A Geisha's Secret

Bud Lee's sincere love and affection for Asian women is duly demonstrated in "A Geisha's Secret", a sexy and serious tribute to Japanese culture, albeit presented in a XXX context. It's one of the better early Vivid videos, and holds up well nearly 25 years later.

Brooke Ashley portrays the young American girl who after working for a year as a bar girl on the Ginza in Tokyo decides to bond with her roots by training as a traditional geisha in the house run by Sake (= Saki St. Germaine), the housemother. She informs Brooke that the geishas need to keep up with the times of a changing (post-War) world, but Bud largely maintains a traditional look to the costumes and customs of a bygone world.

We see customers being serviced (Randy West and Marc Wallice side by side on a couch enjoying sex with lovely Mai Le and Nadine, while Lee stages two hot bathing scenes of Sapphic sex as well. Randy Spears pops up uncredited to get his rocks off, and the film's highlight is a flashback of Nick East as St. Germaine's boyfriend who proves to be unfaithful to the busty housemother. Saki has a thick accent, so another accent handles her character Sumi's first-person voice-over narration for better clarity.

After Brooke's sexual initiation in the finale Lee ends the picture with an elegant touch of her crossing a bridge to join the geisha family officially.

The sex scenes both bareback and with condoms are well-performed if hardly the gonzo junk fans subsequently have voted for with their wallets. But it is encouraging to see an auteur committed to self- expression in the Adult genre rather than just cranking out generic porn scenes.