All American Girls II: In Heat

I will admit up front to being a huge Shauna Grant fan. I have seen most of her films, and this one is the one that is worth seeing again and again. The action is hot, and the women are first rate. This is a first rate example of "the golden age of porn". The plot is somewhat "classic" (read clichéd), but the quality of the cast and the heat of the scenes play it out very well. Imagine, if you will, a group of beautiful early twenties women gathered on one of their numbers yacht. The stories begin, with flashbacks of course, and we see an extremely erotic series of stories displayed before us. A male castaway, rescued by the women, leads to a contest to see which girls story is the sexiest with the winner claiming the castaway (at least the first shot at him). Not a cerebral film, but one aimed a little lower that hits the mark again and again.

The box office success of the "original" ALL American GIRLS – which actually perfected the recipe that started with Svetlana's "cupcake" carnality and perhaps even before that with Bob Chinn's PIZZA GIRLS, that of the "girlie show" (a case could also be made for this hearkening back as far as the "nudie cuties" of the '60s, but I digress) – proved so tremendous that Bill Milling could not resist setting up a sequel of sorts. Three more were to follow (UP, UP AND AWAY, HEART THROBS and ORIENTAL JADE) but number 2 pretty much had them all licked in terms of visual beauty, courtesy of returning DoP Ken Gibb and one of the prettiest female casts ever assembled.

Foreshadowing some of the more convoluted further installments, a little more conflict has been added to the stew, a welcome reminder that Milling – especially in his "Philip Drexler Jr." period – was once a great plot-Meister with the likes of SATIN SUITE and BLONDE IN BLACK SILK. Before this gets you hyperventilating, there's still a bunch of former sorority sisters gathering several years after graduation, this time on a luxurious yacht cruising the South Pacific with actual location shooting taking place at Hawaii, Tahiti and Bora Bora. It's just that one of the girls, Laura (the late Shauna Grant at the height of her peachy perfection), is having relationship problems with errant boyfriend Brad (Blake Palmer, well before the hairline receded and the waistline careened out of control) who basically screws anything with a pulse, including scheming "best friend" Kimberly (future superstar Debi Diamond in her "Shelly Rey" stage). A captive audience for the girls' reminiscences is this time provided by Tom Byron, who fell overboard and is saved by the lovelies who want him to be the judge as to whose story turns him on the most.

This time, Milling can't quite avoid the trap he so deftly sidestepped on the first episode with scenery occasionally overwhelming the invariably photogenic if rather less energetic sex taking place before it. Cute Karen Summer, a very good actress as she would prove in Kirdy Stevens' TABOO IV & V, performs a memorable slow motion deep throat number on bus driver Ron Jeremy's sizable member as an excuse for why she almost literally missed the boat. Sweet Shauna couples well with Paul Thomas (see also John Seeman's underrated VIRGINIA) as the drifter she found sleeping in a hayloft at her aunt's farm in Ireland and does a splendid Sapphic with Diamond that can't be beat for sheer visual beauty. By elaborating on the premises that generate the sex scenes, Milling definitely sacrifices some of the heat however. Ironically, the only other really good number involves stunning Rosa Lee Kimball – most memorable in Chinn's riotous THE YOUNG LIKE IT HOT – giving Tommy Byron his well-deserved prize. If all you're in the market for is sexy eye candy though, this one's still extremely hard to beat.