*packs final change of clothes; walls get whitewashed*
47
On the very first day I got my DVD of Virgins of Sherwood Forest, I was halfway through watching it when I remembered I needed to be packing to go off to camp the following day. Living as I was in a room on my own with nobody else in the house at that moment, I left it on – because of course I did – and scrambled around for things to pack, grabbing a miasma of useful items and random clothes and throwing them pell-mell into my little wheelie suitcase.
That was then…
I snapped the case shut just as a couple of characters were getting it on in the castle bedroom. I’d opened it when they were using the battlements. I later had an orgasm to the scene set on the bridge just outside the castle.
They certainly used that set to a great extent.
The last thing I added was The Box™, still full of unused condoms. I’d been packing this to take with me every time, and every time it kept winging its way back unopened. I packed it anyway, and the following day started making my way to another camp in which – just like every event ever – I failed to get laid.
This is now…
Serena realised only too late that she’d forgotten to put a bra on before the job interview.
I made a lot of mess over Christmas, and in order to impress my cleaner (and find the notebook I think I may have lost), I spent a few hours last night un-messing the house – by which I mean decanting the bins into bin bags. That genuinely is the most useful thing I could have been doing, and so I did it.
But I put Virgins of Sherwood Forest on first.
I’m still not sure why. The concept of doing another mundane task, accompanied by the same glossy smut (albeit almost two decades later), occurred to me while at work, and wouldn’t. let. me. go! Maybe I was feeling cheeky; maybe nostalgic. Perhaps I was trying to prove to myself that the more I change, the more I stay the same. I may have even just wanted something to come to once I’d finished my tidying…
…but, whatever the reason, I put it on, and enjoyed the rolling sex as best I could while sorting refuse from recyclables.
This is even later…
One day after this masterstroke and it seems very silly to begin with. Putting on soft porn and not even being able to touch yourself to it? Just as I relate my favourite piece of smut to packing a suitcase, now I’ll further relate it to emptying bins (and, by extension, this blog post about that).
But this way I got to see the whole package. Not just the eight sex scenes, but the plot, the questionable acting, and the hilarious dialogue. I even watched the end credits, with a hefty number of pseudonyms to protect the identities of those who made this schlock. For the first time in a long time, I enjoyed Virgins of Sherwood Forest. Really enjoyed it, warts and all.
So, what I’m saying is, maybe I should do something like this more often.
I’m 16 and it’s 11:15pm on Christmas Eve. I’m sitting in Gran’s lounge flicking through cable channels on her TV.
Up until five minutes ago I had quite keen to go to mass at midnight. I’d never really considered the concept before. My church doesn’t really do what would traditionally be considered mass, and although I used to go on Christmas morning, I’d kind of fallen out of the practice. I had been invited by my grandparents and was quite excited to go…
…until I flicked past Bravo and noticed Confessions of a Window Cleaner was on.
“Ooh! It’s a Timmy Lea film!” I said out loud to nobody in particular, deciding then and there that I didn’t really need to go to mass; I could just wait out Christmas watching questionable slapstick comedy mixed with gratuitous cheeky smut. I’d managed to upset my mum, who shouldn’t have minded as she is an atheist, by telling her that I’d decided not to go.
I can sit here watching Confessions, and things will be fine.
My finger hits the “last” button on the remote the instant my mum walks in and the TV channel jumps to The Box. Changes by 2Pac is on (again). “Your grandparents have gone to mass,” she says in a voice saturated with disapproval. (My memory is telling me that a sex scene has just started on the channel and I’m missing it.) “Without you.” “Yeah, I know. I’m… I’m too tired to go,” I lie smoothly. “I meant to tell you, though, that if you don’t go to mass you won’t be able to sit here watching music videos. You’ll have to go to bed.”
Five minutes of kicking about in my room pass before I look at the clock and notice the time. It’s 11:25. I half walk, half run into the lounge.
“Changed my mind!” I shout. “I want to go to mass!” My parents look at each other. “But it’s in five minutes,” my mother says. “But I’ve decided I really really really want to go! And it’s not too far away, and if you drive me…”
I sit in a chair next to my nan thirty seconds before our minister starts up. There are some huffy comments about how late I left it, but nevertheless, they’re pleased I’m here. I am too. This happens once a year, it seems fun, and I can always watch ’70s sex comedies on Channel 5. There’s no reason not to come to this.
And that’s how I started going to mass on Christmas Eve. Things have happened since then, of course – people have started to come and stopped again. As teenagers the cousins would all get drunk and then stumble to church and have a whale of a time. Once my auntie would drop the blood of Christ on the floor (and mostly my uncle’s trousers). Every year we would struggle our way through the descant on O Come All Ye Faithful (and we still do).
But it really doesn’t feel like Christmas without it.
It takes all sorts to make a meme. With the bigger, more prolific ones, the level of community engagement is often somewhere between good and stratospheric. Quick and easy content though they may provide, I always enjoy contributing myself, and they certainly helped me through the past couple of years, which were difficult in so many ways.
