Vengeance

Hardly the big-budget extravaganza Wicked Pictures is known for, Michael Zen's "Vengeance" nevertheless is a well-acted foray into the popular witches theme of porn. I would have preferred the ambitious approach of Simon Wolf, as in his trilogy that included "A Witch's Tail" a year before.

A solid quartet of leading ladies is topped by Serenity, who like the rest of the cast appears in a dual role, stressing a theme of reincarnation. In 1692 she is a witch named Rebecca persecuted by the Puritans, led by Lee Stone and Chris Cannon, each male outfitted with fake looking facial hair and wigs. They are the only males in the cast (other than minor extras), a rather chintzy approach.

Story cleverly mixes and matches footage from the past with a contemporary (turn of the 21st Century) story in which the new Serenity named Betsy is telling her troubles to her shrink Jewel De'Nyle. Jewel is present-day named Teresa, but was the head witch in 1692 named Tituba, and cast a deadly spell that got them both into trouble. Their fellow witches finked on them, in the famous hysteria of the day, and Kylie Ireland is especially effective as the villainess of the piece, both back then as Elizabeth and Liz now.

Lost in the shuffle unfortunately, and I have to call auteur Zen to task for this obvious misstep, is Gwen Summers as the fourth witch, who sides with Kylie rather than the leads. She is Mary in 1692, but in present day footage she has only a cameo dancing around with rest of the cast at a disco, but no 2000-era character name or role beyond that.

Where Zen succeeds is in the innovative and effective use of exploiting the dual roles during sex scenes. So we have condoms worn in the current 2000 safe-sex footage, inter-cut with the same actresses and actresses styled in 1692 fashion (guys with wigs and beards and mustaches) and the olden day scenes presented so that we don't see penetration (other than blow jobs) hence no anachronistic condoms. That solves a recurring problem with so many big-name porn company releases wherein fantasy or period scenes are ruined by the Safe Sex condom use.

Acting is good, though hardly the best work from talented Serenity, and Jewel is especially dark and effective as a convincing witch. Zen tosses in a fairly silly scene near the climax where Serenity declares "My name is Vengeance" and an inevitable "Vengeance is mine!" before engaging in some kickboxing moves to get even with folks who offed her 300 years ago in an earlier life.

After telling her shrink about recurring dreams that she's been having about the time of the Salem Wtch Trials, Serenity gets a mysterious phone call about how her name's on the list for a Gothic coven. Are her dreams real or just in her head? I'm not telling, just watch the film. All the women are hot, the film has HOT sex scenes and it has an interesting story to boot. It was supposed to be the next big thing from Vived pictures after Jenna Jameson's excellent "Dreamquest". And while it is pretty damn good and a film I'm glad to have in my small adult movie collection, It still doesn't reach the greatness that made "DreamQuest" so very phenomenal.

My Adult Film Grade: A-