Latex (Michael Ninn, 1995)

After scanning my retina for, oh, I'd say, a minute or two, Michael Ninn's Latex finally granted me access to its shiny, dystopic, dysphoria-causing universe. (Hold up. The first two I understand. But dysphoria-causing?) There are a shit-ton/fuck-ton of close-up shots of crinkly ball-sacks in this movie. Need I say more? I didn't think so. Anyway, the reason I said the film "finally granted me access" was because I think this was my third attempt to watch and review this mid-1990s masterpiece. Yeah, that's right. My third! And you'll notice I didn't call it a mid-1990s "porn" masterpiece. Yeah, the film is that good. Of course, I wouldn't have called it a masterpiece, porn or otherwise, during those initial viewings. I don't know why it took me so many tries. But either way, here we are. I think one of the main reasons I didn't care for the film the first few times was because I was watching it as a porn flick. In other words, I was judging it based on its ability to arouse/titillate. Quirky fun-fact: This was the first film I watched after starting hormone replacement therapy (a.k.a. HRT). I know, pretty awesome, eh? Well, I think so (I've never felt better in my life... it's like I've been reborn or some gay ass shit like that). Now, I'm not saying my estradiol-soaked noodle factory reacted any differently to the slick images Michael Ninn threw my way over the course of the film's two hour running time than my testosterone-soaked one. But it was quite telling that I finally "got" what Ninn was getting at after starting to medically transition. It should be noted that both pre-HRT, pre-everything Yum-Yum and HRT Yum-Yum found some of the sex scenes to be dull/uninteresting. That being said, HRT Yum-Yum practically ate up the style clinic that director Michael Ninn and screenwriter Antonio Passolini pull off with this movie.

As with most movies of this type (porn movies that try to be different), I got a perverse thrill out of knowing that Latex probably frustrated the living fuck out of those who like to masturbate to stuff like this. I don't know, just the mere thought of someone desperately trying to jerk off to this, and failing in spectacular fashion, brings me so much joy.

Now, is it as subversive as the films of Rinse Dream or even Gregory Dark? No. But I found it quite telling that the film's goatee-sporting, quasi-mulleted hero's first line is: "I know you're watching me." A repeated phrase uttered in Rinse Dream's Nightdreams and Dr. Caligari.

Arrested for vagrancy, Malcolm Stevens (Jon Dough) finds himself in locked up in an asylum... Oh, did I mention that the world is a totalitarian, fascist nightmare-scape? Well, it totally is. Under the observation of a bunch of doctors in lab coats (again, very Nightdreams), they're interested in Malcolm because he seems to have a special gift. And while no-one, not even Malcolm, can explain what his special gift is exactly, it's agreed upon that it involves sex in some shape or form.

Spotting a billboard through his cell window, Malcolm fantasizes about the woman on said billboard. A vivacious blonde named Kato (Sunset Thomas), Malcolm imagines the billboard woman masturbating with yellow latex gloves in a retro-style kitchen.

After she's finished pleasuring herself, Kato has sex on a vintage kitchen table with her husband.

The great thing about this scene was... (Sunset Thomas' tits!) I was going to say the attention to detail that went into creating that retro-style kitchen... but I guess her tits were nice. Personally, I dug her black headband. But what can I say? I'm a sucker for hair accessories, especially those that serve a purpose.

Did anyone else wonder what Kato had stocked in those vintage kitchen cabinets of hers? I was kinda hoping she had 'em stocked with pickles, corn chips (with flax-seeds baked right into the chips), salted chickpeas and gummy bears. Damn it, why did I mention pickles? I want to consume an entire jar right this minute. But don't worry, I'll finish this first.

I'm not entirely sure what was going on in the next scene. But I do know that it features Malcolm having sexual intercourse with a "Latex Pony Girl." (A latex what?) It's a fetish thing.

Anyway, while I loved Emerald Estrada's pony look. The spotty, haphazard manner in which Malcolm's taint was shaven was tremendously disappointing. Is there anything more disheartening than a taint that's been improperly shaved? Probably not.

