Porn Watcher

Do you have porn tapes or DVDs you haven't watched in a couple years -- or even longer? I certainly do, and last night I pulled one out from the very bottom of the porn trunk. I haven't seen this film in at least three years, and even though it boasts a stellar cast of top rate straight porn stars, there's plenty of reasons I haven't wacked to it for a long time.

Titled Satin Dolls, the 1985 shot-on-video, almost plotless release is set in the fashion industry. Jerry Butler plays a promoter who fucks both older fashion icon mother (Cyndee Summers) and her younger daughter to make his way up the corporate ladder. Meanwhile, sexy photographer Steve Drake (one of my very favorite straight stars) is shooting a girl posing in a bubble-bath, and he ends up fucking her (as if you didn't see that one coming.) Billy Dee plays a blind musician who has a three-way with two women, turning out not to be blind at all. And Francois Papillon (another of my all time favorites) is a male stripper who gives the high hard one of a hot young woman. What these last two episodes have to do with the fashion world is anybody's guess. There is also an extended girl-on-girl scene (and frankly, I couldn't care less about those. I'm here for the hot guys, know what I mean?) Besides Summers, the film features Bunny Bleu, Gina Carrera, Debra Lynn and Andrea Brittain.

Now, the year this video was made (1985) is important. This is the period when porn was moving from being filmed on 35mm theatrical stock to shot on video production. It is also the period when production quality was deteriorating at a rapid pace. It was tough renting videos in those days because you never quite knew what you were taking home (just like at the bar); an excellent, highly jerkable, cinematic experience, or something thrown together over the course of a day and a half. True, the latter might have some hot scenes, but it wouldn't necessarily hold together as fine, memorable porn.

The stars appearing in the films didn't inform the quality either. It seems your A-list porn crowd would work for any producer who could write a pay-check, and popped back and forth from well made, high-budget work to sleazy, film-as-you-can videos. And although Satin Dolls has an outstanding cast, and a couple of really hot sequences (I mean, face it, I did buy the fucker at some point years ago), it looks and feels cheap. There are no out-doors establishing shots, everything is filmed in bedrooms, livingrooms, and a bathroom, and I'd say from the look of the place, all in the same house. Director Jack Remy, who's resume is long and prolific, tried to give us the feeling of group sex by intercutting two couples fucking separately, but it's obvious they are in entirely different locations. All the intercutting provides is distraction as we become more interested in one couple or the other.

The 1980s low-budget videos made during this transition from film almost universally contain an annoying cost-saving element that frankly drove me over the edge at the time, and, I discovered last night, still makes me crabby. They would edit a sex scene together, and then show the identical sequence over and over, sometimes three or four times. How stupid did they think we were? We notice that he grabs her tit just as she says, "Oh, yeah, that's how I like it." We notice that just as his cock slips out of her pussy the camera cuts to her face in ecstasy. We notice we've seen the identically edited sequence four times in a row. Why not just shoot a little more film, a few more angles, or even longer sections of the same angle? Cheap, that's all it is, and it somehow makes the viewer feel that way as well.

The other inescapable problem with this video is usually reliable Jerry Butler. When I first saw him years ago, I remember thinking he was so sexy. There aren't many better sex-performances than Butler's in Taboo III, Sex Spa USA, or Pandora's Mirror. In Satin Dolls he is young, ripped, hairy-chested and very handsome (although you'll want to avoid staring at the blonde streaked hair.) In this stud's autobiography Raw Talent he admits he beat a drug addiction during his porn career. I'm guessing this movie was filmed before he hit rehab, because in his two sex scenes, Jerry not only has trouble obtaining a hard-on, but he fucks harder and faster than a hummingbird. He never lets up, never slows down, never has a moment of tenderness, just pounds away, faster than I knew anyone could fuck. You're just waiting for the nose-bleed and giggling to start.

Let's just say Satin Dolls didn't get me off last night. After watching it, I had to switch to a different video to finish pulling one off. And I'll be honest, these days I don't avoid videos from the mid-eighties, but I am very careful before buying one. I check them out online, preview them and see how wackable they are before throwing down my hard-earned cash. I'm careful of being duped, it doesn't matter if all my favorite stars are in it (as many are in this one), and remember packaging means nothing. As mother always told us, "Let the buyer beware." Damn it, mother was always right.