London Bangers

Wicked Pictures is one of the all-time great Adult Cinema labels, still cranking out its share of new titles, but hardly in step with the times anymore (c.f., its belated emphasis on condoms). Frequently tapping Eastern Europe for product and models over the last decade or so, it sent one Barrett Blade to London to bag some Brit superstars for this sorry & clearly mercenary exercise.

Rather than respectfully fund some British director and deliver one of the label's vaunted story films, they went cheap-jack and funded Barrett's airfare and a meager budget to sign up some of the best Blighty has to offer: Stella Cox (a very wise move), Jasmine Jae (getting all the promotional attention in the packaging), Lexi Lowe and both the talented Sienna Day and near-plumper fetish girl Harmony Reigns. Last-named Harmony, of fake red hair, tattoos and huge gazongas, she fared far better traveling to Spain to be manhandled by Nacho Vidal.

So what does Barrett Blade, one of my least favorite hack directors, bring to the table? Not much -his own camera-work is unimaginative, the settings look like bare hotel rooms, and the content is generic sex. Worse yet, he thought he could plagiarize freely (after all, 90% of what passes as narrative cinema from Adult pornographers these days is the plagiarism known as "porn-parody"), but he couldn't slip that past me. Each of the five vignettes presented here has the actress voicing over, enunciating ever so slowly but sexily, some intro b.s. in the identical format (sounds like tracks actually being lifted) from the typical daring! Media Group releases made by Anajali Kara or her mentor DiSanto.

Basically the result is a mediocre DiSanto video with condoms added to the cocks, to protect the innocent. Sensi, Britain's answer to Sean Michaels, brings his foot-long member to provide interracial sex content opposite busty Lexi Lowe, an actress becoming prominent at last but not landing roles commensurate with her talent.

Other British studs do their thing, but there is zero sense of connection, emotional commitment or even eroticism here -what porn wags like to call "chemistry" with their limited vocabulary. Jasmine is paired with her husband Ryan Ryder, but after so many XXX screen appearances together the bloom is off the rose for this couple, better straying to couplings with fresh talent than going through the motions for the umpteenth time.

My favorite Stella Cox has Luke Hardy's package at her disposal, but even her unparalleled beauty fails to arouse under the Blade man's supervision.

I notice that Ryder gets credited for second cameraman, varying shots with helmer Blade, so perhaps he will be graduating to filmmaking of his own. Wicked would have done better to let him have this shot rather than import a Chatsworth hack.