Master Bedroom

I just watched a long-"lost" Nick Orleans classic released in 1999 by Adam & Eve, starring Jill Kelly: "Miss Jackie's Full Service Salon", so it was most dispiriting to see one of his latest for the label, the numbingly boring "Master Bedroom". It's hard to believe an artist capable of so many wonderful works 20 years ago has lost his touch.

With a story credit to "Ian Ironwood" that should have been left off, "Bedroom" unfolds ever so slowly (even with ellipses like "One Year Later" and "7 Years & 3 Children Later" barely moving things forward) as a tale of a couple getting married and dreaming of moving into a dream home. That's about it, except that fetish-specialist Nick clumsily injects quite unconvincing bondage/domination/submission motifs into the picture, almost as if some producer breathing down his neck kept sending him memos about how commercial "50 Shades" clones are nowadays.

It might be possible to swallow the nonsense presented in this dull film, except that the most basic elements are botched. Star Tommy Pistol, delivering a very mannered, trying too hard to be subtle performance, is obviously hankering to abuse his lovely and fragile- looking wife Scarlet Red, but it takes a couple of hours before he makes his move. All she wants is a luxurious new home for the family, though I almost turned off the video to chuck it in the waste basket half way through when their kids were insultingly presented to us viewers as just the sound of patter of little feet -that's their entire, and entirely auditory, presence in the entire film. Almost as bad as those Z-level movies of yore where a car crash is represented solely as an off-camera disk jockey style sound effect of crashing/glass shattering noise.

Between acting (and humping cute) and later begging as a card-carrying submissive for abuse, Scarlet Red's character is never given adequate dramatic space for the crucial transition. It this movie were merely the saga of two S&M freaks raising a family, that wouldn't be a story. But as it stands it is neither fish nor fowl, just arbitrary filler to carry six lengthy XXX scenes.

An early catalyst is so overdone as to be risible and beyond Camp. Scarlet finds a fetish video on hubby's laptop, sex vignette titled "Bondage Kittens", and sure enough she later falls asleep and dreams the full-length video, for us porn fans to watch. It's ridiculous, as Emma Evins and Martina Angel crawl about in body stockings and little cat ears on their heads, typical of Orleans' famed pantyhose fetish, and then have sex with their bondage slaves Richie Calhoun (how the mighty have fallen, to such a non-role) and another guy. As a dedicated fan of A & E's vintage Adult classics, I would trace this junk back to a fine scene of fetish Cat Women in Nicholas Steele's film "Photogenic", made in 2002 when Orleans and Steele frequently collaborated.

Film perks up briefly when our stars go house-hunting, aided by mysterious realtor Ela Darling, and peer through a telescope at a neighbor (busty Krissy Lynn) in dominatrix gear abusing her slave Chad Alva. Chad used to be recognizable with shoulder-length hair but has a shaved head under his masochist black hood this time around.

Later, there is a slave orgy officiated by Adriana Chechik and Kasey Warner staged at a popular porn mansion I'm naming the "Master Bedroom" mansion in this film's honor. It has a cold, steely (stainless) black, gray and white decor that doesn't seem conducive to normal living, and was more recently on vivid display in a Gamma Entertainment "Pretty Dirty" feature titled "A Wife for a Wife".

But ultimately, we're left with just Scarlet & Tommy in a tiny bedroom doing dumb BDSM rituals including "collaring" her, and hardly worthy of the term entertainment.