Romancing the Bone

If you ever wondered what would happen if a porn parody stopped at its title, look no further than ROMANCING THE BONE, a real piece of bottom-of-the-barrel dreck from then-newcomer Vince Benedetti.

Having absolutely nothing to do with the similarly-named Zemeckis flick, BONE instead provides an ostensible tour of Adventure Studios, a real life production facility surely familiar to NY porn connoisseurs from its appearances in various low-level XXX productions. Yet even taking the film on these terms, it muffs its simple premise: the "tour" consists of little more than 6 or 7 people sitting in a room for 70% of the film, only leaving in the last 20 minutes to pop onto a dungeon set for some light S&M. So much for historical documentation.

Central to the action is George Payne as Rod Sticker, a retired porn star. The first two scenes both feature him and are lazily set up in the exact same fashion, with someone remarking how much they enjoyed his performance in an old movie. The first scene features him and two black women on a jungle set (bordering on questionable taste), while the second finds him with a female explorer in a tropical cave. One wonders if there hadn't at one point been plans for an actual ROMANCING THE STONE parody that fizzled out and turned got into this, but both scenes' sets and choreography also have the weird staginess of a photo-shoot, so it seems equally plausible these might just be filmed sessions for magazines.

Subsequent scenes are pure filler, presenting a couple encounters from some of Benedetti's (superior-looking) celluloid productions. At least the film is honest and introduces them as clips from another movie (it cites PEEPHOLES, but having never seen that, I can't confirm). After that, Payne gets to teach tour member and aspiring porn actress Tasha Voux how to give a blowjob, and then everyone heads to the dungeon, finally starting (and ending) the "tour" only 60 minutes into the film. Some of the S&M stuff is moderately interesting, featuring whip torture and perennial pain pig John Christopher bound up in the stocks, but it's certainly nothing to write home about, and overall the film is a total dud.

I've seen one other Benedetti flick, the amusing 35mm feature BURLEXXX, and PEEPHOLES carries a decent reputation, so for the moment I'll chalk this up to a momentary lapse in talent and taste - or more likely a free day of rental left over at Adventure. Either way, I'm confident Benedetti's capable of better, and BONE's continued relegation to the VHS-only graveyard is a fate well deserved. This one bites.