Dream Girls

The late David Aaron Clark's screenplay for Sin City's "Dream Girls" is an exceptional take on the world's oldest profession, viewed from a sci-fi/fantasy vantage point. Bud Lee directs with his usual proficiency and for the most part the dramatic thriller is engrossing.

Finnish star Karina is a sight for sore eyes in the lead role, a buxom blonde who works at Steven St. Croix's experimental version of a futuristic brothel: just small cubicles with beds where beautiful prostitutes lie asleep, humped by male customers who perhaps harbor a necrophiliac streak. The concept of sex with a sleeping woman has been handled occasionally in porn, but nowhere as effectively as here.

Karina also has a boyfriend who she supports, an artist played by Chris Cannon (with some nice prop art works used in the movie). In a remarkable scene, he lies asleep in the morning and Karina services him with out his every fully waking up - Clark and Lee's converse to the story's main premise.

Feature turns into a murder mystery when Karina's BFF played by Chloe Dior is found dead in her cubicle of strangulation, and the resolving of this murder is well-handled. Of course our heroine Karina is later put in jeopardy, leading to a quite cryptic ending that stumped me - not bad for a porn flick, though I suspect most viewers would prefer a neater tying up of loose ends.

Besides Karina, Dior is very sexy and Lee stages a lesbian foursome sex scene in a strip club that includes other hotties Natasha Dooling and Alexis Amore. The ironic use of the movie's title is a credit to Clark, whose noir expertise was shown in his successful "Asia Noir" IR series.

A nice touch by writer Clark is the character name for Karina's leading role: she's Rem, the acronym for Rapid Eye Movement associated with sleep.