Jane Bond Meets Thunderthighs

Ron Sullivan/Henri Pachard was never afraid to go kinky in his films and videos, and this garden variety spy spoof is no exception. The bait and switch is having huge character actress Layla as the title villain actually disrobe and have sex, a sight that will cause sore eyes.

Jack Remy made several successful videos in this series, but Pachard's is quite different in casting and content. The constant factor is Robert Bullock as Control, the CIA chief who plays it relatively straight and gets some solid humping under his belt before fadeout.

New Jane Bond is lovely and not very famous Eva Allen, whose blonde wig was at first disconcerting, but soon respectable compared to the even crummier blonde wig worn by villainess Layla as Thunderthighs. Latter is not only the video's bad guy but gets to recite (rather well) tons of verbal exposition as the video tries to seem professional and play like a real adventure, albeit shot on a tiny budget. Caballero has revived it on DVD two decades after release but the box is quite misleading (as usual) trumpeting its "Shot on 35mm" slogan, even though the picture is obviously shot-on-video.

There's kidnapping and skulduggery as an excuse for bondage scenes, with both Allen and her co-star Megan Leigh (as Theresa Titworthy) getting captured and mistreated from time to time. Thunderthighs covers Allen with whipped cream and starts eating off her body, as part of the program's never ending quotient of fat jokes at Layla's expense. The overweight actress even gets to sing (rather prettily and earnestly) "I'm in the Mood for Food" with suitably dumb lyrics, and is in charge of talking dirty most of the time.

But when she disrobes and has sex with her sickeningly submissive henchman/slave Wimpy (Joe Eliott in a lousy performance), it's reality time for the audience. Do you really want to see Layla's hanging folds of flesh and other unmentionable XXX content, more embarrassing than erotic? This is not meant to disparage plumper models - there are many extremely sexy women in porn in the hefty category (I currently prefer the redoubtable Samantha 38G). But Layla is not one of them.

At best, when Jane rips off Thunderthighs' wig late in the film, Layla briefly makes a suitable stand-in for the great character actress Shirley Stoler. The rest of the time she is several rungs beneath Nick Millard's famous discovery Priscilla Alden aka "Crazy Fat Ethel" in the camp department.

A young Randy Spears is disappointing as a nominal bad guy and Mike Horner is awkward as an agent working with Bullock who gets to hump the leading lady late in the show. Director Pachard has a dumb cameo as personal physician to Thunderthighs, Dr. Dildo, with a long rubber dildo where his missing hand should be. Another oddity is Pachard casting Sabrina Dawn in the briefest of roles - she shows her breasts but is immediately killed by Thunderthighs as a traitor in emulation of one of those Blofeld scenes. Joking in the script refers to Jane's previous defeats of villains like Yes and Golden Rod - the latter actually with Amber Lynn as Bond in one of Jack Remy's videos.