Fade to Black 2

Four years later Paul Thomas and company tried to cash in on their overrated "award-winning" feature with this sequel, but it's bad beyond belief. Or to put it another way, even worse than the original.

Some principal characters return, though the key role of porn star "Darla Royale" previously played by Taylor St. Claire goes this time to Vivid contract girl Lexi Marie. And PT himself returns as the weird porn director, but his steeped in bathos acting as a washed-up creep is embarrassingly bad acting at its worst.

Ridiculous plot credited to Dean Nash (after watching these two films my admiration for his work has plummeted to near absolute zero) has PT, his trusty writer Tony Tedeschi and their emmanuensis Darla back at their old tricks: fooling impressionable folk to become involved in their self-indulgent manipulations all supposedly in support of creating porn cinema "art".

PT's antagonist from the first film, a rube he bamboozled, returns - it's porn director from the sticks Curry, played once again by Dale DaBone. He's accompanied by a pair of thugs, and roughs up PT, insisting he's owed $1,500,000 for all the leading ladies PT supposedly stole from him (name dropping includes Jessica Darlin, a rather obscure reference), and an ultimatum to pay up within 5 days or else.

Story quickly goes completely off the rails when PT receives an offer from the Chamber of Commerce of a small town in South Dakota to direct a porn film there using local talent. So PT and his team go there, under the supervision of local go- between and supervisor Ava Vincent.

Once again, PT with the aid of scripter Nash mounts his soap box and self-satirically uses the assignment to try and coax "in the moment" performances from the Dakotan amateurs. Premise is intentionally stupid - this porn is to raise money for a needed sewer project for the municipality, as bond issues and loans are out of the question.

What is supposed to be a softcore porn project soon morphs into XXX action, very poorly directed and acted by the cast of fake-locals (familiar Chatsworth talent of course). And extraneous sex scenes with the likes of Jada Fire are thrown in for padding.

This nonsense builds to a series of false (and idiotic) endings, all intended to out-do the silly twists of the first film, and none of them in the least bit convincing. Nash and PT think they're making a statement about pornography but only succeed in embarrassing themselves and definitely tarnishing the reputation they built with such classic Vivid features as "Bad Wives", "The Masseuse" and "The Devil in Miss Jones" remake.