Shattered Vows

I have found most of Nic Cramer's films underwhelming, so the delights of this rather obscure title in his oeuvre was a very pleasant surprise.

It's shot on film and boasts a crew list totalling perhaps 100 names (wow!), but is an unpretentious little feature that delights with unexpected twists and turns of the story. And gets the job done, hot sex scenes and all, in a compact 73 minutes;.

Title refers to a wedding, which never takes place and is treated with light humor. Jonathan Morgan is betrothed to stautesque Lauren Montgomery, but expresses misgivings to fellow psychologist George Kaplan. It turns out that Lauren is a grifter, out to marry him, then set him up and fleece him of his fortune, in order to live happily ever after with her lesbian lover Keri Windsor. Lauren and Keri later teamed up in the classic Adam & Eve series "Naked Hollywood", but Lauren is incongnito here, billed as "Lacy Ogden".

Star of the film is Sydnee Steele, cast in a very, very offbeat role as a prostitute (introduced servicing J.J. Michaels at the outset of the movie) who is on the run from Mickey G., cast as either her obsessive boyfriend or just pimp -it not being made clear which. Suffice it to say that in a series of extremely strange circumstances she emerges wearing (stolen) Lauren's wedding gown and gets Morgan in the sack, for some good old bride fetish action.

This unfolds like a screwball comedy of old, scenes unfolding as strangely as in Hawks' classic "Bringing Up Baby", but surprisingly Cramer courtesy of his talented screenwriter Martin Brimmer/Rodger Jacobs makes the transitions even more pleasurable than in a mainstream movie. I wish his later, often overblown movies were as entertaining.