I Worship Pantyhose

Correct title of this porn exercise is "I Worship Pantyhose", though the DVD packaging garbles this to merely Pantyhose. Either way, master of fetish porn Kendo louses up an ideal opportunity to indulge a very specific niche, one that perhaps a more obvious devotee, Nick Orleans, might wish to pursue instead.

With the obvious exception of a finale starring Lolly Badcock and Cate Harrington in Sapphic embrace, the program is obsessed with cock worship, an unfortunate bait and switch. One suspects the logical viewership for the result would be a Gay Male audience, whether interested in ogling various big British dicks, or identifying with the pantyhose garbed women staring at and fondling (or imbibing) same.

This drastic error in emphasis may merely reflect a long-held bias in hardcore porn, dating back even before Damiano's revolutionary "Deep Throat", whereby the male member and fellatio to be more specific were judged early on to be the most cinematic of porn content/positions. Given the highly repetitious nature of porn, which with minor variations has basically used the same shots that were effective in "Mona" in 1970, redone unchanged 45-plus years later, the question of what works best was a central one. Just as the movement of horses perhaps signifies the Western genre better than any other specific detail, the blow job in close-up is XXX porn writ large.

So Kendo's various femme beauties can hardly be faulted for their attraction (lesbians omitted) to the erect cock, and the maestro records this particular fetish quite lovingly and dare I say it, fetishistically. Sure, they are wearing various designs and sizes of pantyhose, but that fact is more or less a given, and not the tactile excitement of the video. Having watched scores of Kendo's output, on my way (unfortunately) to seeing it all in the not so distant future, I am well aware that he exists in a bubble surrounded by yes men, so no one pointed out this obvious defect in the daring! Media release.

If one can tear one's gaze away from the proud erections, or better yet just use the menu to head straight for the lesbians, the lingerie and hose are attractive indeed. One vignette has the model pulling her panty hose up way past her chest, almost neck high for an odd bodyshaper effect. One money shot has the dick trapped between pantyhose and the outside world, messy but visually unusual. Overall, the tedium of a Kendo video emerges intact.

Drawbacks for the non-fetishist are the usual terrible cropping the master insists on using to destroy his images - no forehead is safe from extinction, with whole heads missing from time to time. One segment takes his focus-pulling fetish past the usual extreme, creating what felt like a minute or two (my exaggeration because I truly hate it) of out-of-focus shots -not artsy, just poor. In the '60s, even in sci-fi films like THX 1138 and 2001, there was a mania for shooting out of focus at the beginning of a scene to create abstract "what's that?" imagery that would strikingly be identifiable when sharp focus eventually came to fruition, but bringing back that ridiculous and dated technique earns Kendo many demerits.

Though the emphasis here is definitely south of the border, looking to Secondary Sexual Characteristics I would award breast in show to Carmel Moore, her dark nipples and perfect globes bringing some superstar class to a surprisingly no- name list of actresses. Yes, they are actresses even if Kendo insists on calling them models and following through by simply having them pose, not act.

With random snatches of black & white printing thrown in, about as random as Lindsay Anderson's use of same back in "if...", Kendo experiments with fairly bold color schemes, including scenes showing only pink & black decor plus the natural skin tones of flesh.

That represented the most interesting content in the languorous "I Worship Pantyhose", a boring porn video which reached its apotheosis in an IR vignette pairing Black actress Lala with Oriental porn star Keni Styles. Use of an imitation-Keith Jarrett piano score (from the library music stockpile) was horrendous and insulting to us ancient Jarrett fans -not sitting well with my memories of attending some truly moving concerts he gave over 40 years back. If Kendo exhibited one iota of Keith's artistry in his chosen field of pornography, I would gladly sing his praises.