Mistress Club

 

Picture: C-     Sound: C+     Extras: C -     Main Program: D

 

 

What specific industry can be out of ideas, dealing with censorship, be played out and still be a multi-billion dollar entity?  Try the world of sex films, or really, sex videos.  There is the usual hardcore type we don’t bother covering and the soft core we come across by default.  Recently, we got to the lame softcore “art” flick Secret Things, which was very overrated and silly.  Now, we have the more obvious, non-art feature The Mistress Club, which is so old that the year of production is not even on the disc or materials.

 

For those looking for an X-rated title, this one is on the edited R-level, the kind that is likely so otherwise, but was cut for supposed cable presentations.  That is cheesy, even if the women look good.  Funny how the men are particularly edited and covered up, though this has a female director.  It is also symptomatic of the kind of glut that the industry has run into since it went to tape in the 1980s.  Why this is being issued in such a mainstream way is odd, but the idea is to get some females someone knows (Penthouse Magazine “Pet” Shauna O’Brien, American Virgin’s Kira Reed), but this is just lame.  They all have to seduce men who all look the same and have sex with them to be part of the title club.  Sex being taped this tiredly deserves to be skipped, while the “story” is pointless, of course.  Titles like this seem to be behind the times.  With AIDS all over and amateur sex videos being the latest rage, this non-cinema is going to look worse as digital High Definition kicks in.

 

Speaking of picture, this one is particularly bad.  The full frame 1.33 X 1 image looks like it was shot on video than transferred to film and is hazy throughout.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is adequate at best and there are no extras.  This one is better skipped.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo