Private Film 26: Apocalypse Climax 2

The concluding and brief half of Nic Cramer's take-off/ripoff on the Coppola classic includes plenty of standard parody elements, imitating the imagery of the original and mocking its dialogue, but the show is worth watching due to redhead Vivid Video star Melissa Hill, proving why she's the finest actress in that label's troupe of glamour girls from porn's VHS into DVD eras.

In place of Marlon Brando's self-indulgent take on the iconic Kurtz character from Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", writer-director Nic Cramer cast Melissa Hill as Colonel Flurtz, a messianic military cult heroine whose goal is sexual liberation. It's not only an appropriate adaptation for a porn movie, might conceivably could have been instructive to Coppola had he sought to combine his anti-war movie to the hippie era, a la Donald Sutherland's hilariously anachronistic hippie character in Brian G. Hutton's WW II action/comedy "Kelly's Heroes".

Melissa takes the part and runs with it, particularly in a well-written lengthy monologue, directed to just-arrived commando Jon Dough, as she gives herself a sponge bath, lit like Brando in the original. She's spellbinding, and easily seduces her adversary Dough. This speech and their sex scene that follows are intercut with an orgy taking place outdoors, both taking up the bulk of the show's hour-plus running time.

Damien Michaels, in an over-the-top version of the Rober Duvall role, gets to assert: "I love the taste of poontang in the morning -it tastes like victory" after he's tasted the pussy of a Russian prisoner played by blonde Barbara Molat.

Less successful is Dough's head emerging from the water in imitation of Sheen's classic image. Such is the perils of ripoff rather than daring to be original, which ultimately hurts Cramer's movies and reduces them to less than a footnote (much less given porn's low reputation) to such varied films targeted including "A Clockwork Orange", "Looker" and "Under Siege".