Epiphany

I admire Nic Cramer's work (mostly forgotten as his dozens of VHS era releases are no longer in print), but "Epiphany" did not capture my interest at all. It's incredibly pretentious, made following his biggest hit "Looker" and you can tell he let success go to his head by listing dozens of crew members in the end credits (padded with a dozen of the dumbest jokes you never heard at a comedy club).

It's an attempt at a romantic movie, with young Jessica Drake (pre-stardom) reading a letter from her friend and former lover Bridgette Kerkove (also young and with natural breasts but her usual gonzo attitude) apologizing for stealing away Jess' husband Alec Metro.

We're treated to a flashback of the main four characters chatting, and Jess is sullen -as if we're supposed to blame her for losing her man. What follows is a series of XXX scenes that make little sense as a story, apparently just Nic showing off his technical prowess. He forgot to make an entertaining film, just delivering sex scenes like current practitioners do.

A lovely young blonde actress Bethany Hartford is wasted here as a blank, no emotion sex slave who puts on a sex show at some club with Brian Surewood her master. Jessica dressed in latex watches them with the same no expression on her face she uses throuhgout the movie, then has a sex dream (hokey in the extreme as Nic uses back projection of weird patterns out of "2001: A Space Odyssey") as Julie Meadows f*cks John Strong and then Jess is wearing the same latex costume watching that duo continue to make love in Brian's club.

A phone call from Kerkove wakes her up and she goes to fetch Bridtgette from jail, where the friend/homewrecker tells her Metro has been arrested for robbery. The two women make love in jail and are joined by guard Evan Stone (Jess's real-life partner back then) and the movie simply ends when they leave jail with Evan not stopping them. Roll five minutes of dumb, useless credits.

I want pornographers to tell a story. I want them to take their work seriously. Nic was able to do both but this feature is nearly self-mockery.