Last Resort

"Last Resort", shot six months ago but only recently released on Wicked Pictures' website, marks a return to the rom-coms Stormy Daniels successfully directed for the label over a decade ago. Whether fans are still interested in this Old School format of Adult Cinema is the open question, given the extreme dominance of all-sex/gonzo content in recent years.

Though the film lacks the genuine laughs and scope of the work Stormy used to deliver (partly due to today's very low-budgets for XXX features), I enjoyed in a nostalgic way her upbeat, no-malice approach to the trivial travails of a romantic couple Jewelz Blu and Will Pounder, neither a marquee name in porn. Since Wicked made its bones originally through masterful adherence to the star system on VHS and DVD, ranging from Jenna Jameson and Chasey Lain through to Stormy and (ongoing) Jessica Drake, it's problematic whether the B team will attract audience interest from the streaming generation.

The duo were high school chums but never consummated their mutual attraction. Now they're thrown back together in screwball comedy fashion: Will has cold feet about his upcoming arranged marriage to cutie (underage-looking) Haley Spades, but his pals including Seth Gamble and Barrett Blade (latter doubling as the show's cinematographer) insist on going through with his bachelor party anyway. The strippers arrive to service them at the party, and besides sexy Pristine Edge and newcomer Kate Dalia, Jewelz is one of the strippers.

No surprise that Stormy's screenplay is pro-stripper, given her own career as dancer/superstar actress/director, so it's believable that Jewelz and Will will get back together and get serious about each other this time -in fact, by the rules of a rom-com it's inevitable. Story has Spades killing off her chances via an opening sex scene in which her cosplay/role-playing sex with Oliver Davis finds her caught in the act by Will.

His parents, played comically by Stormy and her co-star from way back when Evan Stone, need Will to marry Haley because of a big real estate deal they have underway with her dad. But central to the plot is the very cute subplot of Jewelz' hippie-era holdover parents Katie Morgan and Tommy Pistol as owners/managers of a nudist resort and their amusing antics.

Especially today when extreme right-wing forces are rapidly taking over America by hook and by crook, I found it refreshing to watch a carefree paean to the hippie ethos of an earlier age -not ridiculed as usually done in the media (see: the huge hit "Mad Men" for example) but only lightly mocked. Suffice it to say that Will's self-realization by joining with the free-spirit hippies is applauded here.

Sexy cast does a fine job, and Pistol, whose latter-day work generally turns me off, is quite effective expressing the '60s nostalgia, and gets the movie's biggest laughs with his strategically-worn man-purse (he calls it by a loftier name) that brings back memories of those coy Nudist Camp movies popular back in the '50s.