Skin Deep

Amplifying my contention that Brad Armstrong does best with "little" movie projects, "Skin Deep" 15 years later holds up as an entertaining, throwback type of Adult movie that benefits from its simplicity. Missing here are the hype, special 2-DVD packaging, and overproduction that hampers most of his self-inflicted "blockbusters".

Stormy Daniels stars as an overnight success, introduced looking mousy in her glasses and business attire as she manages a fashion-model photo shoot. Still photographer Voodoo, having fun with his Pepé Le Pew fake- French accent, needs four girls to portray the four seasons of the year, so boss Jonathan Morgan (effective briefly in a NonSex Role) presses Stormy into action to fill in for a missing model. The rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

Filmmaker Brad Armstrong is clearly reviving the sort of romantic film popular in the 1940s, when so many wonderful leading ladies ranging from Jean Arthur to Marlene Dietrich ruled the roost in a pleasant format. Setting is a 1940s building, with doorman Trevor Zen destined "to get the girl" in the final reel, and many a cliché of old Hollywood films thrown in. But the XXX sex scenes are hot-hot-hot, and that makes for a satisfying result, especially in contrast with today's all-sex boredom festivals that dominate the post-storytelling market place.

Voodoo has a field day, not only opening the film by humping his real- world wife Nicole Sheridan, but later getting to participate in a show- stopping three-way involving Nicole and Stormy. The other models represent diverse casting, with tall, tall (in heels towering over everybody) Faith Adams as the bitchy one, while April is the prettiest and Nikita Denise is perhaps the sexiest (with her fabulous accent).

Brad keeps matters light and frothy and proves that the clichés of yesteryear still play perfectly well. This is a lesson learned by Stormy, whose nearly 100 films as a director later in her career generally follow a similar line of adapting various Hollywood genres and patterns to X- rated screenplays.