Caught in the Act

I like to discover a filmmaker early on - I was among the first to write (in Variety newspaper) about such future big-names as Sam Raimi (in 1980), Spike Lee (in 1984), Abel Ferrara (in 1980) and not so famous but talented Katt Shea (in 1987) at the beginning of their careers. So too with Red Ezra, one of the best latter-day XXX helmers, but CAUGHT IN THE ACT is one of his final videos and really stinks - no wonder he has been summarily banished to flunky crew jobs at best in recent years.

Instead of the complex and often riveting earlier works like SWEETWATER and HEARTS & MINDS, Red is just tossing a throwaway 1-joke sketch of a video here fully explained by its cliché of a title.

Steven St. Croix has hired Eva Angelina to direct a media campaign touting the qualities of his business. She tapes interviews with his employees, but they all have a habit of humping each other in the office, so faster than you can say Donald Trump, St. Croix fires each of them.

That's the entire video: sex scenes in the board room or on somebody's desk, punctuated by the "comedy" of boss Steven saying "you're fired!". And wouldn't it be a surprising if the video ended with St. Croix himself "caught in the act"?

The sex is utterly routine and the cast couldn't carte less, especially beautiful star Eva Angelina whose presence is the only reason this crap was shot, and who evidently was just fulfilling some contractual commitment. I despair when I sit through a mid-1980s porn video and realize how carelessly they were cranked out to feed the video store "new arrivals" maw, but in these post-apocalyptic days of DVDs and now streaming CAUGHT IN THE ACT reminds you that things are only getting worse in the race to the bottom. And you can't blame the absence of quality all on Max Hardcore and the advent of other gonzo slobs - there's something intrinsically wrong here.

The glory days of watching an adult film in a real movie theater are long gone, and I wonder if the coming implosion of mainstream cinema (now that home theater technology has improved to the point that fake IMAX and 3-D will not long sustain the theatrical experience) will likewise snuff out quality movies altogether.