On that yucky note, I think now is as good a time as any to mention the soundtrack. While some people seem to enjoy watching people fuck on film/video, I now find the act itself to be extremely revolting and, not to mention, tedious as all get out. Thankfully, all that gross/yawn-worthy fornicating is set to a non-cacophony of warm synthy goodness cascading over the top of a surplus of choice funky beats. Composed by Dino Ninn, the music heard throughout this movie was a virtual lifesaver. Seriously, their music is a motherfucking godsend. I doubt that could have made it through the whole thing without it.

It turns out that Malcolm, simply by touching you, can "see inside of people." And what he sees is usually sexual in nature.

When he touches Tiffany Million, the doctor currently interviewing him, on the arm, we're treated to a scene where she gets poked and prodded by Sam Cooper, her male assistant.

If you have a thing for rough lesbian sex, colourful latex and bob wigs (blonde and brunette), you'll love the next sequence. Played by Debi Diamond, Lacy Rose, Barbara Doll and Tasha Blades, the wonderfully uncouth antics of these swaying "latex vixens" eat up a huge chunk of time.

Since Malcolm can't visualize himself in his fantasies, he uses an avatar. And at the tail end of the day-glo lez-fest, Malcolm takes the form of a man named Brick Majors. As the synths wind down and the beats begin to fade, Brick spews a modest dollop of creamy, non-watery tartar sauce-esque jizz from the smallish opening located at the tip of his clearly worn out penis.

(Smallish opening?!? Don't you mean his urethra?) Ure kidding, right? That word makes my skin crawl. No, smallish opening is way less upsetting.

I didn't think I would say this, but the acting of Jeanna Fine (Party Doll A Go-Go!) and Jon Dough in that black and white flashback scene during the Julie Show segment (Malcolm eventually becomes a minor celebrity and the toast of the "psychic underground") is pretty fantastic. It was, like, all dramatic 'n' junk. Bravo.

Of course, the top-notch pathos of that scene quickly falls by the wayside when the vapid TV hostess (Juli Ashton) is double-teamed by two of her long-haired crew members. Wait, I think one of the crew guys was played by Tom Byron. Man, does this guy get around or what? In the year 1985, Tom starred in White Bunbusters. In the year 1995, Tom appears in Latex. That's a ten year gap! I wonder how many people Tom penetrated during that period. Hmm, I wonder.

Oh, would you look at that, we're back where it all started: Watching Sunset Thomas getting fondled and fucked on a vintage kitchen table. Great.

Culminating with something called the "mega-splash" (don't ask), Latex, despite the repulsive/repetitive nature of the sex, is always interesting to look at.

On the cusp of being a cyberpunk classic and sort of smart in places, Michael Ninn has made a film that is glossy, smooth and super... cool, I guess. And I'm not just saying that because everyone from start to finish is encased in latex. Or maybe I am. At any rate, if only they could have trimmed some of sex scenes. I know, what's the point of porn without porn? But still, do we really need to see that much fucking? I'm being told that we do. Whatever. Now, where are those pickles at? Yum. No foolin'. I need salt, goddammit!

Party Doll A Go-Go!: Part 2 (Rinse Dream, 1991)

What must have the stained raincoat crowd thought when they inadvertently stepped in front of this chatty smorgasbord in 1991. It's not the clearest vision I've ever had, but I can almost make out their broken little faces crumbling under the sheer of weight of the weirdness transpiring on-screen. No fooling around, the operational integrity of their masturbatory instincts must have been severely compromised by this salacious enterprise. In that, the rapid fire manner in which it belittles the audience's erotic comfort zone is just as prominent as it was in the first chapter. Besides, given the fact that the radioactive lingerie, freeze-dried ornamental grasses, toxic space flowers, rustic fence materials, dangling clumps of rope, and the chain-adorned mattresses from the first film were probably still lying around the no doubt gamy-as-fuck set, and since the cast's genitals were already percolating with a lustful hunger, you'd be totally insane not to make Party Doll A Go-Go! Part 2. Taking what worked from the first chapter, jiggling it ever so slightly and not expanding on it one bit, all Stephen "Rinse Dream" Sayadian (the genius who brought us Dr. Caligari, Nightdreams, and Café Flesh) does is switch up the penetration pairings, change the licking order, move around the excellent music of Double Vision, and, boom, just like that, you've got yourself an equally unwell sequel.

