Firestorm 3

Once more into the breach, as his career winds down, finds Howard Winters as Cecil Howard milking the "Firestorm" saga for a few more shekels. It's a case of too little, too late.

Set five years after the first film (which tallies with the time gap in terms of production dates), Part 3 features the same cast as Part II, minus the presence of Ron Jeremy (thank God!) and adding to the story Nina Hartley.

Too much old footage is recycled to take this episode seriously, but die-hard fans will want to seek out a copy on VHS or perhaps bootleg DVD to qualify as completists.

During the endless flashback footage from the vaults we get to see Tish Ambrose and Sharon Kane again, followed by Eric Edwards humping Kane photographed with wide angle lens distortion. And don't forget Mitch humped by Eric's big toe.

Tish helps narrate, recalling a phone call from private eye Michael Gaunt, leading us into the various characters and story line.

Edwards has written a novel about the oil scandal and Paul Thomas recalls humping Renee Summers, an excuse to recycle some more footage.

Ali Moore sitting in a diner recalls in flashback humping Eric...you can see the drift, porn's favorite cut-rate methodology of getting extra mileage out of vault material. Leslie finds her there as he continues to flee from the Arabs, as in Part II. John's sweet talking soon has Ali humping him, too.

There's a cop character named Coney (as well as an uncredited bartender) appearing only in Part 3 (aiding Gaunt's investigation), and he's portrayed by a crew member billed as "Mondo Scenti". By this point the boring story has lost all its momentum, but keeps soldiering on.

Summers visits Tish Ambrose and tells her how she adopted Claire's identity. After Mitch masturbates, Gaunt wants to become Eric's partner, working against Leslie.

Suddenly Nina Hartley pops up in San Francisco as Eric's wife Lily: she masturbates with a finger up her posterior, and then Eric f*cks her. After Eric finds Renee, who tries to tell him (and the audience) what's happening. Leslie is nabbed by the Arabs and taken for a ride.

Renee reveals that Claire is working in Lebanon, where they became best friends and she decided to impersonate her. Pure soap operatics intrude, as Renee recounts how she fell in love with Eric vicariously from afar.

This rather odd come-on works, and Renee successfully seduces Eric. Howard continues to shuffle his pack of characters (as filler): Ali visits Gaunt after finding his business card from her tryst with Leslie, and asks him to search for the now-missing Leslie (she's fallen in love with him).

Terrible ending: Gaunt asks Ali -"Are you a model?". Zoom in on her kisser: "I'm Caroline".

Whew! I'm glad that's over. Just another nail in the coffin of story- line porn.