There are no credits on Blue Voodoo, to protect the guilty. It wastes a bevy of top stars in ridiculous action apparently made possible by new video technology but with crude results, especially the garage-cinema sound recording. It's a curio for scholars and completists, as well as those souls who prefer amateurism (and ineptness), a growing group thanks to the hype in recent decades over "indie cinema".
This is indie production compared to mainstream porn (all porn is "indie" by definition) and eccentric in the extreme. Editing is similar to that of a live TV show with dissolves and "go to camera 2!" style. The sets are threadbare with blank walls embarrassingly used for "fantasy" sequences. Some jerk submitted a $200,000 budget listed in IMDb -try dropping a couple of zeroes.
Most surprising element for me was the prevalence of soft-core over hardcore footage, tipping the balance, apparently due to the filler decision of having many tame striptease routines included in a junky night club set. Vanessa Del Rio as a voodoo priestess tries hardest to create a character and is of course hot in her limited sex footage.
A one-shot, obviously a stripper rather than a film actress of the time, Camille Sands stars as Black Widow, a mysterious woman conjured up by Del Rio in one of her spells. She's a Euro porn player with an impressive body, something out of Warhol's Monique Van Vooren school, and the main reason to catch this crummy video.
One orgy scene features some of the top '70s hams, R. Bolla and Joey Silvera teamed with David Morris, to be transported by Camille back to Nero's era wherein they play dual roles clad in togas. Their inane patter intentionally lampoons the show and its anachronisms, while the notion of Nero and Claudius in the same time is too hip for the non-script's own good.
The sex scenes are nothing to write home about, and the only lasting memory (positive at least) that I might take from this farrago is a remarkably nasty scene of Wade Nichols proudly proclaiming "My business is taking money from women" after he humps Serena, pocketing her hard- scrounged $10,000 and laughing at her expectation that they will get married. This brings Serena to tears, closest thing to acting here.
A proper film would have made something of the Black Widow character beyond her voodoo revenge on NIchols (he dies mid-hump with Sam Fox on top), but this belongs to a cynical period, not unlike today's gonzo approach to video porn but wackier.
As far as the claim of its being the first shot-on-video porn feature, that's hardly an accolade or milestone, and I've seen several early bondage videos (featuring the likes of Serena & Jamie Gillis) that might qualify for that dubious "honor".
