Tag: soft porn sunday (Page 4 of 4)

Let me be the one, Justine
Let me be the first, Justine
To have you, and hold you…

It’s been a while – in fact, it’s been so much of a while that I can’t put a number of years to it – since I first watched the Adventures of Justine series. It was shown all of twice on L!VE TV in the late-’90s, and I once accidentally got sent a copy of a Justine flick when I’d actually ordered Emmanuelle. (I watched the sex scenes and then sent it back.) The fact that I’ve been re-watching it recently has me thinking… was I assuming it was anything other than what it actually is?

Time for AN INVESTIGATION!

For those of you who aren’t aware what Justine is – and relax, it’s in no way based on the book by de Sade; I had to look that up too – it’s another series of seven erotic adventure(ish) films made by the same people (almost exactly the same people) who made Emmanuelle in Space. By which I mean, without hyperbole, it’s got the same directorial team, same crew, same sets, same cast (with the only variation being the principals, and even then there are some returning actors), and even some of the same music, which I hadn’t noticed until rewatching the second in the series the other day.

Justine follows the traditional ASP line of having seven volumes with pretentious names, some of which being known by alternate titles because actually I have no idea why. According to the DVD cover, they are:

Volume 1: In The Heat of Passion
Volume 2: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (presumably with apologies to Bill)
Volume 3: Object of Desire, also known as Wild Nights
Volume 4: Exotic Liaisons, also known as Exotic Liaison
Volume 5: Crazy Love
Volume 6: A Private Affair (written by Brian Clemens OBE, although how he got involved…!)
Volume 7: Seduction of Innocence

while Wikipedia lists them as:

Volume 1: Exotic Liaisons
Volume 2: A Private Affair
Volume 3: Wild Nights
Volume 4: Crazy Love
Volume 5: Seduction of Innocence
Volume 6: In The Heat of Passion
Volume 7: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

and there’s even some ambiguity as to when these films are dated – some are 1995, some ’96 and even some as ’97. I’m going to guess that ’95 is the closest bet, as Emmanuelle in Space is from ’94 and it’s quite clear there was very little break between filming both series.

I’m not entirely sure what Justine is meant to be – perhaps an erotic spoof of Indiana Jones, perhaps a college girl tale with fantastical elements, or probably just “a way to use up ASP’s budget” – but the resulting product is incredibly episodic, so it doesn’t seem to matter what order you watch these films in (I’m going by the order on the DVD cover). Internally the films are also a series of individual adventurey vignettes, so one could achieve the same effect by broadcasting the Justine series as half-hour episodes. Only nobody would watch that.

So, yes. Justine Wikenson (Daneen Boone, who also appeared as “Girlfriend” in Emmanuelle) is a smart and precocious, yet incredibly innocent, college girl at an academy for gifted students (Topacre). Her best friend Ursula (Kimberly Rowe, Angie in Emmanuelle) is smart and sassy, but also incredibly sexually active – the only one to have scenes like this – while Madame Souvray (Jennifer Behr, Ursula [confusingly] in Emmanuelle) is a female teacher… possibly the head of the academy, who cares?

The male lead – Professor Paul Robson (occasionally pronounced “Paul Robeson”, amusingly – is played by Timothy DiPri, who also played Theo in Emm… you get the idea. Robson is meant to be a bespectacled, yet handsome archaeology lecturer who just can’t resist getting his hands on some random historical McGuffin, throwing him into a world of intrigue. Justine interferes and gets captured (yes, in every single film! This girl gets captured seemingly as a hobby!); Robson manages to rescue her and…

…okay, here’s the other series trope. It was all a dream.

I’m not making this up. Justine’s adventures are mostly dreams she’s having either in the middle of Robson’s lectures or while writhing on her bed in sheer négligée. They genuinely don’t need to write endings to these storylines because they’re all actually dreams!

So what’s Justine studying, then, sleep? I’ve never seen her do any actual work or take an exam or anything… not like she pays attention in class, either, as she suddenly slips into an archaeological adventure seemingly completely at random!

Originally I intended for this to be a standard SPS review, where I took a scene and analysed it in-depth. I can’t bring you one, however, because the other thing I’ve managed to discover is that there’s very little sex in this sex series.

Justine is a virgin and manages to remain so throughout the entire thing (fetishisation much?), while all the kinky sex with random guys is the remit of Ursula (slut-shaming much?). While there’s meant to be a little “will-they-won’t-they?” between Justine and Robson, this never actually happens, so there’s no pay-off. There’s plenty of inoffensive nudity from Justine, as she’s particularly keen on changing into nightwear at the drop of a hat… but there isn’t an awful lot of sex.

And when there is sex, it’s often brief, poorly lit, and cuts off before any actual penetrative sex is meant to be happening! It’s very frustrating!

I suppose one positive thing about this (apart from Paul Michael Robinson, formerly Haffron, who plays a villain in this with the most lacklustre German accent I’ve ever heard – always a gem!) is that, in what was clearly quite a short space of time, ASP managed to wring seven adventure films out on what was also probably quite a limited budget. Daneen Boone tries her best, but she doesn’t have the inherent sexiness of Krista Allen as Emmanuelle, and frankly she’s such a drip that it renders her character quite unlikeable.

But the adventure aspect is good. I’m sure I’d appreciate this more were it not for the “it’s all a dream!” epilogue, but at least they’re trying something different with it. I’m not sure it works, coherently, as a whole – they get lost a few times with what they are trying to do – but at least it has the bare bones of a series all in place.

I just wish there were a little more sex, that’s all!

