Déviances

Luca Damiano, who chose his porn name wisely, is a master of lush Italian porn films. He easily outdoes Joe D'Amato, the horror maestro whose latter-day XXX work overlaps with Luca's but lacks the latter specialist's conviction to his chosen genre.

DARK LADY, which sports its original title DRUG QUEEN on screen, is a very simple story of a tall but plain (in context) secretary, who suffers harassment (forced sex with her mean boss) at work, only to go home, don her fetish gear, and lord it over the disco denizens all night as not just a drug queen but a sex queen too.

That's the entire film in a nutshell. So simple that the U.S. release, from domestic provider of numerous Luca and D'Amato titles Tip Top, does not even bother with any dubbing or subtitles -it leaves the minor Italian dialogue untranslated.

Ursula Moore is quite effective in the title role, and there was a laudable effort on both her and the filmmakers' part to create a maximum contrast between her bespectacled, mousy appearance in the opening reel with the dominating figure on her night beat turf. Cast goes through the usual Eurotrash motions of hardcore porn with a certain visual flair to the shot-on-video proceedings, and the Hungarian locale is not for atmosphere but rather for budgetary and casting reason, this having been made during the outburst of Eastern European porn talent. Luca's chief collaborator is cinematographer/editor Antonio Adamo, who has competently directed an endless array of these films.