Tracy in Heaven

Similar to the extravagant re-shooting of Ridley Scott's "All the Money in the World" to excise media pariah Kevin Spacey from the cast (replaced by Christopher Plummer), this porn fantasy starring Traci Lords in the title role was rejiggered after her underage scandal by inserting Gina Valentina as "Tracy" a couple of years later. It plays well enough to hide that fact from the uninformed viewer.

Oddest thing here is that the opening reel or two that sets up the plot and has Gina's first sex scene is presented in what I like to term Blurrovision -soft focus and distortion so extreme that one can't see what's going on. With that crummy technique you could have left Lords' sex footage in and no one would be the wiser.

Anyway, it's not up to the high standards one associates with pornographer Jerome Tanner, especially in his Legend Video features shot a decade or so after. Story is dumb, explicitly riffing on Warren Beatty's "Heaven Can Wait" (mentioned in the dialog) as Tracy (Gina) ends up in heaven to hump a Christ-like stud named Tom before being given the proverbial one more chance to reform and behave better back on Earth, or else. The else is going to Hell instead, a rather obvious telegraphing of the feature's lousy ending.

Action back at home is a bit confusing, likely due to the problems of reshooting and re-editing, with plenty of rivalries and uninteresting double-dealing going on. For the porn viewer, not only is Lords missing in action, but her even more desirable original co-star Christy Canyon has also been totally excised.

Marc Wallice's overacting is insufferable, and the fate of his character is totally at odds with the genre of romantic comedy/fantasy. This version, street legal as opposed to the kiddie porn status of Lords' original, is preserved on DVD on an Alpha Blue Archives 3-fer dedicated to supporting actress Taija Rae.