My own meme, on the other hand, has decelerated to the point where I genuinely thought, at one point, that it would come to a complete stop. Scrabbling through the digital ether to bring it back today, I chanced upon a scene I’ve never seen before, as recommended by helpful reader SA. With acknowledgement to him, then, let’s dive into…
Appearance:The Corporate Ladder (1997) Characters: Nicole Landon & Matt Taylor
I haven’t actually seen The Corporate Ladder, but both the trailer and synopsis feel familiar. Maybe I actually have seen it and forgotten… or maybe it’s just yet another business-themed thriller that’s exactly like everything else. This was, however, made by Playboy, so it’s a fair assumption that there will be some amount of nudity at some point.
Ah, there’s an affair. I see.
I really hope that photo frame has a picture of a spoon in it.
Kathleen Kinmont plays Nicole, the ambitious young assistant to rich advertising executive Matt (Tony Denison, using his full name for this, as opposed to using ‘Tony’ for his more recent work and his one appearance in Charmed). She is helping his career while also helping herself to a bit of Matt. He’s married, of course, with a baby on the way, but The Corporate Ladder is a Playboy movie, so we all know where this is going to end up.
There’s some stuff about murder as well, and insofar as I can tell, someone does actually fall off a ladder at some point. So it has that going for it.
This is a sex scene between Nicole and Matt (their first) and the most obvious thing I’m getting from it is how loud it is. Their lusty moans and hesitant dialogue such as
We’re not doing anything. You’re doing it.
Nicole, who hasn’t quite got a grasp of what pronouns mean
are done at such a volume that I had to turn it down on my VLC player and rewatch the first thirty seconds at 50%. Even then, the sound effects are very prominent – there isn’t any music either, which makes them more so.
This is Nicole’s “Victoria’s Secret” catalogue audition.
This isn’t to say that Kinmont and Denison can’t act, because they can. In fact, the first 40 seconds are a very good example of how to do a seduction scene (even if it does move quite quickly). Nicole is undressing Tony from behind; his resistance is token, and her manipulation of his hand (the “you’re doing it”) to his own crotch is a nice touch. At 00:42 exactly, however, there is a jump cut to something completely different.
Because suddenly there is music. And suddenly there is Nicole doing a kind of awkward striptease in front of what looks like a collage of Year 6 work on a classroom wall. Eventually she gets around to taking the rest of Matt’s clothes off, of course, but quite a lot of time is devoted to showing Nicole in her undergarments (white bra; white knickers; white stockings), because… well, because Playboy, I guess.
Nicole, surveying her prey… sorry, I mean, her boss.
There is, of course, the classic “we’re having an affair so let’s do it on a table” trope in play here, and it’s during the lead-in to this we finally get a shot of Nicole’s breasts. I mention this because she appears to take her bra off no less than three times between 01:19 and 01:27 (maybe it’s the same shot from different angles. No, that’d be too “director-y.”). But she’s an attractive woman, so that’s nice to see.
I wonder if all those women in the background are there to make sure this passes the Bechdel Test.
At this point there was a bit of movement on her part so I did have to wonder if they were supposed to be having sex by now, but no; the next shot (which I think I may have seen on a planking website) clearly shows that Matt still has his pants on. There’s certainly a lot of kissing going on, and what might be loosely termed frottage, but no actual sex happens until…
…actually, I can’t tell.
What happens next is a serious of jump cuts between 1.5 shots of various… things happening. Some of them are sex; some are just undressing and some are random mucking about. There’s no actual sequence to it, and that’s clearly deliberate. The final 24 seconds do, to their credit, show continuous sex in one position, so if that’s what you’re looking for, it’s in here somewhere!
Nicole preparing to play the lead in the next “Joker” movie.
For all I’ve said here, this isn’t a terrible scene. It’s short, and one couldn’t really call it a traditional sex scene. The setting (his office) is a little drab, and the music is uninspired – it doesn’t really lend itself to the old grey whistle test. I’m also not overly fond of Denison’s performance as Matt (he looks a bit gormless), but then again, he isn’t really given much to do here. The focus is on Kinmont as Nicole.
But it is shot well, and the seduction bit at the start is steamy, and the end bit is all right for what it is. Nicole also has this seemingly permanent grin, which I suppose serves its purpose. In the context of the rest of the The Corporate Ladder, I suppose this sort of scene is almost a necessity in establishing what’s going on here.
It’s not an all-time great, for sure. But it will do.
Unlike pretty much all of my friends, I quite like this song. I’m honestly quite surprised that Molly remembers it. I can’t stand Daniel Bedingfield, but Unwritten by his sister is such an earworm that I’m prepared to give the whole family a pass.
I’m nice like that.
*
It was a Monday evening and I was headed out to band practice in an hour. By this point, everyone else had moved out of the house and I had the whole building to myself. I’d spent the whole day doing basically nothing but wandering around in circles and listening to my growing collection of MP3s – the last of which was, coincidentally, Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield.
One of my friends had written a damning indictment of the song on his blog at the time, which was probably why I downloaded it.
I also had some porn open. It wasn’t running, of course – Unwritten may be a fun song, but it doesn’t quite sync up with this scene from Virgins of Sherwood Forest – but I’d had it open for a while, the DVD valiantly whizzing in its little USB-connected device.
Natasha in front of the background scenery from Virgins of Sherwood Forest. Or similar, anyway.
“Feel the rain on your skin…”
I clicked off Windows Media Player when the song had finished and turned my attention back to the porn. Forty-five minutes until I had to go to band. Maybe I had the time to enjoy myself beforehand. Or at least start myself off. I unhooked my trousers, slid my pants off, sat back, curled my fingers comfortably around my shaft, and clicked play.
*
Band practice went past as it always did – a collection of adequate tunes coupled with me getting almost constant low-level verbal abuse from our musical director – but it had finished. During debrief in the bar afterwards, I excused myself to use the toilet, at which point I discovered that I was still hard. Quite an achievement considering that I had just spent three hours hitting things with sticks and I had had an orgasm shortly before that.
I resolved there and then to try for another orgasm once I got home – hey, it was my house now, I could have as many as I wanted – and was distinctly uncomfortable for the ride back to my side of Nottingham. Just before I got out of the car to follow my dick back up to my bedroom, our band manager asked me to add something to the website.
“Okay I’ll do that I’ll do that tonight I promise look tomorrow okay I love you bye bye!” I said in one breath as I channelled Billy Whizz on my way to the front door. Up the stairs, with my trainers, trousers, pants and T-shirt coming off at various points. Back to my room, computer on, porn back in, same scene, let’s do it again. Again. Again.
Sooooo horny.
*
Half an hour later and I’d finally managed to clean all the cum off my hand, belly, chest, neck and a bit of the desk that it hit. I was also considering sponging down my chair and going for a shower, but maybe that could wait. I admitted it: I love my porn.
Five minuted later and I was about to shut down my computer and actually go to bed when I realised that I hadn’t done the website update. I could do that. It would take me, what, five minutes? I could even put some music back on while I typed it up…
The first song Windows Media Player opened was the one I’d been listening to when I clicked it off a short eternity ago. Unwritten started again from the beginning, a nice accompaniment to the tappity-tappity-tap of my fingers across the keyboard. I was about to click submit on the web form when I realised that I hadn’t put a title.
What would be a good title for a general update?
“Feel the rain on your skin…” I typed carefully, reasoning that if the band manager didn’t like it (or, come to think of it, if he had an aversion to Natasha Bedingfield), he could always change it).
He never asked, and that post remained in situ for the rest of the website’s existence. The fact that I managed to hide the phrase “I have been watching porn” in the code remained so too.
Q: What is Twilight Entertainment? A: Surrender Cinema. Q: What is Surrender Cinema? A: Full Moon Features. Q: What is Full Moon Features? A: Charles Band’s company. Q: Knowing this, is Charles Band then indirectly responsible for many of your orgasms? A: … Q: … A: I feel so dirty!
Appearance:Phantom Love (2000) Characters: Judith & Chauncie*
[*Pronounced “Chancey” /tʃɑ:nsi:/. I originally had this in my head as “Chauncey”; if you’ve played the first Luigi’s Mansion you may understand why.]
The Plot
To start with, Phantom Love is a little misleading insofar as there aren’t any phantoms. It’s one of Surrender’s later offerings (earlier ones are labelled “Torchlight Entertainment” with a logo that looks like the Pixar lamp moonlighting), and although it has some familiar faces, I can’t in all honesty say I’m overly familiar with too many of them.
I know a couple. The frame narrative of this is fairly simple: Marie (Sandy Wasko, who I mainly know from Emmanuelle 2000 and Passion Cove, although apparently she’s also in Beverley Hills 90210…) is a struggling romance writer trying to think of a new angle. On the advice of her agent (David Christensen, who I do know… he’s the dean in Co-Ed Confidential!), she does the sensible thing of going all the way to Italy, checking into a hotel she arrives at by accident, and accepting a centuries-old journal from the creepy woman in charge, which she then reads and orgasms to.
Judith spends most of the film wearing stuff like this.
The actual story is in the journal. Judith (Griffin Drew, who’s in Elke and Andromina: The Pleasure Planet but also appears in Baywatch!) is the last surviving heir of a rich Italian family, but she’s been studying in America for a while. (Quite why she’s doing a British accent isn’t really explained. It’s also not really explained why this isn’t in Italian.) Her wicked stepmother nasty aunt archetype wants her to marry the local vapid Baron, but Judith is a free spirit and prefers to go her own way.
Do I need to tell you that she then has sex with a number of different men, including the Baron, before inexplicably hitting on a plan to save the whole estate? Or had you worked that bit out? Yeah, you worked it out. I see you, gentle reader.
The Characters
Nice trees in the background there. Are they real?
Judith is a British-sounding Italian lady raised in the good ol’ US of A, which didn’t actually exist in the early 18th century so I have all sorts of questions. She’s been told to save the estate, so obviously isn’t going to do that.
Chauncie (Jesse Johnson) is a gardener. He’s working-class, and isn’t even able to afford a comedy accent, but presumably he has a big cock. In any case, Judith has sex with him basically because she can. I mean, there’s the rest of the movie too, but most of the budget presumably went on this.
Sex? What Sex?
What I didn’t realise, when I started watching Phantom Love, is that (like Femalien: Cosmic Crush, which was admittedly a decade later!) there’s very little sex in this sex film. There are sex scenes – of course there are, this is Surrender – but they’re not the longest or the most arousing. In 2000 Surrender was making things like Lolida 2000, Pleasurecraft and Virgins of Sherwood Forest, so maybe this was made on an off-day or something.
Is it me, or does Jesse look genuinely surprised here?
