Carnal

Presumably made as a followup to his "Jessica Drake Is Wicked" all-sexer, Brad Armstrong's "Carnal" (also starring Jess) finds him in a familiar mode - visually arresting vignettes displaying different themes, not unlike his earlier "F*ck" and "Lust". I much prefer his narrative/character videos, but this one is better than his recent work in Feature land.

The five individual vignettes put Jess front and center, but the varied concepts save the day. Blue is the color scheme for the opener in which Jess is styled in an insect-like costume, not as exaggerated but in the same vein as Philip Mond's "Insextz". Mond's innovations in that film and its forerunner "Zazel" seem to have influenced Brad's approach to similarly abstract content.

Another segment has Brad and his cast in vaguely Steampunk fetish costuming, for the usual group sex action. Another features many Asian beauties, led by the big-bust incarnation of former Wicked contract star Kaylani Lei -an effective all-girl exercise.

Finale carries forward a breakthrough Brad introduced in "Jessica Drake Is Wicked": integrating trans-female sex action into a mainstream release. It has Jess styled as a Queen of some ancient civilization, and through matched dolly shots and editing she is humped by three Black performers as if three versions of a single entity. Sean Michaels bring his long cock, clad distractingly in a garish condom (a chief drawback for Brad, one of the few pornographers to still practice Safe Sex on screen decades after the format was largely rejected by Adult Cinema consumers); Ana Foxxx humping Drake with a strap-on dildo; and beautiful trans-female star Natassia Dreams doing the honors on JD with her own cock.