If the first telecast celebrated irregular insertion, then part two downright glorifies it. Behold, as a wide array of avant-garde items are willfully jammed into crevices big and small. This cranny packing is made possible thanks to the generous assistance of the non-unionized members of a demented crew of sentient female persons: Jezabel, the mysterious one; Lannie, the lascivious one; Roxi, the kinky one; Vivian, the seductive one; Tantrum, the hippest one; Vera, the lubricious one; and Echo, the troubled one. All their rambunctious girl biscuits are hungry for firm boy jerky. Well, some are itching for the taste of a special kind of secret secretion. Which just goes to show that one should never assume what one might desire to temporarily have placed/inserted inside a body cavity.

You know you're watching a Rinse Dream project the moment Jezabel (Jeanna Fine) says, "I know you're watching me," just as Randy Spears is about to orally ravage her labia and surrounding girl-area. This paranoid statement is a reoccurring slice of dialogue that permeates most of Mr. Sayadian's work. A sentence that is an obvious a dig at the voyeuristic temperament of pornography, the judgmental way Miss Fine stares directly at the camera, spouting non-sequiturs like a banshee, is meant to be a direct challenge to the audience.

The second coupling features Lannie (Patricia Kennedy) and Roxi (Nikki Wilde), and is all about utilizing your mouth as a weapon for sex. The expression "girl homo" (a Nikki Wilde holdover from part one) is used with a freewheeling wantonness in this segment. In fact, Nikki takes a second to utter the two words just as her entire face is about to become muffled by the crumpled flesh of Patricia's damp expanse; an "artificial man-thing" is implemented when Nikki's face grows tired of being muffled.

A securely built Vivian (Raven) is the next party doll to get her tender places tinkered with. And I say, "tinkered," because this probing sequence is all about using sexual metaphors of an automotive nature. Sporting slicked back hair this time around, Tom Byron goes through the pounding motions, laying into Raven's finely tuned organic structure, as Tantrum and Echo dance wildly in their day-glo underwear, periodically shouting out the names of car models from the 1960s.

Exhausted from all that boogieing, Tantrum (Madison) relaxes against an erratic hodgepodge made out of metal and lace, and proceeds to allow Vera (Bionca) to vigorously lick the appetizing viscosity out of her consecrated cookie juice. The spunky Madison, still the sexiest party doll on call, has the off-kilter vibe down perfectly. I mean, not once does she resort to spouting the hackneyed, "fuck me," "pound my pussy," or the classic, "don't you dare draw energy from my squirting mess, you glorified hat rack!" Even when Bionca is attempting to cram one of her pointer-than-usual nipples into her gaping sex maw, the angelic sex kitten keeps it together like a bitter butler on his last day of closeted homosexual servitude.

The closest thing Party Doll A Go-Go! Part 2 has to a conventional plot is the situation concerning Echo (Tianna) and her inability to stop "The Wiggle." This strange, yet immensely groovy affliction was acquired by the short-haired blonde with the wonderfully circular backside during the encounter with Tantrum and Vera. The other party dolls try to snap her out of it by suggesting that she ingest the contents lying in wait somewhere inside Peter North's purposeful ball sack. I'm no scientist (obviously), but the milky man-medicine seemed to do the trick. Sure, none of it is actually ingested, but only a major tool would deny the healing power of Mr. North's Halifax-reared cock.

At any rate, I'm surprised they didn't make a PDAGG part three. They're fun movies with endless possibilities for crotch-based mayhem. Hello, you've reached Party Doll A Go-Go! Uh-huh.

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Party Doll A Go-Go! (Rinse Dream, 1991)

