Invisible

I'm infatuated with the brilliant films Adam & Eve released at the turn of this century, made by a core team including Nick Steele, Philip O'toole and Christopher Saint Booth, but "Invisible" doesn't measure up to the others. It's take on sci-fi is eccentric and at first engaging, but stumbles into vagueness and tedium.

It's probably a case of biting off more than one can chew, as a two-day shoot is hardly the recipe for an ambitious science-fiction movie, whether mainstream or Adult. Intriguing casting, starting with the exotic Adirana Sage as a most unusual "mad scientist" (who looks more like a fashion model) and various studs in ordinarily nerd roles, sucked me in, but O'toole's script soon lost its way.

With an alternate title "Liquid Dreams" displayed at the end of the movie, representing the code name for a secret government project concerning gene splicing and cell fusion, "Invisible" is really about Sage doing what all mad scientists seem to end up doing: experimenting on herself. Early on we hear a professorial type played by big-dicked Joel Lawrence lecturing on how one needs to trust one's senses other than sight and turn to feelings rather than rationality for true understanding. These themes dovetail with the creative team's mastery of the Erotic genre of dreamy, spiritual Couples Romances, Adam & Eve's bread and butter until the label later conformed to the gonzo, wall-to- wall sex preference of audiences and Adult Industry bearers of conventional wisdom. I continue to put up the good fight for preserving characterization and narrative stories as the core of Adult Cinema, but it seems like a losing battle.

And during "Invisible" that battle is also lost as the story is downplayed in favor of one lengthy sex scene after another. The set-up of labs and experiments and Sage eventually becoming invisible herself, turning into a Molecular Girl image that briefly provided quality visual SPFX reminiscent of an original "Outer Limits" episode circa 1963, but nothing much is made of this. Instead Steele unwisely keeps playing back over and over the few audio tracks recorded for the movie, creating not deja vu but rather an obnoxious effect that the cupboard is bare -as if he failed to get the cast on the set or in the dubbing studio to provide enough material. A femme computer voice, forerunner of Siri, keeps saying the same scientific mumbo jumbo over & over again, rather than enlightening the viewer on what's going on.

Sex scenes, particularly well-photographed anal action for Sage and two quality humping scenes by the great TJ Hart, justify watching "Invisible" even when its story verges on becoming invisible. Some moments of panache save it from becoming a total loss, as by film's end, a lengthy two hours away (in a period when short VHS features were the norm), Sage's feeling that she was invisible to her heart-throb Nick Manning gives way to an improbable happy Couples ending for the star- crossed pair of unlikely scientists.