Ron Sullivan's "Phone-Mates" thankfully brings a light touch to the porn comedy genre, with an able cast put through their sex comedy paces. It's another testament to the talent of the late, great pornographer, using Henri Pachard as his nom de porn.
Premise is not the expected phone-sex saga, but rather a goofy project assigned to hapless employees Joey Silvera and Alicia Monet, to come up with usable audition aural sex tapes pronto, at the behest of their boss (not shown) J.B. The typical boulevard comedy of musical bedroom-hopping is staged here in their offices instead.
Dividing up the interviewer workload ("You take Greek and oral, I'll take fetish and lesbian"), the two host a bevy of oddball applicants who've seen their newspaper ad for wannabes. Of course each one is tested out sexually, and the pacing and mix & match nature of this operation is how Sullivan keeps the feature lively and amusing.
Among the highlights are Ona Zee as an anal specialist, but especially Megan Leigh who is 100% disdainful of all oral sex, insisting on back-door action. She's interviewed by Joey's assistant Andy (smoothly played by Robert Bullock, one of porn's unsung best actors, and here showing off a really long dick). Leigh's tongue- in-cheek (but played relatively straight) dialogue is priceless, and though the video lists no script credit, who ever wrote this for Ron did a fine job.
Orgies inevitably erupt and the twist ending effectively lampoons the pointlessness of the entire exercise. Sullivan was well aware that he was often just grinding out programmers, in this time frame to feed a video store market constantly hungry for new product (until the concept of video store became obsolete).
Both Monet and Silvera do an excellent job, and Shanna McCullough provides a fine contrast as an extreme submissive married to Randy Spears, who clearly enjoys ordering her around and loaning her out for sex with all and sundry. The Pachard technical team is on the ball to create an eminently watchable result.