The reason I chose this scene with Judith and Chauncie was that it was basically a surprise. I was so used to the frame narrative that I wasn’t entirely sure if Griffin Drew was going to get her kit off at all. There’s a lesbian sex scene featuring her before this, but this is her first straight sex scene. It doesn’t have much preamble, either. He’s there, she kisses him, then they shag.
Efficient.
The first thing you notice is the music, which I suppose is going for the ‘aristocrat has sex’ thing, but is actually code for ‘keyboard player found the harpsichord voice’. There’s a repeated line (possibly a loop?) underlying an increasing number of string parts (maybe it’s a real string quartet. Nope, that would be a bit too BBC.) and the occasional roll on a ride cymbal. Drums playing a breakbeat come in halfway through and basically made me feel like I should be fighting a video game boss to this. It’s all very odd, and very loud, but I can’t deny that it is unique.
Jesse’s Diets
There may be limited amounts of sex, but there’s certainly a lot of kissing. For the first 70 seconds of this, Judith and Chauncie do very little but snog. Every now and again you will get a shot of his hands undoing her corset from the back, but it doesn’t really go anywhere. In real life, of course, I’m perfectly happy to kiss for more than a minute, but this is softcore – so get on with it!
Anyway, after a minute and a bit, we are rewarded with Griffin Drew’s boobs, which Jesse goes on to kiss a few times, her legs which he also kisses, and his penis.
The penis is on the bottom half of his bo… well, where a penis is, I guess.
That is to say that you can see Jesse’s penis if you slow down the playback and hit the pause button at exactly the right time. I’m not exactly emasculated by this, but it took me a while, so here’s the screenshot.
We get a standard softcore cunnilingus scene with Chauncie consisting mostly of hair and Judith making a face (which actually goes on for a while; Judith appears to have an orgasm at one point!), until eventually, at 02:04 into the scene, we mix to what is unmistakably, genuinely sex.
Huzzah, actual simulated sex!
We get this during sex scenes, but precious little else.
Something else I need to point out is that most of the sex in Phantom Love happens in the astride position, and this is no exception. We get Judith demurely riding Chauncie, although it’s mostly just her hair and back at first; there are also some nice shots of her face, boobs and even her bum at points.
That’s it, then it’s all over. It all finishes relatively quickly, and even then, most of it is filmed in close-up so all we really get is their faces. Judith finishes with
I’m going to see about getting you a raise!
judith
which is… I don’t know? Is that funny? Is it meant to be? Polite blinking from me there.
Conclusion & Evaluation
Phantom Love is a strange beast. It promises at points to be something that it isn’t, and in any case there aren’t any phantoms so it’s very much a misnomer. I wasn’t even aware of its existence until last week, and the main plot did keep me interested (to an extent), so I enjoyed it for what it is.
But then the sex scenes are all like this. Sex happens but it’s over very quickly, characters do get naked but that takes a while, and it does feel like more effort went into the music than the cinematography. There are several, all on a similar theme, and one does have to wonder why. Surrender sex scenes are longer than this. They’re better than this.
I do have to say that I really like her hair.
My guess – and it has to be a guess at this point – is that the studio suddenly realised that they had a fairly competent story in there somewhere. The frame narrative doesn’t do anything, but it bulks up the time a bit, and the main bit with Judith in her family’s estate actually had me hooked. I was wondering how it was going to end at some points, and considering how some Surrender films don’t have an ending, the fact that they got one in there was impressive in itself.
So watch this one if you want. But don’t expect too much from the sex. And beware! Beware the phaaaaantoms!
I’d just like to make an announcement: This building is on fire!
Tim Booth, 1983
I got to my room before anyone else. My ‘phone, vibrating in my pocket, told me that one of my colleagues was out of action with a stomach bug; my immediate superior wasn’t in yet. Vaguely wondering if she was sick too, I sat down at a desk and began to busy myself.
The fire alarm went off.
Sigh. Out I went into the corridor. Nobody was there, but then I didn’t see anyone in the assembly point, either. Rationalising that if this was a real fire, it wouldn’t be safe, I made my way down the stairs. I was halfway down when the alarm stopped.
The aforementioned cataclysm from Thirteen Erotic Ghosts. Devastating.
“It can’t be a real fire,” I said aloud to the unoccupied staircase, adding “like that one at the beginning of Thirteen Erotic Ghosts…” in an undertone. Confident that I was safe and struggling to remember any more of the plot of Thirteen Erotic Ghosts, I stomped back up the staircase to my room, this time passing by a cool, unconcerned-looking colleague.
I hadn’t sat down yet when the fire alarm went off again.
This wasn’t the first time this has happened. In fact, the day beforehand, and the day before that, we had all stood outside in the mizzling rain listening to our boss talk about how opening certain doors tripped the alarm. Who had done it? Staff? Client? It didn’t really matter, though; there wasn’t a real fire. Making a mental note to not open any doors again, ever, I stood there dithering for a few seconds before grabbing my lunch and the Super Mario cup I got in Sweden and making my way back out.
I didn’t stop walking when the bell stopped ringing this time, since I was halfway to the break room and had half a mind to make some morning coffee while putting my lunch in the ‘fridge. As I passed his office, I spotted our CEO Paul sitting back down, evidently having been caught out by the alarm as I had been.
Paul, like Paul Michael Robinson. Paul Michael Robinson, who plays Haffron in Emmanuelle. Grinning internally at what reaction Haffron might have to a fire alarm sound, I made my way into the break room to find, for the first time that morning, more than one colleague standing together.
