The Illustrated Woman

Bud Lee directs his wife Asia Carrera in the forgotten feature "The Illustrated Woman", just added to IMDb by me over 20 years after its VHS release. It represents the best Marc Cushman/Cash Markman scripted video I've seen in ages (after dozens of clunkers).

The title is of course taken from Ray Bradbury's classic novel "The Illustrated Man", made into a disappointing movie starring Rod Steiger and his wife Claire Bloom. Markman takes just the germ of that story but comes up with a rather interesting variation.

Luc Wyder plays the wanderer who comes upon a beautiful woman (Arianna) in the middle of nowhere, and they exchange anecdotes in a conversation that lasts the length of the movie. In real-life they were a married couple, adding panache via this casting, and both sport impressive tattoos, moreso two decades ago before the craze caught on in porn circles to the extent it has today.

So it is Arianna who is the illustrated woman of the title, but figuring prominently in flashbacks she relates is Asia Carrera's character, and Asia gets top billing as a superstar back then. Both she and the rest of the cast is sensitively directed by Lee, with plenty of his patented ethnic femmes on hand, including Nyrobi Night who excels in an interracial d.p. threesome with Lee's stock players Rick Masters and Dave Hardman.

But it is Arianna who casts a spell, her mysterious beauty and long black hair mesmerizing not only Wylder but the viewer as well. One effective in-joke has her commenting on a vast tattoo of a mysterious lady on Luc's torso -the knowing fan will recognize it as Arianna herself.

As with most porn the vignettes are arbitrary but held together by the time-honored storytelling narrative device. Asia, her breasts not yet enhanced, is sexy as always, and their is a haunting quality to the show and its logical conclusion. Sex is performed bareback, another plus for modern audiences as so much of Asia's and Lee's work for major distributors was soon to become condomized in the safe sex revolution of Adult Cinema a few years later.