Voracious: Season Two, Volume 1

John Stagliano has become the Barry Goldwater of porn, adopting latter's famous motto, edited by me as "Extremism...is no vice." Yes, following in the horrible footsteps of Max Hardcore (and under the influence of Rocco Siffredi, one of his leading men here) the Buttman has gone over to the dark side of Adult Entertainment, gonzo division.

That's a shame, because there are many, if only fleeting, visual images and ideas (all of which Stagliano showers Trump-like self-praise on himself for creating, as he spends over 2 hours on a desultory "bonus" BTS feature) buried within a binge-craving endless 18-part "series". I'll be reviewing the four volumes separately, mainly because IMDb has sorted them that way, and with varying casts it makes sense from a database standpoint.

First major defect, among many which sink this project, is the omission of Brooklyn Lee, star of the original "season" of Voracious. Johnny Stag and his creative partner, the great Lea Lexis, spend considerable time sitting at his Movieola and belly-aching about the no-show of Ms. Lee, cast in this sequel to continue her role as the curious heroine who became a Rocco-dominated vampire but was miraculously returned to human form by the end of that far better (than this followup) saga.

To hear Lea and John tell it, Brooklyn decided to retire from the porn wars, and didn't tell them -merely not showing up for work, so they were left on shooting day with one hour to do a major rewrite. So they blame her for the crappiness of what resulted -I can't endorse that blame-shifting ploy -they and particularly big John must take responsibility for messing up. Foolish me - I would have substituted another actress in Brooklyn's role, as is often done (but not with fab results I admit) in Hollywood -look at the junker 3-part recent "Atlas Shrugged", each part with an entirely different cast playing the famous Ayn Rand characters.

Instead, the feature's story makes no sense at all, and given my knowledge of the back-story (Season One) I was confused and dismayed early on. For the first 3 segments presented in Volume One, we have some interesting set-pieces, notably in a fortune teller's lair, as key characters are introduced. Stoya, on loan from Digital Playground, is terrific as the pale-skinned palm reader introduced as an aerialist vampire hanging from a big hoop in the set John rented from kindred spirits at kink.com, it being the basement former shooting range of the landmark Armory building that now houses crappy video shoots for internet addicts of BDSM as well as swingers' parties, all documented frequently on video.

The not-so-good-guys of the tale are scientists James Deen and Skin Diamond, who run a sperm bank (!), with Deen as a sort of Von Helsing character out to drive wooden stakes through what remains of San Francisco's dwindling vampire population.

Episode II is the most outre of the 11-1/2-hour tale, featuring an extreme BDSM marathon with emphasis on the M, threesome of Lexis, Skin and a fellow named Deviant Kade. Kade gets lots of credit for location hunting and other crew functions in the Buttman's BTS spiel, but his real contribution is out-doing such lesser lights as Slut Bottom Chris and other dubious performers who make a living exploiting their real-life fondness for self-abuse, ass play and humiliation.

So we're treated to an hour-long sequence of Skin and Lea delivering forced-sex on Kade, pegging him with out-sized dildos, suffocating him and forcing him to deep-throat extremes, cock & balls torture and all manner of abuse, supposedly "erotic entertainment". It is merely the legacy of Max Hardcore run wild, the stuff that industry idiots hand out awards for, during an era when storytelling is dead. Dollops of narrative are handed out in niggardly fashion by Buttman in Season Two of Voracious, and most segments end with a groaner of a one-liner that even Schwarzenegger would have trouble uttering.

Final nails in this project's coffin (no puns please) are Buttman's lighting and editing. Most of the show is under-lit for effect, ruining most sex scenes (brighter lighting where the action can be clearly discerned is saved for the nuns' segments of Volumes 3 and 4) and rendering the whole thing amateurish. As far as editing, unlike masters of cinema who benefited from complete control (think Kubrick, Kieslowski, Bergman, Fassbinder, Angelopoulos, Akerman and especially Rivette), Stagliano insists on length over clarity, padding his finished product with endless and tedious filler, most notable later on when James Deen takes over and just won't exit like Snagglepuss, Stage Left.