The fire alarm went off again and nobody said or did anything about it.
I got my coffee and walked back to my room past a door through which grey smoke was issuing.
The word smoke slotted into my brain a little too late, and I half walked, half flew back to the room, wrenching the door open.
“Hey, close the door!” said my colleague in the kitchen. “I had a bit of an accident making the toast, but that’s okay. I threw away the burned bits. The toast’s ready now.” “Theo, your toast is ready,” I said before I could stop myself. My colleague threw me a half-amused smirk, with which I thought it best to excuse myself.
My immediate superior was in my room when I got back.
“Ah! You’re here!” “Yes! Have you been here for a while?” “I have. The fire alarm went off a few times. I was enjoying the quiet and privacy, but that’s not to be.” “You can have privacy in my room.”
I don’t remember the rest of the lyrics, but that’s how the theme tune started.
Nor do I remember much of the Passion & Romance series. I remember vague references to it as “Passion” in Radio Times, occasionally with the description “Women’s entertainment”. It was certainly marketed towards women: being shown after 10:00 on UK Living, the sex was all softcore, the stories had strong female characters, and every episode was written and directed by a woman.
Except it wasn’t. While it’s claimed that this episode was both written and directed by Jill Hayworth (who also directed Emmanuelle 2000, although most of that was directed by Rolfe Kanefsky, so who knows?), some of the films in the series were made by men who used female pseudonyms.
Genuine Reverse George Eliot stuff, there. I can’t claim to understand it.
Still, I’m not a woman and I was entertained by this, so there’s that, too.
Appearance:Passion & Romance: Scandal (1997) Characters: Annette & Some Guy
Passion & Romance episodes always follow the same formula: there’s a story, but it genuinely doesn’t matter because very few of the characters appear to own many clothes. Scandal‘s alleged plotline concerns an American election drawing near, during the run-up to which, Governor Buck-wild… sorry Buckwald (Thad Geer)… begins to lose hope as his family becomes entangled in multiple sex scandals.
My teenage bedroom was this colour!
None of which matters, because Kira Reed Lorsch (credited as Kira Lee) and Gabriella Hall are in this and they barely appear to be aware of the existence of garments at all, so I think we all know what the broader appeal is here.
So, the scene…
This is the very first scene in the film (if you don’t count the wraparound opening sequence), and it’s a good’un. Since there’s no context yet – it could be anyone, anywhere – the scene relies on sex to draw the audience in, rather than trying to establish a story first. It is, essentially, a collection of interconnected shots of Annette (Kira) and and an unnamed, uncredited character having messy, dirty sex on a random bed while the TV is on.
I say “unnamed, uncredited” because that’s what he is. I don’t have a full copy of this flick and helpful reader S.A. – who has an encyclopaedic knowledge of this stuff – reports that this character doesn’t have a name or is credited. I myself can’t find any indication on IMDb (thus originally taking the character to be Andrew [Wesley O’Brian], who does have a scene with Kira later on). Let’s just assume he doesn’t have a name. His parents forgot, or something.
That’s it, that’s the scene. End of post.
Hey, look, hands. I have some of those.
I don’t have much else to say about it. As early as the very first frame, Annette and Mr. No-Name are going at it. There’s no disrobing and no lead-in, and from what you can see, they may well have started before we come in. Things happen in medias res, and so we are thrown – as a collective audience – into the middle of sex without any prior indication.
Which is probably why I liked this as a horny teenager.
Kira and Mr. ______’s joint performance – and the general idea conveyed by the set (clothes on the floor, bed in a bit of a mess, television still on) – suggests that the sex was urgent, and certainly not planned (always something I like). We start with something close to the missionary position, initially seen side-on, Slenderman thrusting away and Annette underneath. Kira is making a lot of grunty, moany noises and clearly enjoying herself; there’s a connection established between these two characters simply from the way it’s shot.
You’ve already seen her, so here’s a different angle.
Between the 00:30 and 00:50 mark there’s a switch in position which appears almost accidental – Annette rolls over, taking No-Face (and the duvet!) with her, ending up riding him. We get some nice shots of Kira at this point – pretty face, nice red hair, obligatory boobs – before they melt into a silly kiss.
The final few seconds are incredibly intense, too. While none of it’s particularly slow, the last bit of the sex is done with Hulk levels of energy as the twosome do some bouncing on the edge of the bed. It’s all very frisky, very fun and very brisk. Sex with a smile and appropriate time management.
Randomiser as Andrew. He forgot to put his eyes in that morning.
My initial memory of this scene was underscored by the fact that it didn’t have any music – the news broadcast on the television replacing it – but, on reviewing it now, there is a soft, unobtrusive musical score here, at a lower volume than the TV. In fact, if you play the whole scene with your eyes closed (WHICH I JUST DID WHAT HAVE I BECOME), you can listen to the anchorman helpfully explaining the plot, which you may have overlooked due to the fact that Kira Reed is on the screen…
…and the voice of director Hayworth as weather girl Wendy Waters. Just so someone can mention they noticed that!
Wide shot from the end, with bonus floordrobe.
My big problem with the Passion & Romance series, bearing in mind that I last saw these at the age of sixteen and things have happened since then(!), was that the sex scenes – numerous though the may be – always struck me as a little humdrum. The three scenes I can remember liking – really liking – are two from Ocean of Dreams (1997)… and this one.
