Michael Raven's "Angel X" is one of his best features, a stylish and satisfying Wicked Pictures adventure fantasy with a cast of beauties. It deserves a wider viewing audience 15 years after, especially compared to other of the Couples label's prestige productions.
Red Ezra's art direction, nominated for an AVN award, sets the stage for visually arresting scenes that combine a decent if minimal fantasy plot line with hot sex scenes, running just an hour and a half in total. Double DVD package is unnecessary, as the BTS extras could easily have fit on the feature's disk.
Stephanie Swift is briefly seen in the "Making of" short subject on Disk Two practicing martial arts moves, but scheduling conflicts made it impossible for the contract star to topline as planned, so Angel is played instead, and in winning fashion, by Wicked's Kaylani Lei.
She is tapped by co-star Asia Carrera (her full breast commancding the screen) to save the world from the clutches of evil Nick Manning, a sorcerer who appears not only in his handsome (soap opera star) guise but in a convincing makeup prosthetics look for an orgy scene with four beauties and two studly henchmen (Lee Stone and John West).
Besides a sensual lesbian scene featuring Kaylani and Asia, the lithe heroine gets to bed down with a fantasy perfect man played by Dale DaBone. The costumes are fabulous, including an amazing white gown for guest star Olivia Del Rio as Kaylani's mom. Raven wisely doesn't ghettoize the casting (as in so many gonzo Asian girls porn videos), with all sorts of ethniicites mixed in the fantasy realm..
Mike Horner produced with Raven and appears briefly with heavy makeup styling as a sort of seer in a NonSex Role, but use of echo chamber dialog subverts his on-screen contribution.
