I watch a lot of features by Nicholas Steele, a prolific, high-profile pornographer who blows hot and cold. "Vortexxx", poorly titled (it doesn't suggest the contents at all) is one of his cool customers.
Nick and his technical staff have obvious talent, cranking out technically well- made product over and over. But the inspiration is lacking here, making the Adam & Eve release a pedestrian one.
Story begins like a third-rate horror movie as a group of folk (in a horror-movie they would be teens or some semblance thereof, but here are overage porno stars) visit an atmospheric 150-year-old mansion, to poke around and stay overnight. It's merely an excuse for sex, as Tommy Glide teams up with Cytherea and Felicia Fox beds down with Cheyne Collins. It was nice to see Cytherea play an actual character, though unnamed for no apparent reason, after seeing her in dozens of gonzo/squirting videos over the years. Just one example of how porn might have gone in a different direction if the theatrical story films of the '70s and '80s had continued on, rather than the industry irretrievably having gone down the dull path trail-blazed by the infamous Max Hardcore.
Alone among the visitors Randy Spears is magically transported back to the year 1931, where he falls in love with the beautiful Monica Mayhem. Belying her silly stage name, the Aussie-born star is a typical English Rose, who in a kinder world would have been a graduate of the Rank Charm School and cranking out Gainsborough style camp romances instead of toiling in hundreds of porn assignments. She does get to emote as a well-bred lady from another era in this video but to no avail.
Script, attributed in the opening credits to "Peter Wood" and in the closing credits seemingly by mistake to the show's talented cinematographer John Noz Muka, is quite poor -nonsensical and cornball with awful dialog. (Chief dialog victim is Spears who at one point declares ungrammatically "Where's my friends?" and after a lengthy tearful flashback of Mayhem's sex with her sailor boy husband, who went off and died in WW I, Spears announces solemnly "War is a terrible thing". No, Randy, writing like this is a terrible thing.)
The sailor boy is underplayed, for a change, by Evan Stone, who wears his little white sailor cap even while otherwise nude having sex, because his shoulder- length hair is coiled up hidden away under the cap like a rastaman. I was fooled completely by this sleight-of-hand until watching the BTS short subject on the DVD.
Spears, on the other hand, is overacting, making his scowling or bewildered face so many times I wanted to change the channel, figuratively speaking. Poor script pays no attention to time or age believability: Mayhem is shown in the year 1931 but married to Stone in the circa 1915 wartime sex flashback: that would make the 25-year-old actress pushing 40 in the 1931-set film, while she looks her own age. Similarly, Spears is way too old to play an inquisitive sort of teenager in a spooky house, amplified by his flashback of similar lost love has the wonderful Sophie Evans humping him stylishly in the shower (artfully shot through translucent masking design on the glass shower door) and elsewhere, where she is crucially cast as a young girl off to college in Europe, never to see him again. Unless he is a cradle robber and the script doesn't indicate such, then he is a decade or two too old for that scene too.
Also in the cast are Lauren Phoenix and Stephen St. Croix as maid & butler to Mayhem, who have their own hot sex scene.
Film ends in a combination of pure corn and oddball touch. Spears has been reunited with Mayhem in the past forever, and his pals see a large wall photograph in the mansion (another anachronism in its look, not appropriate for 1931) alongside Mayhem as bride & groom way back when. Corniness evaporated as the photograph magically and subtly came to life like a rare shot from Chris Marker's "La Jetee" - I didn't know if this was meant to be touching or just another audience insult.
In looking back at dozens of porn features produced a decade or two ago, I am still confused as to the proper use of condoms on screen. For "Vortexx" five of the sex scenes are done bareback, while Evan Stone wears an anachronistic condom in his hump scene with wife Mayhem set in 1931. Mayhem eventually has a sex scene with hero Spears in which he doesn't wear any protection. Makes no sense.
IMDb lists this as a 2003 film with that as its release year, but the actual DVD bears a 2004 copyright on its printed label.
Nick and his technical staff have obvious talent, cranking out technically well- made product over and over. But the inspiration is lacking here, making the Adam & Eve release a pedestrian one.
Story begins like a third-rate horror movie as a group of folk (in a horror-movie they would be teens or some semblance thereof, but here are overage porno stars) visit an atmospheric 150-year-old mansion, to poke around and stay overnight. It's merely an excuse for sex, as Tommy Glide teams up with Cytherea and Felicia Fox beds down with Cheyne Collins. It was nice to see Cytherea play an actual character, though unnamed for no apparent reason, after seeing her in dozens of gonzo/squirting videos over the years. Just one example of how porn might have gone in a different direction if the theatrical story films of the '70s and '80s had continued on, rather than the industry irretrievably having gone down the dull path trail-blazed by the infamous Max Hardcore.
Alone among the visitors Randy Spears is magically transported back to the year 1931, where he falls in love with the beautiful Monica Mayhem. Belying her silly stage name, the Aussie-born star is a typical English Rose, who in a kinder world would have been a graduate of the Rank Charm School and cranking out Gainsborough style camp romances instead of toiling in hundreds of porn assignments. She does get to emote as a well-bred lady from another era in this video but to no avail.
Script, attributed in the opening credits to "Peter Wood" and in the closing credits seemingly by mistake to the show's talented cinematographer John Noz Muka, is quite poor -nonsensical and cornball with awful dialog. (Chief dialog victim is Spears who at one point declares ungrammatically "Where's my friends?" and after a lengthy tearful flashback of Mayhem's sex with her sailor boy husband, who went off and died in WW I, Spears announces solemnly "War is a terrible thing". No, Randy, writing like this is a terrible thing.)
The sailor boy is underplayed, for a change, by Evan Stone, who wears his little white sailor cap even while otherwise nude having sex, because his shoulder- length hair is coiled up hidden away under the cap like a rastaman. I was fooled completely by this sleight-of-hand until watching the BTS short subject on the DVD.
Spears, on the other hand, is overacting, making his scowling or bewildered face so many times I wanted to change the channel, figuratively speaking. Poor script pays no attention to time or age believability: Mayhem is shown in the year 1931 but married to Stone in the circa 1915 wartime sex flashback: that would make the 25-year-old actress pushing 40 in the 1931-set film, while she looks her own age. Similarly, Spears is way too old to play an inquisitive sort of teenager in a spooky house, amplified by his flashback of similar lost love has the wonderful Sophie Evans humping him stylishly in the shower (artfully shot through translucent masking design on the glass shower door) and elsewhere, where she is crucially cast as a young girl off to college in Europe, never to see him again. Unless he is a cradle robber and the script doesn't indicate such, then he is a decade or two too old for that scene too.
Also in the cast are Lauren Phoenix and Stephen St. Croix as maid & butler to Mayhem, who have their own hot sex scene.
Film ends in a combination of pure corn and oddball touch. Spears has been reunited with Mayhem in the past forever, and his pals see a large wall photograph in the mansion (another anachronism in its look, not appropriate for 1931) alongside Mayhem as bride & groom way back when. Corniness evaporated as the photograph magically and subtly came to life like a rare shot from Chris Marker's "La Jetee" - I didn't know if this was meant to be touching or just another audience insult.
In looking back at dozens of porn features produced a decade or two ago, I am still confused as to the proper use of condoms on screen. For "Vortexx" five of the sex scenes are done bareback, while Evan Stone wears an anachronistic condom in his hump scene with wife Mayhem set in 1931. Mayhem eventually has a sex scene with hero Spears in which he doesn't wear any protection. Makes no sense.
IMDb lists this as a 2003 film with that as its release year, but the actual DVD bears a 2004 copyright on its printed label.