I calibrate Brad Armstrong's movies relative to their scale -it's not fair to compare one of his Wicked-proclaimed "blockbusters" (e.g., "Flashpoint X") with his modest- scale, more personal works ("Crossroads" -I prefer the latter).
This early feature he directed in 1997 lives on as a Jenna Jameson picture, merely because she became the greatest star of her time. But the sex scenes involve many talented femmes, most notably Melissa Hill, who has the second biggest female role and was a big name back then, plus obscure talent like Brazillian/American actress Barocca, scoring breast in show here in her only mainstream (read: non-gonzo other than"Orgazmo" comedy) credit.
Armstrong's writing and direction of the action scenes as well as stagings where plot is allowed to interfere with the generally laid-back, hedonistic atmosphere of a sex cruise on a beautiful yacht (the name tag of the boat reads "Dandeana" but the cast keeps referring to it as Adrianna) are terrible.
Famous high-point is a six-girl XXX lesbian group-sex scene on deck, with bountiful breasts as far as the eye can see. Ace cameramen Jack Remy and Jake Jacobs photograph the sex and nudity with great skill, but in the final reels the director unwisely injects himself into the show as a stereotypical bandito who hijacks the yacht with the team of Missy and Mickey G. as his partners in crime.
Their deadly antics play almost like a parody of such action film clichés but are so corny and poorly executed as to give the lamest of Steven Seagal's dozens of low-grade movies a sheen comparable to his first couple of great ones (e.g., "Above the Law", "Under Siege") by comparison. Flimsy plot of the baddies out to find Lt. Ryan Thompson (Vince Vouyer in a poor performance) and his smuggled drugs is tough to swallow, and the derring-do of Jenna and Melissa to outwit and physically corral all the villains is ludicrous.
All Brad achieves with this anticlimactic action is to provide fuel for that not-silent majority of porn fans who fast-forwarded on their VCRs back when this was made to get to the sex scenes, and likewise today skip the non-sex material on their DVDs, if they've not gone over to the Dark Side and merely stream wall-to-wall sex only.
If I'd been a fan back in the day, I might have sensed Brad's drift to elephantiasis at this early stage in his directing career, as the film (shot on video) is over-padded with so many actresses (wasted non-roles for the likes of Nikki Sterling, Alexandra Silk, Charlie and Angelica Sin among others) just as his phony award-winning spectacles a decade later would boast hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of gaudy production values to distract one from their empty centers. It's a shame to watch a talented guy become so self-indulgent.
