[Walks into the room and up to the front; turns his radio mike on. Nervous smile. Clears his throat. Stretches arms wide in a welcoming gesture and…]
Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, and welcome to Erotic Independent Film Club – EIFC. I’m Innocent Loverboy. You join us here in the fantastic [name of cinema, theatre, back room of pub, community hall or wherever] here in Soho. We are, once again, here to share in our love of erotic cinema, and I’m here to talk too much about it.
[Pause for audience laughter.]
Our presentation tonight is… oh, boy. Yeah, this took me a huge effort to find, and I’ve been trying to do so since I started EIFC back in [year]. Why, you may ask, did this take me so long, when DVD and Blu-ray are both so prevalent? Well, for some reason – and I don’t know the reason; it’s genuinely a mystery – the studio didn’t release an uncut version on DVD. The only version with intact sex scenes was the limited-edition VHS, which came in a cardboard case…
[Holds up the case.]
…and VHS doesn’t really lend itself too well to HD. Nevertheless, this is what we’ll be watching. I could, of course, be showing you the cut version, but this is Erotic Independent Film Club, and a few seconds of nudity I don’t really think counts. We don’t even get the sex scene music, and that’s unforgivable!
[Pause for audience laughter.]
Those of you who have read my blog may have noticed that I’ve featured this film a couple of times, notably the lesbian cornucopia that happens partway through I’m sure you will enjoy… but there’s a lot more to this slice of skinema than that, and I’m both pleased and relieved to be able to share this with all of you!
[Genuine heart-warming smile.]
This is EIFC, I’m Innocent Loverboy, and I am proud to present – at long last – the full, unedited, as-God-intended version of…
Appearance: Dungeon of Desire (1999)
Characters: Princess Gwen & Prince Eric
Okay, I gypped you there. This isn’t EIFC and it isn’t a live event, nor do I have the VHS of Dungeon of Desire. But the rest is kind of there… I have been looking for it for a long time; I’ve seen the cut version a few times (in fact, I own it); the long version that I remember from Bravo on my Gran’s Cable TV may well be lost to the mysts o’tyme. But last week I managed to source the sex scenes. I even had to sign up to a website to get them.
So here’s what I’ve been fapping to.
The setup
Pity poor Princess Gwen, for her life is a humdrum one.
I mean, is the message, although Gwen (Mia Zottoli) does spend most of her time engaging in lesbian sex with her lady-in-waiting (Stella Porter), with the rest of it spent bathing, relaxing in large beds and eating good food. What a terrible life she must be leading.
You see, Gwen is madly in love with a prince she barely knows, in true Disney fashion – Eric (the late Eddie Jay, credited here as Ed Johnson, which I’m assuming was probably his real name. He died in 2013.). In decidedly un-Disney fashion, her main aim in life is to shag him; this is hampered by Aura (Venessa Blair), the archetypal “wicked queen”, who is keeping them apart.
And why? Who knows? Let’s have them both escape, meet up in the garden and fuck!
Is an abridged version. There are some bits with time-travelling glamour models, a wizard, a few guards and a magical message in the sky written in Trebuchet MS (could be worse – at least it isn’t Comic Sans). But that’s not really relevant by the time Eric starts taking Gwen’s clothes off.
The pay-off
So let’s recap. Gwen and Eric are in the garden, having been led there by Trebuchet MS. It doesn’t take long before their clothes come off – Gwen’s top first, followed by Eric’s shirt. All by 00:15 – very efficient! It doesn’t take that long until they start having sex, either – there’s hardly even any foreplay, a mix taking us straight to the main event as early as 00:19!
One does have to wonder what the reason for this is. The plot does suggest that their clandestine bonk IN THE MIDDLE OF A PUBLIC GARDEN IN BROAD DAYLIGHT needs to be quick and dirty, since they’re not really meant to be aware of each other at all… or it could just be the fact that this scene is a minute and a half long and they wanted to squeeze in as much of Mia Zottoli as possible, and I am completely on board with that.
For the first half of the scene Gwen is sort of semi-riding Eric while also caressing various bits of her own body, accompanied by an odd mix of instruments including a frenetic drum beat, a bass line which sounds like it’s from early-noughties indie rock, muted guitar thrumming and occasional synth melodies, assembled as something which is almost music but not quite.
I genuinely don’t mind this. Mia Zottoli is always excellent value and she’s not holding back here, merrily rocking back and forth and looking like she’s genuinely enjoying herself. I can’t really comment on the actor playing Eric because he’s dead, but to his posthumous credit, here he makes for a very believable naïve young prince.
The bait-and-switch
The second half, to which the score adds something which I think is meant to replace lyrics in the Nickelback single this is destined to become, is a little different – here we are presented with something curious which may evolve into missionary sex, although it never quite does. Gwen’s legs are apart and Eric is between them. but he doesn’t do anything except kiss, and in shots from behind, we can see his bum clearly far enough away to indicate there’s no penetration there.
Even for softcore, that’s a little weird, but it completely makes sense here because…
The twist
…IT WAS ALL A DREAM!
Okay, maybe that’s a bit too dramatic. Yes, it is all in Gwen’s head and she is sadly fantasising about this as opposed to actually experiencing it; she is, however, merely remembering the last time she had sex with Eric (portrayed earlier in the film via basically the same scene!), which she desperately wants to repeat. She’s so blue that she turns down sex with her lady-in-waiting because she’s been dickmatised or something, I don’t know.
Anyway, although it happened like an hour ago or something, here it’s all in her head, but of course their story ends with a messy, dirty sex scene in front of a fireplace, so you haven’t got much longer to wait to see more of that.
And that’s what’s meant by the term “royally fucked”
This was an odd scene for me to choose, now I look back on it, because there are other, better sex scenes in Dungeon of Desire (ten! In a one-and-a-half-hour movie! We are spoilt!). This is, however, the one that sticks in my memory the most.
Thanks once again to my ability to spot the stupidest little details, like the way Gwen’s tiara constantly threatens to fall off her head but never quite does, the contrast between Gwen’s lighter and Eric’s darker skin tones, the effort they’ve put into the garden set…
…or, perhaps most cheekily, how they’ve managed to put this together and present it as a new sex scene, despite it being mostly reused footage!
But I just can’t hate on this. It’s been years – decades, even – since I first saw this. It’s not flawless, for sure, but it’s packed full of nudity, plenty of sex, some amusing attempts at humour and even a story that works, and that’s exactly what I want from my soft porn.
Dungeon of Desire, I love you ❤️
Leave a Reply