First Soft Porn Sunday on the new(ish) blog and it’s one I’ve been promising for ages – months, even – without bothering to get off my arse and do so. Cracking stuff, ILB.

This is, in any case, the third in a series of four sex scenes from Compromising Situations‘ third-series episode Centerfold [insert “shudder at the American spelling” here… again…]; additionally, as with the first two I reviewed, this features Glenn Ratcliffe as lackadaisical photographer Joe who… hell, just go and read the first two, okay? I’ll wait.

Appearance: Compromising Situations, Series 3: “Centerfold” (1996)
Characters: Angela & Joe

So, yeah. This scene takes place on an incredibly fluffy bed with a pretty blue/grey colour scheme (which extends to the curtains and whatever’s going on outside the Perspex window they have there), which both serves as a location and outside fuel for my seething internal jealousy (my bed is about as soft as one of those Whomp enemies from the Mario series). The Sully-themed duvet cover does, however, look a little itchy, so why they’re getting naked on top of it I’ve no idea.

I mean, it’s obvious why they’re getting naked. I’m just slightly distracted by the colour scheme.

There isn’t really a lot of nudity here, for what it is. The scene starts with kissing – and they’re very keen to show you that it’s kissing, judging by the fact that they’ve overlaid kissing sound effects, which cut out suddenly when we cut to Joe doing some odd kind of horizontal kiss on… her breasts? Her collarbone? Random bit of skin? It’s confusing, but it doesn’t matter, because 32 seconds in we fade to insta-sex, SO THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY.

The sex here is positioned in an odd way facilitating it to happen neither under nor on the covers (or maybe they are just trying to avoid the itch); Joe is on top of Angela, or kind of… they are rolling around a bit, but I’m assuming this is meant to be missionary… with the covers pulled down and keeping their feet warm, but the rest of their bodies on display. One does have to wonder exactly why they’re doing neither one nor the other. Softcore doesn’t tend to have this kind of quandary.

There is evidence (or at least pervasive urban rumour) to show that having your feet warm during sex makes for a more satisfying experience. Scientifically, you can lose a lot of heat through bare feet, which lends some credence to the idea, although during good energetic sex you are building up heat, so maybe a fair outlet is beneficial. Whatever. Maybe Joe and Angela are keeping their feet warm to facilitate better lovemaking while also having their top halves bare so they can mutually admire the person they are making love to.

But. y’know, probably not.

It’s nice to see the undersheet also corresponds to the colour scheme, though.

Anyway, so yes, sex. As I said before, Joe is kind of on top here, but they are rolling around a bit so at points it’s a little difficult to tell. At 00:44 we get a quick fade to something more close-up (where we get the first good look at Beatrice Baldwin’s face, which reminds me of Salma Hayek) with yet more overlaid kissing sounds and then one of the least appetising screen kisses I’ve ever seen, but there’s still very little indication that actual sex is happening. It’s clearly meant to be, but this is much more like foreplay than sex (even by softcore standards), and even then, it’s not particularly invigorating.

Maybe it’s all that sex with other women that’s tired Joe out, or something.

The subsequent cut makes this all the more confusing, as Joe (who is doing something odd with his hands as if he’s trying to read Braille) is clearly not meant to be inside Angela, unless he’s somehow fucking her knee (we also get a view of his very square arse, which I hadn’t noticed before and will never now unsee!); if he was meant to be having sex with her before, why isn’t he now? Is this in the wrong order, or are they just trying to be super-realistic and have them take a quick break?

Okay, at this point I have nothing to say because there’s an over-long shot of Beatrice Baldwin’s boobs, so I’ll talk about the music, which is utterly mystifying. It consists entirely of a hi-hat rhythm with apparently random snare and bass drum hits, coupled with a strange ethereal synth line and occasional low thrumming notes (also possibly played on a synth). It doesn’t really sync to the scene, doesn’t actually have any relevance, and is scarily reminiscent of Muzak, which makes me unnerved, as it takes me back to department store lifts in my youth.

After twenty-five seconds of boobs (yes, that’s right – it’s all we see for nearly half a minute), there’s another mix to what, this time, is meant to be sex without pussyfooting around. At least, at this point Angela is riding Joe, so unless she is somehow shagging his belly button, this is full-on penetrative sex, and…

…oh, more kisses. Okay.

Look, I like kisses. They are one of my favourite things. I like to kiss and to be kissed. And I like them in soft porn because they have their place – especially when used strategically, like as a precursor, or footnote, to sex. A kiss can be very powerful. There is, however, a limit, and when you have – as with this scene in pretty much its entirety – multiple kisses of various body parts even when any other scene would have bump’n’grind at this point, that limit has been, shall we say, reached.

Scene kind of ends there with (finally) a full-body shot of them not really doing very much, and a couple of snare drum hits for good measure.

This isn’t a scene I dislike so much as I find baffling. Sex is meant to be happening at certain points, but because there’s very little movement, it’s difficult to discern exactly what those points are. There’s too much of an emphasis on kissing, which would have been fine interspersed with actual sex, but I’m left at the end of this wondering why she had let him inside her in the first place, since neither of them seem to be putting any energy into it. You could achieve the same effect with a cuddle.

And the set design is sound, and Beatrice Baldwin is pretty, and Glenn Ratcliffe is… well… Joe. It has all the makings of a good scene. It is, however, boring, stilted, and uninspired. There are four sex scenes in this episode, so maybe they ran out of ideas?

Or maybe they just had a limited amount of time to film it. I mean, that would explain a lot; we all have things to do that we occasionally run out of time on and never quite fini