House of Shame

Due for elevation to the Adult Cinema pantheon, Brit filmmaker/fetishist Tanya Hyde gives an arousing and cheeky "House of Shame" to her fans, still potent 12 years later. It's a fine intro to an under-appreciated master (or should I say mistress?).

The five vignettes cover much ground, as Hyde is interested in a variety of both weird and by-now mainstream perversions. "What the Butler Saw" (a Victorian era title if there ever was one) has Brit Porn mainstay Steve Hooper in the title role, taking care of a dinner party attended by all manner of pervs, as femme narrator (movie is strictly pantomime) Miss Kitty informs us.

Besides dance/sex entertainment for the attendees, there is much sex too, plus Hooper spying on the maid when she goes to the loo upstairs, and then humps her in the bathroom.

"The Laboratory" is a salute to the medical instruments fetish, with film's most impressive performer Donna Marie getting examined (including magnified gynecological close-ups) by Prof. Gonad and a weird doctor assistant, played by more obscure actors I couldn't identify. This impressive three-way footage including d.p.'s is augmented by another experiment elsewhere in the house where Hooper returns as a "humnanoid", cocooned in latex that makes him passive for a blonde girl to ravish him, later joined by the doctor for a 3-way and more d.p. action.

"Catfight!" is a showy, mainly black & white (monochrome is used throughout the video to contrast with the color sequences) vignette with McKenzie Lee in big-bust mode styled as a Bettie Page type in a '50s setting. She shoots pool and makes love to a another girl, after which she goes outside to do a Golden Shower, joined by a blonde who also performs a Golden Shower, before going back into the house for an actual cat fight and then lesbian three-way, with bondage thrown in.

"The Lesson" stars Alicia Rhodes as a teacher of what amounts to perverted sex education, with Donna Marie back, Raggedy Ann freckles makeup on her cheek to split the difference between her real age and the role of jail-bait schoolgirl, demonstrating for the class with the help of Alfie, a latex-clad geek played by Ian Tate/Dirty Dog in cock-centric fashion. Continuing a recurring theme, Donna takes time out to perform a Golden Shower into a metal bowl, which Alfie then drinks up with narrator egging him on: "Don't spit it out, boy!". Tanya adds to this by having her camera pan down to show Tate urinating while Donna's fluid drips down his chest in overflow. What impresses me here is that unlike the cottage industry of fake-"Squirting" videos that are so popular in America, these Golden Showers are not palmed off as some female ejaculate in Chatsworth "let's pretend" fashion. Added bonus is Tony DeSergio in drag doing some humping described as "Cock in a frock".

Finale is very impressive, and a ton of extra footage from this sequence is provided on the DVD as a bonus (making total running time in excess of 3 hours). "Abduction Seduction" provides more bondage action with Tate returning as a pollster door-to-door from the Hyde Party, caught in a net and then subjected to female sex "torture" that is anything but. A slave boy on a chain is thrown in and lesbian sex for good measure.

Quite entertaining, this survey of fetish content is now a collector's item like much of Hyde's work. Irony is caused by Gresham's Law: Hyde's videos from Harmony in London were distributed in America a decade ago by John Stagliano's Evil Angel label, which subsequently has released hundreds of inferior (and often imitative) gonzo shows from its roster of a dozen or so directors that in flooding the market have driven out the quality material like hers (out-of-print mainly). This stuff by Johnny Stag, Perry, Nacho, Ferrara, Silvera, etc. has absolutely none of Tanya's style or even her nonpareil craftsmanship in terms of camera-work and rhythmic editing -it is merely extreme gonzo bordering on generic sex. The public eats it up (at least until recently, when DVDs are sliding in popularity as a format for the mass of consumers) and yet Hyde's work is relatively unknown. There's the vaunted "invisible hand" of the market for you, o ye laissez-faire jerks!