James Avalon is one of many self-absorbed '90s pornographers who turned XXX into some rather pretentious navel-gazing exercises. This first edition of RED VIBE DIARIES has some effective vignettes but is marred by the auteur's excesses.
It is only fitting that the most pretentious of softcore pornographers, Zalman King of cable's "Red Shoe Diaries" fame, gets ripped off here. Instead of the ubiquitous (and pointless) red high heels of late night TV, Avalon opens with heroine Samantha Armstrong (busty Stacy Valentine) visiting a sex shop and purchasing a red vibrator.
I quickly got tired of the director's shaggy-dog approach, as Samantha spends most of the film writing in her diary about fantasies which provide sex vignettes, when not pleasuring herself with the title dildo. It isn't until the final scene that she finally gets down.
She's plenty horny married to workaholic neurosurgeon John Armstrong (Tony Tedeschi, the porn vet who looks more like a high school dropout, but full speed ahead). Her best friend Joanna (lovely Misty Rain, a real scene stealer) invites Samantha to join her girls' club, which turns out to be a ladies-of-the-afternoon brothel run by tall and mysterious Lavia (Euro import Laura Palmer, underutilized here).
Storyline comes to a head when Vince Vouyer (well-cast to fit his stage name) offers $10,000 to Samantha to turn whore and service him at the club rather than just be a bystander. She ponders the proposition, but sloppy script/continuity results in her noting the offer at $20,000 in her diary that night.
Best scene is a wet dream where Samantha conjures up a heavily made-up Female Demon (Maya) being serviced by a Black Demon (David Steel) in a very hot vignette, suffering only from the usual Stacy-as-bystander premise. Finale has her humping Vouyer -finally satisfying the overly teased fans.
Film's cynical ending is an excuse for the umpteenth iteration of the porn proselytizer's philosophy, which I find completely phony and tiresome. After noting "He has his work and I have mine" (re: her new life as prostitute), smug Samantha concludes "There is a little whore in us all". It's the self-justification XXX-ers revel in, and a specious argument.
Tech credits, including shooting on film, are way above average, making this a suitable package for fans who get off on watching Stacy masturbate.