Voracious: Season Two, Volume 4

I celebrated the holidays binge-watching Season Two of John Stagliano and Lea Lexis's regrettable 18-part "Voracious", a chore with few (but quite remarkable in their own right) rewards. It resembles a fruitcake gift rather than one of those wrapped with a bow brand-new Lexus automobiles you see on TV commercials.

Lea and John have many a loose end to tie up, but not to worry, they leave most hanging. Episodes 13 through 18 of the season give us the fate of Rocco Siffredi as Vlad the Impaler, wreaking sexual more than violent havoc on the loose in San Francisco, as well as the easily predicted reversion to type of horny nuns who've been sort-of getting rehab at kooky Mother Superior Rain DeGrey's halfway house. The local dwindling vampire cult reigned over by the divine Stoya (cliff notes booklet included with the 4 DVDs calls her "alabaster", a good description of her appropriately lily-white skin for the role) also lingers, and even the uber-masochist of previous segments Deviant Kade (seeing his act you'll probably wish you hadn't) makes an uncredited fleeting cameo as Skin Diamond's human ashtray!

Worst aspect of Volume 4 is Stagliano's ill-advised decision to give over much of the footage to repeated (not once but twice) scenes of James Deen abusing and humping Stoya, chained to a rack in his apartment. She's the vampire and he's the Von Helsing-esque vampire hunter, but according to Alibi Ike Stagliano (see the feature-length "Bonus" BTS for his mouthing off) their romantic bonding is worthy of such tedious attention. He foolishly shot the three lengthy sex scenes, which play identically, all at once, not very bright if one is to respect the audience's desire for a modicum of variety. Old Sysiphus had a problem in ancient Greece similar to any would-be "Voracious Season Two" fan.

But what does it all mean, pray one ask? I guess it adds up to a foolhardy attempt by waning-in-stature Hall of Famer Buttman to regain prominence in a marketplace dominated by websites and streaming. So folks can stream these 18 episodes from his website, rather than suffer through the DVD artifacts so beloved by Old School oldtimers like me, who fondly remembers those bygone days of sitting in fleapit cinemas, hopefully all alone (for safety's sake) as I did for example back in 1974 to see (solo) Gerard Damiano's unsung masterpiece in all its Bergmaniac glory, "Memories Within Miss Aggie".

Alas, the Buttman's sort of self-proclaimed masterwork "Fashionistas" leaves me cold, little more than Cirque de Soleil as envisioned by the good old Marquis de Sade. For all its lousy lighting and editing, poor scripting and self-indulgently showy "can you top this" sex filler, "Voracious" did not satisfy my appetite for quality.