Women Love Porn No. 1

Despite Anna Span's presumptuous title for this series of amateur efforts, the fact is that women don't love or even like porn. If they did, Adult Entertainment would be quite different, perhaps starting with the lucrative Lesbian Videos subdivision, which are aimed at a male audience, underscoring my point.

Women are interested in eroticism, evidenced by the tremendous success of the BDSM lite novels like "50 Shades..." But this does not translate into a new market for hardcore XXX content, quite a different matter.

Span is an odd bird on the British scene, somewhat analogous to other "femme porn pioneers" (largely self-appointed) like France's Ovidie or Dutch-based Yank Jennifer Lyon Bell. They all have their moments, but generally belong to the "wishin' & hopin'" (to borrow from Hal/Burt/Dusty) school -namely believing there own hype that an audience exists for their woman-friendly work.

This compilation of five short videos shot by fledgling female erotic filmmakers ends up being five clunkers. The "winner" of some contest, evidently Span reaching out to encourage other women to follow her lead in directing porn in a male-dominated industry is sequenced last on the DVD: "Jezebel" by Katie Coxxx. It's set in a strip club (cheap set, not creating the required atmosphere at all), where Span regular and Brit Porn icon Steve Hooper gets a lap dance and sex from an actress named Maxine. It's not interesting at all, and like the other vignettes has nothing to say from any point-of-view.

So the five segments are little more than 21st Century equivalents of those good old stag movies that date back a half century ago as the predecessors of modern porn. With a blindfold test (i.e., no access to the credits) one could not discern that these were directed by women - they all play out as hackwork. Hooper appears as a dance instructor in Roxi Stone's "Dirty on the Dance Floor", getting to hump customer Emma, to set up the gag of matronly next client Jenny's reaction when she sees them in action -will she receive a similar happy ending?

Paula Porn's "Top MILF" takes a sort of a '50s kitchen-sink approach to the genre, emerging as merely amateurish as buxom MILF named "D.J." (not sure if she's an actress or merely a prostitute recruited just like they did back in the day of shooting real stag movies) gets to hump her son's friend while he's out.

Carmen Mariss's "Made to Measure" is a lesbian liaison between the costumer and the client, also suffering from extremely poor (to nonexistent) production values. Another star Span enjoys employing, Avalon, brings a bit of professionalism to Miss Whiplash's "Head of the Class", playing a school administrator who disciplines a trouble-making male student with sex.

Not much to show for this affirmative action exercise, merely demonstrating Span's heart is in the right place but hardly an advertisement for new talent, since little in the way of talent is discernible.