenshot.

It’s been a while since I’ve either had a sexy dream or watched anything featuring Kitten. Since I moved I haven’t really had the wherewithal to put on any DVDs. and only really managed to plug in my external CD/DVD drive about a week ago (ironically, I basically bought it for porn, and haven’t yet used it thus!). My Region 1 copy of Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens is in my special drawer, and I have yet to dig it out.

The fact remains that I have seen Beneath the Valley… so many times that I could probably recite it. I ordered the DVD at the age of 18 (the package itself appeared to have come from Germany!) and, it being one of the very few DVDs I owned at that point, it was something I watched over and over and over and…

…and when the band I was in played Old-Time Religion, I was laughing so much I had to hold onto my bass drum to avoid falling to the floor.

The other night, however

I woke up at about 5am with an entirely new sex scene in my head. I know it actually isn’t in Beneath the Valley…, because I’ve seen all those too. It did, however, have all the trappings – Kitten as Lavonia, on a bed, with plenty of movement, music on the radio and the necessary exhortations for cock.

But some bits were missing. I didn’t see who she was having sex with. I didn’t have any context from the narrator or the quick cuts between scenes the film is famous for. The bit that did wake me up, eventually, was a few seconds of Kitten in a certain position that we get about one second of in the original RM release.

Yeah, I know, I really do. I shouldn’t really be waking up as hard as I did (and I did, I was solid as a rock) due to four seconds of simulated sex that, as far as my memory serves, don’t exist. Perhaps I shouldn’t, at the age of 39, have dedicated so much of my brain to such a niche piece of (admittedly very quotable) media. But I clearly have, at some point, and it’s going on to invent more bits of this film that’s six years older than I am.

It’s good to have a skill.

Soft Porn Sunday: Roxanne Blaze & Michael Todd Davis

September 29, 2024 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

Be still, my beating heart!

It happens sometimes. I think I know more than I do – I can catalogue most of Passion Cove, put the Confessions films in order, list each of the films in the Emmanuelle series GIVE THE 2024 ONE A UK RELEASE YOU ABSOLUTE COWARDS – and then something blindsides me at the last minute.

Featuring Joe Estevez (brother of Martin Sheen), Don Swayze (brother of Patrick) and Joey Travolta (brother of John) – and bonus Jackie Stallone, Burt Ward, Nikki Fritz and C.C. Costigan – Beach Babes from Beyond is one such thing. I’m genuinely surprised, thinking I knew everything Surrender put out in their entire catalogue… and then I find this!

It even won an AVN Award – I mean…!

Appearance: Beach Babes from Beyond (1993)
Characters: Dave & Xena

Case art for "Beach Babes from Beyond" (1993) — I can’t believe that’s the tagline.

Plot-wise, this one follows the standard formula: intergalactic babe Xena (Roxanne Blaze) “borrows” her dad’s ship to go… somewhere… with her two pals Sola (Nicole Posey) and Luna (Tamara Landry) but they run out of fuel, crash-landing in California. Into the mix come three guys (wouldn’t you know it? Three! How fortunate!), Dave, Jerry and Ziggy (Michael Todd Davis, Ken Steadman and Michael Roddy). ~~Sex happens~~ Stuff happens.

There’s some more stuff – Uncle Bud is about to lose his beach house; the beach babes enter the bikini contest to win repair money; the evil fashion designer will stop at nothing to win – but it’s mostly salad dressing. It gives you a plot to cling to (I will admit “we crashed so let’s fuck” is a little flimsy, even for Surrender). Consider, however, that a total of 08:75 – over 11% of this film’s 79:44 runtime – is given over to Baywatch-style bikini-clad beach montages… not to mention the 06:03 bikini contest routine towards the end, and it’s fairly clear somebody thought that whatever they filmed needed a little padding.

In any case, the sex

Although the sequel (yes, there’s a sequel) indicates that all three girls lost their virginity to the guys during the events of this one, you wouldn’t know it. The cut-between-sex montage featuring Jerry, Ziggy, Sola and Luna depicts those beach babes as particularly well-versed in exactly what to do in bed with an Earthling. Maybe it’s Xena who was a virgin. Let’s find out.

Her sex scene with Mike doesn’t actually start too badly. It’s actually fairly romantic, in a way (a “terrible sound design but the dialogue is all right” way): a hissy Xena doesn’t want to leave Mike, but a hissy Mike is insistent that they’ll find a way – quite an LDR, two galaxies away, but maybe they can use Zoom or something.

Image of Roxanne Blaze & Michael Todd Davis in "Beach Babes from Beyond" (1993) as a Simpsons meme. "The Simpsons" font at the bottom reads "I must go now. My planet needs me."

In any case, their kiss is quite sweet and WHAT THE FUCK JUMP CUT?

This was in full colour with some unobtrusive music! Why is it suddenly blue? Where did their clothes go? Why did somebody suddenly overlay the exact same music from Tales of the Saddle Tramps?

Image of Roxanne Blaze & Michael Todd Davis in "Beach Babes from Beyond" (1993) — Enjoy it – it’s the last moment of full colour you’ll have for a while.

Where even are they, anyway? This isn’t Uncle Bud’s beach hut. Have they suddenly checked into a hotel? What happened to Xena having to get back to her planet before her parents find out she nicked their ship? EXPLAIN, MOVIE! EXPLAIN!!!

All right, so can I make out what’s happening through all the teal tint? After the necessary breast licking, which is definitely the way to go according to every softcore movie ever, we get a fair amount of oral sex. Fair play here: with the exception of Bedtime Stories, not a lot of soft porn attempts to show cunnilingus, but this one dwells on it for quite a while. We have to put up with Davis’ bum, but I’ll let that one go.