And now I realise why.
With gratitude to the aforementioned helpful reader for fact-checking character names.
Steve Curtis. Dutch Flaherty. Chris Johnston. A.W. Anderson. Everett Rodd. Jeff Urban.
That’s a list of all the male actors in Hotel Exotica. I genuinely don’t recognise any of those names. No David Usher, no Brian Heidik, no Jason Schnuit. I’m genuinely surprised. Surrender had a tendency to wheel out the same people to play their generic cast of forgettable idiots.
Let’s look at the female cast, then. I should be recognising Taylor St. Claire, Landon Hall and even Ahmo Height. I’ve certainly seen them all in things… but then again, this is Surrender; the same actors are in everything. I’m just not fitting names to faces. I do, however, recognise Nikki Fritz. I’ll always notice her, even if she’s only in this for a few minutes and the character doesn’t warrant a name.
What I don’t quite get is how the eponymous hotel doesn’t turn up until thirty minutes in (that’s one third of the film). But let’s overlook that.
Let’s have a look at the plot then, shall we? Carly (Hall) and Rachel (Height) are sisters who look nothing alike. The passion has gone out of Carly’s marriage to Doug (Flaherty), so the girls go off to the Hotel Exotica, where stale relationships are rekindled with the help of the hostess and her girls. Doug and his business partner Frank (Johnston) follow them unnoticed. This, as I said, doesn’t happen until a third of the way into the movie.
There’s a lot of exposition here.
Rachel is one of the best characters in it, but she has a terrible backstory; her artist boyfriend, Zeke (Curtis), has a secret lover who he’s been not-too-subtly boning behind Rachel’s back. On account of the fact that she just walks in and catches them at one point (implying that he didn’t lock the door), he doesn’t appear to be too concerned.
Then again, were I having sex with Nikki Fritz I wouldn’t be too concerned either.
Come for the boobs, stay for the… well… the boobs.
Anyway, this scene starts with boobs (as it should). One of Zeke’s designs is on the left breast (both a nice touch and a terrible waste of ink), but it’s a nice shot of some nice boobs, so I’ll give them that. Both participants are naked at this point, so there isn’t really any faffing around removing clothes. We can cut straight into the action, and by “action” I mean “softcore blowjob which is mostly just hair.”
I suppose the angle’s right…
Because that’s all it is for the first thirty seconds. Zeke is pulling very silly faces throughout while Nikki gives it all her best hair acting skills, but it goes on for so long that they start to look bored towards the end. 31 seconds in and we switch up to…
to…
…
OK, I’m going to focus on this for a bit. Softcore simulates a lot of sexual acts, but it’s an incredibly rare thing to see someone eating arse. You occasionally get something in lesbian scenes, but I don’t recall any other straight scenes which are clearly meant to be simulating analingus. This is clearly what Zeke is doing here, and although there’s a pan across this shot, it has him there for eight seconds. He’s clearly licking her “from behind”.
I mean, I do that if I’m asked. Welcome to the club, Zeke.
Yes! That is exactly what he’s meant to be doing!
Ahem. Anyway. We then cut to the obligatory nipple suck part of our symposium – Nikki has very pert nipples, so may as well put them in a mouth – before we finally get to oral sex the other way, Nikki on her back with Zeke’s head between her legs. Because of course this happens. They are lying on a white sheet for this, presumably because the scene is meant to be happening in Zeke’s studio. I mean, it’s not like it’s clearly a house set with the bed moved aside or anything.
Nikki throws some “I am sexually excited” faces for a bit, and then – just over one minute into the scene – they get to shagging, a fairly lusty amount of bump’n’grind in a variety of positions. It’s not shot too badly, either – there are a few too many cuts, but Nikki gets a chance to show off her body while Zeke pulls some more silly faces. My favourite bit of the entire scene happens when they have sex balanced against one of his stools (it actually uses the set here, thankfully), which both generates a lot of steam and bends Nikki’s foot into an odd position.
Freshly stuffed Nikki, served on a bed of crumpled sheets.
Oh, and it also reveals Steve Curtis’ balls. I am 99.9% certain that this is completely unintentional, but his testicles swing out from between his legs no less than three times. It took me a while to screenshot it, but it most certainly happens!
There’s a fair amount of licking, sucking and sex after this, but there’s nothing new, and some of it is just reused footage from the beginning. Maybe it’s there to fill up the length of the music, or something (speaking of which, the entire scene is overlaid by a hard rock track – electric guitars and drums – which is the standard “cheating boyfriend” music in softcore. It fits the scene well enough.), but it doesn’t really add any more.
Actual balls in softcore porn. You hardly ever see such a thing!
Having said all this, I think this is the best sex scene in the film (and there’s a lot of sex in this one, I mean really, there’s plenty to choose from). Ethically, of course, it’s fairly abhorrent – we shouldn’t be celebrating cheats – but, from a cinematographic point of view, it stands out. Yes, it could be better lit, there could be a few more wide shots, and maybe it’s even a little too long for what it is… but, overall, this is a nice scene. It’s hot, it’s horny, it’s fun…
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised.
