Vivid Paradise

This is one of those "big production" pornos that tries to be a "serious" movie as well. There's a location setting and a sort of a plot, and a big sound track. But the characters, to the extent they're developed at all, are all either pathetic or hateful, and nobody's having any fun. They're all just kind of desperate.

With beautiful island locations throughout, this PT blockbuster offered the potential realized years later by the competition with Tera Patrick's "Island Fever" hits. While "Fever" succeeded on sheer beauty, dispensing with storytelling entirely, PT and his writer Tony G have a ridiculous script dwelling on pointless "Lord of the Flies" cliches, coming up with a dull, aimless feature.

It's hard to evaluate, given that I watched the 72-minute 2001 Wave DVD version, 20 minutes short of the VHS original. Vivid was in the habit of cutting its earlier movies to ribbons to serve the "new" DVD format, apparently taking the position that fans only want sex scenes, nothing more. Thanks for nothing, guys.

Literally dominating the movie is Jon Dough, extremely hammy from the git-go as self-appointed bad guy. Usually in this genre there is a transition from civilized behavior to animalistic "king of the mountain" action, but here it takes place immediately. He's crude, belligerent, irritating, misogynist, you-name it, at first sight. The eight survivors of a shipwreck soon move toward nudist behavior, but they concede way too quickly to boorish Jon's autocratic actions. He becomes their defacto leader immediately, and soon he is doing all the work, diving in the wreck to rescue cartons of food to feed everyone, while wielding a machete threateningly. He also treats the beautiful women as his instant harem, and most of them comply.

Leading a resistance is Stephanie Swift, already early in her career a talented actress to be reckoned with. The other men are passive Marc Wallice and more intelligent Mickey G., neither able to successfully stand up to Dough.

The designated Vivid star of the show is Lexus, impressively beautiful but vapid here. Very talented Missy and Alexandra Silk have poor roles, while petite redhead Deva Station's place in the show was quite cryptic, especially in this deeply-cut version.

Given the talent and beauty of nature, this could have amounted to something. But as is, it's tiresome and quite difficult to watch given Dough's lousy performance.