What’s less explainable, if one can see at all through the Oxford overlay, is that the scene then mixes to a standard softcore blowjob, with hair getting in the way. Fair enough that Xena may want to be giving a blowjob as she is still a virgin – I’m sure lots of people do, my first girlfriend certainly did – but, unless she is preternaturally talented, shouldn’t it be a little more awkward and experimental than this? Has she been practising on space dildos or something?

You were saying?

Oh yeah, the scene. Well, we do then get missionary penetrative sex through the azure ambience. It starts with a close-up (in which you can genuinely see the sweat on Davis’ back), pulls out to a full-body wide shot and then mixes back, a slow pan to facilitate arse-grabbing. Another mix throws us into doggy style (presumably; it’s very dark and very blue so it’s difficult to see), also shown through a few close-up shots, then sitting up, then riding…

…and we end with a kiss, which would be erotic if I could see the bloody thing!

JUMP CUT WHAT THE FUCK FULL COLOUR? My eyes already hurt enough! What is this, The Krypton Factor?

In any case, that’s the end of the scene. Eighteen more minutes of pissing about on the beach and then they leave Earth. Fantastic.

Why haven’t you made a Xena: Warrior Princess joke yet?

Because I’ve only ever seen one episode. Anyway, yes.

Have I been a bit critical here? Possibly. Full disclosure: all the other sex scenes in Beach Babes from Beyond are a little dark (and in some unspecified location), but this is the only one that’s the colour of my teenage bedroom. It’s a bit of a shame you can’t see much, because Xena is genuinely attractive and Dave is… well, he’s a generic ’90s idiot, but at least a believable ’90s idiot. I remember the ’90s, we all had hair like that.

There’s also a bit of a missed opportunity here. This could be a great scene and something I’d have an orgasm to if there was a better colour scheme to it. It’s got everything I like in it, and even if the music is over-familiar, at least it’s music that works. Neither Xena nor Dave has had any form of full nudity earlier, either, so it’s nice that they finally get to DO IT!

However, the loud music, the cerulean cinematography, and the fact that a jump cut takes us both into and out of the whole shebang does make it all seem a little incongruous. If they’re going to have sex, why not do it outside? California’s certainly warm enough. Why not on the beach, since that’s in the movie’s title? The balcony outside Bud’s hut? Hell, why not Xena’s ship? It’s just sitting there not doing anything!

But the one thing I can’t get past (and this genuinely is just me, but it’s my blog, so…) is how smooth the sex is! The sequel clearly states that this was Xena’s first time! My first time was a few minutes of clumsy cowgirl after it took me ages to get it up! How is she suddenly able to do everything, including three different sex positions, when all she had to get her going was thirty seconds of foreplay?

I call intergalactic bullshit!

Fiction: Jungle Tales

September 28, 2024 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

16,000 years in the future…

“You’re sure this is the Sahara?”
“The map says so, doesn’t it?”
“But my senses tell me differently. It’s so… humid. And wet. And I don’t remember there being a rainforest here, either.”

I began to unbutton my shirt, almost by instinct.

“Thank the North African monsoon,” she said matter-of-factly. “Its northward migration helped with the fertility.” She tossed her discarded tee casually on the floor of the pod. “The extinction of humanity couldn’t have hurt, either.”

I couldn’t argue with that, although I had assumed, until that point, that some other invasive life form would have done whatever it could to ensure that the arid desert remained the blasted wasteland it had once been. As I cast my eyes across the vast swathes of jungle that reached past the horizon, even from this height, it turned out I was wrong.

“You’re sure this is safe?” I asked, as I fumbled with my belt. “Nngh,” I added helpfully as I gave it a heftier tug. It dug into my midriff as I eased it open. My trousers slid off easily, though, to my relief.

“Safe? Of course it’s safe! We’re fifty metres from the canopy!” she laughed. “Even if one of the unmentionables that survived the eruption…”

An eerie, ululating call came from below. She continued unabated, unhooking her bra as she did so.

“…that survived the eruption did notice us, how could they do anything? We’re up here.” Dropping her bra in my lap served as a reminder of exactly what we had come here to do. Trust me to become distracted by science, although not all of me was distracted by the chittering of nature above the soft hum of the hovering pod. That was judging by the rapidly increasing stiffness making it difficult to keep my pants on.

I’ve never been able to resist her breasts. I love their form, their shape and their weight in my hands. They compliment her small frame perfectly. Add in the sweeping red hair, the sparkling green eyes and the tireless tongue and I still don’t know why she’s in the least attracted to the shambling mess I am.

She catches me looking. It’s perhaps the first time I’ve been distracted from the North African Fertile Growth. Someone in a white coat decided that the term “Sahara” carried too many negative connotations; I may not have agreed with him, but there was certainly a lot of fertile growth going on at the moment.

“So don’t worry,” she stressed, moving closer. “You worry too much.”
“I suppose I just think a lot,” I murmured.

She was far too close. I could feel the tickle of her hair, crackling with static. I could breathe in the scent of rosin and woodsmoke that I always associated with her. I could see the peak of her stiffening nipples…

“You need a distraction,” she whispered in my ear, “a distraction from your stress.”
“So distract me.”
“That’s what I needed to hear,” she mouthed, alighting deftly on her knees. “Keep an eye out for any other pods, will you?”

And I sat in my seat, the force of nature spread out below me, life continuing apace from every corner, while she closed her lips around the burgeoning shaft of my cock.

[Inspired by Wikipedia's timeline of the far future and my earlier fiction, Dinosaur Boy. There may be more of these at some point - this is fun!]