Passion Before Midnight

This movie has my all time favorite sex scene. Oh how I wish I could be having sex with Julia Parton when the phone rings. I love her sexy body and huge boobs.

One of suspense cinema's most oft-used (and tired out) plot structures, from the classic "Gaslight" is trotted out in this boring softcore feature filling the pay-cable slot for horny insomniacs.

Porn stars Shayla LaVeaux and Randy Spears walk through the lead roles, which should have generated a modicum of "Basic Instinct" heat. Supporting cast of lovelies and talented porn character actor James Bonn (strictly wooden here) gaslight Shyla into thinking she must be going crazy, while Spears the police detective unravels the mystery of her missing (and presumed dead) hubby Bonn.

Pseudonymous director "Stan Allen" is one dull boy, staging mechanical simulated sex scenes, lots of shots of women entering or leaving their automobiles, and clumsy "action" or plot climax scenes.

I have just finished watching this movie, and I'll have to say....it was better than I thought it would be.

The story goes as follows: A messed-up patient of a crooked psychiatrist is pushed and persuaded (usually with drugs) to do things she wouldn't normally do, such as sign her various real estate holdings over to her shrink's lawyer. It seems that they (meaning the psychiatrist, her lawyer and their entourage) were trying to kill her in order to get her hands on the money, but that never came out in the story. Instead, the lawyer tries to drug the poor girl up and make her think she's going out of her mind.

The storyline had good intentions, but faltered somewhere toward the middle. As for the rest of the film, it was your usual softcore sex-fest. An appearance by Amber Newman really put a smile on my face. There are some women in this film who are also hardcore porn stars (like Shayla LaVeaux) and a porno guy too (Randy Spears, first time I've seen a porno guy in a Skinemax-type film, not that I've ever noticed). The women as a whole don't look too bad, so the "Women" grade stays high. The sex scenes are standard bump-and-grind stuff, although there's quite a bit of moaning.

Women: B+ (There are hardcore porn actresses in this film, but they seem to be the ones who have been around the block one too many times. You can see the wear and tear on their bodies. Amber Newman is alright with me, though.)

Sex: B+ (The scenes were believable, and there was a fair share of moaning, which somewhat adds to the realism if it doesn't seem canned.)

Story: C+ (It was well-intentioned, but poorly written. A few too many plot-holes, but you usually have to forgive something like that in a genre full of movies like this.)

Overall: B (Good-looking women, decent sex and an average story. This is about the best grade a film will get from me with attributes like that.)

IMDb lists the running time for this film at 88 minutes...the DVD clocks in at 72 minutes. Take a guess what could be missing from it? Yep, the fun stuff. I actually can kind of enjoy a Skinemax style soft-porn film, just as long as the sex scenes aren't too watered down, but the ones in this version are a joke--each one of them is barely a minute on screen consisting of each camera set-up shown for about 4 or 5 seconds, then done, over and out. That adds up to not even a minute. What's left is the "plot", and the magnificent acting from the cast. Um, yeah. It took Netflix forever to finally send me this from my queue...the anticipation to get it just made me hate it all the more.

Aging porn star ,Shayla LaVeaux stars as Crystal, a woman seemingly suffering a mental breakdown, but in reality only being messed with in an not-so-elaborate plan to get her mansion. Aging porn star ,Randy Spears is the detective who's going to get to the bottom of it (and her.. heh heh heh) As far as soft-core flicks go, you could do worse then this one. The ladies are all fairly good looking, the sex scenes have moaning (that's always a plus), and knock-out Mandy Fisher is pretty drool-worthy in it. So I'll go ahead and recommend it to any fellow perv with some free time.

9 sex Scenes (M/F/F,M/F,F/F)

My "Soft-core Skin-flick" rating: B-