The Power of Love

With Nick Orleans directing and the divine Inari Vachs in leading role, my chances of passing up "The Power of Love" were absolute zero. Oddly enough, this Adam & Eve video made almost 15 years ago was entirely missing from IMDb until I added it recently.

It has the strangeness one associates with both Nick and Adam & Eve at the turn of this millennium, but the script and premise are too weak to make much of an impact. Fortunately the sex scenes, and especially femme casting, save the day.

Vachs, dressed in a latex fetish nurse's outfit, anticipating the garb one would find a decade later at any Ricky's store, runs a goofy clinic, giving herself the title of Goddess of Goodness. Guys are sent there, mainly by their wives, to be cured of weirdness - the maladies exhibited by our star trio of Evan Stone, Dale Dabone and Ian Daniels are rather ridiculous.

Treatment is similar to the aversion therapy made so famous by Kubrick (with poor Malcolm McDowell the recipient) in "A Clockwork Orange", and feature devolves into fairly bizarre mental adventures for them. Fortunately this consists of heavily stylized hardcore sex rather than some merely asinine delusions by current "visionaries" of the Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton persuasion.

Taylor St. Claire is Evan's wife and perhaps the sexiest girl in the cast, though Angelica Sin tops her in the breast in show sweepstakes. Several other terrific heartthrobs of the past show up, with Monica Mayhem, contract star Ava Vincent and stylized (also in fetish gear) Mia Smiles adding to Vachs' already hot performance.

I wasn't thrilled with the many condoms on view, but one has to bite the bullet and get used to these videos shot by companies during a safe-sex mania of years back. Before gonzo took over, they could get away with that practice without eroding their audience completely.

If Orleans had worked harder on his script and made this suspenseful and interesting it might not have become a forgotten film so quickly. Nonetheless the sexiness, beauty of the women and high degree of craftsmanship make it worth resurrecting.