Pleasure Principle

Pretentiousness is David Stanley's middle name: a successful and prolific pornographer who tries to express himself artistically in an art form (porn) no one seems to take seriously. That puts him into a perennial Catch-22 situation: will pornhounds sit quietly and attentively through one of his pompous pornos/lectures.

Kaylani Lei's talent is stretched perilously close to her limits as she talks directly to the viewer, introducing with philosophical commentary many a skit, and taking part in some of them. It emerges as a hodge-podge of Stanley's concepts and gimmicks, realized with some impressive visuals but often silly and always self-indulgent.

Intended high point, which the auteur discusses in the DVD's BTS short subject, is a musical number (for which he also gets writing credit) in which Carmen is dancing with a guy in formal attire and top hat, who is later shown to be busty Lexi Lamour in drag, resulting in a hot sex scene. Replete with an old Victrola, 78rpm disk and old-fashioned jazz it is an achievement.

But for every successful skit he delivers a couple of hokey clunkers. For example, there is a cryptic pantomime in the manner of Silent Film (with deteriorated film look) of Randy Spears and Brooke Banner on a bus where Randy rubs up against her and delivers a cum shot on her thigh -no penetration or sex. Other than trying to appeal to a kinky Japanese audience, used to the local phenomenon of perverts getting off by rubbing against women on crowded subways (see the Charles Bronson movie "Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects"), this is pointless weirdness.

The philosophy here is close to David's mystical approach, emphasizing porn's usual anti-censorship, pro-sexual freedom propaganda, and adding goofy theories. He even appears on screen himself portraying an art critic in a black & white sequence at a museum, proclaiming that all art and entertainment is derived from "erotic rhythm". This is one of the better scenes, as Carmen touches a statue, bringing to life Marco Banderas and Ana Nova (bearing excellent makeup effects by Red Velvet) in a highly erotic tableau.

Ultimately the cop-out for this mess is "at least he tried" compared to 99% of pornographers who just hand in mechanical sex footage. To which I respond, he should have tried harder.