Romans 1:24-27
Admit it, you’ve never heard of Sinful Desires, have you? Maybe you have – it sounds very much like one of those ’90s erotic thrillers you saw on late-night cable as a teen; then again, they’re all called things like Sins of the Night II and Indecent Behaviour IV: The Search for Clothes. This could just as easily be one of them. A reader of this here blog suggested I do this review and it took me a few minutes to identify which one this is.
I think I’ve seen it…
Appearance:Sinful Desires (2001) Characters: Lorena Collins & Jonathan Taylor
The first thing that jumps out at me is the actors involved. Lorena is played by Nikita Cash, of whom I’m actually aware – I’ve seen her in things before – and Jonathan is played by Craig Stepp, who is credited here as “Craig Field”. A steppe is a bit like a field. Please tell me that’s deliberate.
The back story…
Sinful Desires is a standard – but solid – erotic thriller whodunnit thing which is mainly focused around an American-style late-night call-in show hosted by Gia (Jacy Andrews) – real name Angelica. Gia begins to get a caller dropping hints as to her true identity, and slowly comes to realise that she is being stalked.
Hence the name of the film, Intimate Secrets, as that is what the caller is sharing.
And yes, I know the film isn’t called Intimate Secrets. It just… should be called that.
Gia’s boss Jonathan (Craig Shrubland) is mostly interested in making money from her show, and her best friend Lorena (Cash) works in the local bar where Gina drowns her sorrows. Quite why Jonathan and Lorena end up having sex I don’t recall, but hey ho.
The scene itself…
This scene is about three minutes long and doesn’t waste a lot of time getting into the action. It does briefly start with a kiss – a genuine-looking one – but three seconds in there’s a mix fade to both Cash and Savannah naked and already doing a lot more than kissing! Way to economise on screentime, movie!
Stepp down on it…
Something that I’m noticing is that, in the first thirty seconds, nothing is wasted. It’s all very fast – kisses, frottage, breast sucking, stomach licking and “good ol’ soft porn cunnilingus” (you can tell, because Lorena moans a lot) – and it comes at you with such a speed that you genuinely can’t get bored with this. Cash is doing quite a lot with her body, as well – grabbing her boobs and rocking back and forth – rather than just making a face while Grassland’s head is between her legs. It’s more realistic, and I like that.
At around the one-minute mark, sex starts. The scene takes place on a sofa (with exotic fake plants in the background, to make it more porn-y) and leopard print cushions (taaaaaaaasteless!), but it’s a good prop for which bouncy cowgirl sex to happen, and that’s what Lorena is doing.
Can’t stand pat, swear you gotta Stepp it up and go…
In fact, we get Lorena riding Jonathan for a while, from a number of angles – plenty of variety of facial expressions (including some very funny ones from Plateau!), lots of hair action from Cash (she has very good hair in this flick), and some very fast and very hard action that quite closely resembles actual sex. You know that moment during sex when you sort of lose control and just go for it? Yeah, this is that moment.
We also get missionary from about 01:47, which has just as much energy (even if the sofa is too small and Jonathan has to be standing up for some of this: a curious bit of design). Once again, there are a lot of quick cuts between angles, but the few seconds of sex at each angle are long enough to clarify what’s happening, so you don’t lose focus.
Drums bangin’, steel twangin’, two Steppin’, end to end…
In fact, towards the end there’s a “this is an orgasm” moment, where Jonathan pauses and lets out a “hyah!” sound, and then they both kind of ride it out to the end of the scene. Job done.
The verdict…
There’s a lot to unpack in this scene. It’s certainly full of desperate, horny energy (although it lacks the intensity of something like Lisa Boyle in Elke, it’s close) and both Cash/Lorena and TemperateBiome/Jonathan are giving it a lot. There’s a lot of movement, a lack of control – in fact, the whole thing looks messy at points, which sex is – and they both make a good sound.
I also quite like the fact that the character of Jonathan is a little older. Throughout this, Prairie has greying hair, so they haven’t tried to make him a little younger. As someone who’s beginning to feel his age, I appreciate this!
Every time I see you in the world, you always Stepp to my girl…
If the moans are overlaid in post-production, they’ve done a good job. These look live. The music, sadly, is bland and uninspired, but it’s not so intrusive as to be a distraction. Overall, this is a good scene.
Strangely enough, however, if the reviews are to be believed, this is one of the worse scenes in Sinful Desires. Everything I’ve seen suggests that the main draw is the star, Jacy Andrews, and that her scenes are the ones you’re watching this for. I haven’t actually seen anything with Jacy Andrews in before, and since I think this scene is hot, the prospect of something better is an intriguing one.
So let’s get the whole film, then. I mean, I’m not doing anything tomorrow, am I? Why not?
Since I started this meme, I’ve always kind of assumed that this film would come along at some point. Not that it’s particularly well-known, or memorable, or even particularly good… but I do remember it by name. Handyman. I also remember watching it, in full, on TV late one night, and then going to bed questioning my life choices.
My Glod! There’s a VHS release?
In fact, since then I’ve found out that this was meant to be the start of another franchise of British sex comedies – in the vein of the Adventures of… or famed Confessions series – but, due to the failure of this first instalment, it never quite got off the ground.
Let’s find out why.
The Ups and Downs of a Handyman (1985) Director: John Sealey Starring: Barry Stokes, Penny Meredith, Gay Soper, Sue Lloyd, Bob Todd, et al.