The prospect of watching people vigorously collide with one another in a veiled attempt to uncork fluid has never appealed to me. I mean, unless these fluids are going to be used by two married individuals in order to manufacture a baby in the near future, I don't want any part of it. Seriously, the idea of my precious eyeballs devouring the indecent image of strangers jabbing at each other with their respective holes makes my skin crawl. However, if the impeccably brained Rinse Dream (a.k.a. Stephen Sayadian) is in charge of the filming the fornication of fancy-free fissure sniffers in a gaudy environment, then my liquid paper/personality/inner Men Without Hats groupie would gladly allow itself to be corrupted by this strangely erotic display. This earth-born figure, a director who helped reinvent on-screen intercourse with the surreal Nightdreams and the post-apocalyptic Café Flesh, attacks our sexual synapses yet again with the wonderfully loquacious Party Doll A Go-Go!, a nonsensical ode to repetitious yakety-yak, neon lingerie, and that special kind of tingle. Moving from one act of tender copulation to another with the speed of a goofy yogurt salesmen, the debased production feverishly splices stream of consciousness dialogue with scenes of customary and uncustomary penetration. The forcible ejection of semen is a standard indicator as to when a scene is over, yet there's a free flowing, almost tongue-in-cheek attitude when it comes to structure. Ignoring the normal constructs that constitute your standard fuck film, Rinse Dream hates your erection, thinks your moist undercarriage is stupid, and has no interest in soothing your loneliness. It's obvious that he despises couch-based pornography, as the wacky words being uttered and the abstract pelvic thrusting are constantly at odds with one another.

The first scene has the bubbly Madison and the forthright Tianna double-teaming Tom Byron's already unfurled penis on a bed made out of what looks to be chains and barbed wire. Well, actually, Tianna spends most of her time mock consuming the thankfully nonexistent contents of Madison's attractive asshole (I've memorized every groove and every contour of her delicious anus). At first, I was a little put off by this display (it appeared unseemly and a tad uncouth), but the more she lapped it up, the more appealing it became.

Spouting the ridiculous dialogue with a surprising amount of flair and a giddy brand of self-possession, Madison and Tianna make a terrific pair of gyrating tart-bunnies. I loved Madison's enthusiasm when it came to tilting her head and spewing nonsensical gobbly-gook, and Tianna's perfectly round backside and coital mantra, "Ride that stranger like a rocket 88," had me reaching for my head medicine.

Scene number two involves the aptly named Raven and a wide-eyed Nikki Wilde tasting each other's clitorises for a solid ten minutes. Since this is a so-called girl-on-girl scene, the editing is a little more subdued. Boasting the cool audio art by Double Vision , which throbs effectively on the soundtrack (it's a delightful mishmash of surf rock and new wave), the scene also features Madison and Tianna, who appear sporadically to interject the proceedings with whimsy and verve.

Oh, and don't be alarmed by the fact that Miss Wilde says "girl homo" every once and awhile; it's her thing. Anyway, call me crazy, but the manner in which Raven dined on Nikki's young lady speckle reminded me of a neglected soup tin lid. Hear me out, finally getting the mouth-based attention it so justly deserves, the lid moans seductively in response to each forceful lick. (In case there's any confusion, I'm referring to the side of the lid that's been living a solitary existence in the dark ever since the consommé was consummated.)

A redheaded Patricia Kennedy, who is "hotter than a Kansas City barbeque," brings a significant quantity of supple resplendence to Party Doll A Go-Go! with her brave portrayal of a youngish woman who gets properly poked and prodded on a weird-looking mattress. Performing the prodding is Randy Spears, an actor who gets to say various sentences that end with the word "unhinged" over and over again (though, he probably just said it the one time and they put it on a loop). While his member ain't exactly a "spear" (it's more like a vein-covered hammer handle sporting a protective helmet), he nevertheless wields it with an unsubtle grace.

While it's obvious that I have a soft spot for Madison and her animated proclamations, box cover star Jeanna Fine does an ultra-groovy job lashing out at Peter North's temporarily brick-like appendage. I was deeply impressed by how the gorgeous thespian was able to recite the Rinse Dream dialogue in such a brilliantly deadpan fashion. Judging by the way she carried herself in this film, you'd think her main talent was more in tune with the realm of Wendy Wasserstein, not making vein-covered dicks disappear. I'd go into further detail about her oral prowess, but describing acts of a sexual nature make me uncomfortable.

The proceedings go into overdrive when Bionca (attired in yellow opera gloves and bright pink stockings) and Peter North hook up for the final encounter. The editing has an extra hint of kookiness about it, the word "Bosco" is said a lot, and all the random nonsense from the earlier scenes is inserted liberally throughout Bionca and North's straightforward screwing. Culminating in a manner you'd expect, lot's of semen, but there's more going on than that. You see, Party Doll A Go-Go! is subversive cinema at its most frenzied, and unlike most directors in this field, Rinse Dream knows he's languishing in a cesspool. And the fact that he knows this, makes the viewing of his films all the more pleasurable.

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