Sheela, die Dschungelfee

I love when pornographers "take it on the road", exotic locations providing a romantic backdrop. It's a sub-genre dating back to '70s soft-core hits "Emmanuelle" and "Vanessa", and revived by Nick Steele in this smashing South American expedition.

Cutting to the chase, end title promotes the cause of preserving our world's precious rain forests, a noble message that would seem awfully strange coming from a XXX source, but Adam & Eve Pictures has a history of such social responsibility -notably in its other classic "Search for the Snow Leopard". To grossly paraphrase author Theodore Sturgeon's famous dictum, so what if 95% of porn creators are cruddy - 95% of everything is cruddy!

Ava Vincent is accompanied on her expedition to Venezuela by Dale DaBone, a guy she doesn't really trust given past history between them and her dad. Film mainly unfolds as pantomime with Ava narrating, and it typically verges into New Age inflected action, notably the guy they're searching for, Tyler McCabe (Evan Stone) well-cast as a mystic gone Native living with local girls in the rain forest and villain John Decker as the guy who always turns up anxious to exploit. Though fans and so-called historians of soft-core porn have redefined "exploitation" as a wonderful thing, in this context we're talking about Bad Hats.

The beauty of the scenery (including vast waterfalls), which makes for evocative outdoor sex scenes is enhanced by aerial photography worthy of an A-picture from the entertainment mainstream. Casting of many lovelies, including Euro talent like Rita Faltoyano and Chatsworth superstars like Brianna Banks ensures arousing sexual content, but the minimal gee-whiz storyline is also fun. Many European porn videos have continued in this tradition, such as an array of tropical escapism on the Private label, but they tend to be mindless wall-to-wall sex, which "Emerald Rain" is not. It has a dreamy, languorous pace and tone which I greatly enjoyed.

It's likely that the couples/Romance market that Adam & Eve specialized in making movies for a decade ago has dried up, but I give the label credit for its pioneering work, which still holds up exceedingly well nowadays. It's part of a vast body of watchable, vintage storyline efforts that provide solace for those of us who have all but given up on the current wham-bam XXX universe.