It’s not difficult to see where the idea for something like this came from. Written by Derrick Slater from an idea by the director himself, it takes a trope that works (working-class salt-of-the-earth type attempts to do his job; ends up in bed with beautiful women) and runs with it. The problem here is that it doesn’t appear to know where it’s running to.
I shall explain. Although the film itself starts in London (indeed it has a montage of the London traffic as the opening sequence), it quickly transpires that Margaretta (Meredith), a faithful wife, has inherited a little country cottage in the fictional village of Sodding Chipbury…
…no, wait, I haven’t finished laughing yet…
Marital bliss, with added phone.
…and transplants herself there, taking with her her husband Bob (Stokes), who takes on a job as a handyman for hire in order to pay the bills. This is a British sex comedy, though, so of course you know where that’s going.
My memory of this one may be sketchy, but a few things I remembered before viewing this again were:
– a catchy theme song (written by Vic Elms, as it turns out, and sung by Stokes himself. I also remember it being more catchy than it actually is.) – a title sequence in “British seventies sex comedy yellow”, which is definitely very much there – a frolicking haystack sex scene – lots and lots of casual nudity but practically no sex – and not much else!
I wasn’t far off. For what it’s worth, Handyman does contain all those sorts of things. It ticks a lot of by-the-numbers boxes as well: dirty old men with pretty young wives, a hapless wide-eyed policeman, broad physical pratfalls played for cheap laughs, lots of scenes in double time (seriously, they Billy Whizz half these bits) and a protagonist who is physically unremarkable but seemingly irresistible to women.
Bath threesome. The water here looks filthy!
Yes, I said that last bit. The problem here is with the main actor. Stokes isn’t unattractive – he’s a decent-looking enough bloke – but the character he’s playing definitely is. He’s mostly completely gormless, seemingly completely unaware of what’s going on, sporting this look that’s reminiscent of someone who’s just been struck over the head with a metal pipe! He has none of the cheeky charm or the innocent-but-keen attitude of the other male protagonists of the time, and the script isn’t doing him any favours. In fact, the best lines go to the women…
When we get to the bathroom, you pull it out!
pretty young woman
…but, bear in mind, the fact that they’re the best doesn’t really mean they’re any good.
What I did get wrong was the amount of sex. It isn’t particularly explicit, but there is actually quite a lot of this – brief though the scene may be (the longest sex scene is right at the beginning, between husband and wife). There’s a threesome in the bath at one point, the aforementioned frolicking haystack scene, sex with the squire’s wife, sex with Maisie, sex in a car with the blonde, and…
…yeah, let’s go through these,
Threesome in the bath: This happens during Bob’s first handyman job, with the pretty young woman quoted above (whose dad owns the village shop) and her boss. There is genuinely no introduction to this – Bob trips and falls into the bath on top of her, and it just starts!
The haystack scene. Bob is on the right; Polly is under him, but you can’t really tell.
The haystack scene: This has some sort of precursor, insofar as Bob comes across Polly, a woman sunbathing nude, who puts him to work shovelling hay and then does a striptease for him basically because she can. Her mother then turns up(!), who appears to be about the same age(!!), and they all have sex in the hay(!!!), and nobody appears to see the problem with this?
Sex with the squire’s wife: After a meeting of classy ladies, Bob gets hired by the squire’s wife. The squire himself is only interested in spanking (in fact, there’s a whole spanking scene here!), but she’s more interested in having sex with Bob. As with the aforementioned two, this doesn’t really have any buildup – she just disrobes and they get on with it!
Sex with Maisie: Maisie (Soper) is presented as a woman with strange fetishes – a few Gothic artefacts on the wall, some BDSM gear, that sort of thing. Again, this is all some sort of hint that the women in the village are both sexually starved and a little odd, but the handyman sleeps with her anyway. The BDSM subplot doesn’t go anywhere, by the way.
The car scene: Bob doesn’t even take his clothes off for this one. While he and the car’s owner are in flagrante delicto, the car’s brake comes off and it careens down a flat road (although quite how…), flattening Fred (the cop)’s bike and initiating a trouble-with-the-law subplot that also doesn’t go anywhere!
The squire forgot to take his hat off. Tch, how careless.
In fact, none of these subplots do. Fred has his own which only really amounts to following Bob around. There’s a subplot involving indecent literature in the shop, the spanking squire having a completely topless maid who otherwise wears traditional “French maid” dress, some very ill-advised fox hunts during which young ladies appear intentionally, and the aforementioned incest and BDSM references, and none of them bear any relevance to the main plot…
…BECAUSE THERE ISN’T ONE!
And that’s not hyperbole. Handyman is incredibly episodic and could have just as easily been a miniseries of short sketches. It doesn’t even have a real ending; it just kind of finishes, leaving it open for a sequel which never happens. It’s also badly lit, badly edited, badly directed, and there’s one scene where the spanking squire’s mouth moves but no dialogue whatsoever is heard! Nice one, movie!
I’ve seen in several places that this is “the worst of the worst”, and while it isn’t – there are worse, and this has a good helping of nudity, so at least it delivers on that front – it’s definitely not good. It’s got a lot of what makes a British sex comedy in it, but it completely becomes unstuck, and the initial set-up may as well not have happened when you consider how all-at-sea this ends up being.
And now to try and get that theme song out of my head.
