The Girls Next Door

Lately Jacky St. James has been opting for character actresses rather than Adult superstars in her Mile High features, most evident in this engaging and surprising tale of a pair of female grifters.

This particular format has been done nicely before, notably in the New Sensations father-daughter variation "New Dad in Town" and the fun Stormy Daniels' mother-daughter scam "Scandalous". This time we have a magnificent performance by Mona Wales as the greedy mom who involves daughter Danni Rivers in her serial schemes to take prospective husbands for all they're worth.

She moves into an apartment building and first targets widower Ryan Driller, until she discovers he's got no money. But daughter Rivers discovers that his son has stashed away $600,000 in cash from illicit drug deals, so the game is on.

Living in the complex is property manager and her husband, a decidedly miscast Small Hands, visible tattoos and all, as a dogged police detective who suspects Mona is up to no good. There are excellent plot twists in Jacky's script, making for a satisfying romantic crime drama.

The unusual aspect here is that none of the three leading ladies are raving beauties, none of them resembling typical porn talent, which adds immensely to the verisimilitude of the storytelling, though making this a far from commercial project. More power to Jacky for not settling for mere eye candy, and so far resisting the trend toward wall-to-wall sex content.