Champagne Showers

I'm addicted to story-line Adult Cinema, but that doesn't mean anything will do. Hearkening back to the good old days before gonzo took over, "Champagne Showers"' director Francois Clousot is way too old-fashioned in his approach here to hold one's interest. It's about on the mediocre level of that junk shown on Cinemax or Showtime late at night.

Jessa Rhodes, a seriously underrated actress, takes the lead role as a would-be singer/guitarist headed to L.A. to break into showbiz. Opening hump scene has her saying goodbye to boyfriend Tyler Nixon, who's off to Singapore to work for his dad, and Jessa's unwilling to tag along in his shadow.

Since the heyday of '60s soft-core, porn directors have loved this plot of innocent girl heading to the big city, only to find a cesspool of sex and degradation. Back in the 1930s it was the standard ploy of roadshow/exploitation directors too. Of course she can't get work, and is befriended by a highly unlikely buddy, Keiran Lee. He made his career with over a thousand Brazzers vignette appearances, and is a lousy actor, quite unconvincing here as a good guy (having seen him in burlesque skits taking advantage of women so many times over).

She finally gets a job as a waitress/B-girl working at Nikita Von James's bar, alongside other lovely talent like Kirsten Price, Breanne Benson and Layla Sin. Nikita turns out to be the film's second lead, lending her gargantuan breasts and enviable deep tan to two sex scenes. Price also worked on the crew, and was often directed or photographed by auteur Clousot back in her salad days as a leading Wicked Pictures contract girl.

Also coming down in the world is a former Wicked superstar Alektra Blue, cast in a throwaway sex role here to service Xander Corvus. When asked her name, she replies "Alektra Blue!" with a visible snarl, almost as if telling the world where to shove it now that she is no longer top-billed prima donna in the fickle Adult industry.

Hokiest subplot has Toni Ribas of all people cast as Jessa's daddy, a completely random choice for the role. He's protective of her, and doesn't get to drop the pretense that he's an actor in favor of what he really is, humping late in the film. Picture climaxes with the bar's biggest night of the year, New Year's Eve, with cast and a horde of extras (all of them credited in a fashion not usual to porn credits on screen) whooping it up among the confetti and the bubbly sprayed everywhere in, you guessed it, champagne showers. Better than Golden Showers, I would concede.

Rather misjudged in this format is Jessa's mandatory scene of "the big break", where she pretends to strum her trusty guitar, and whisper sings a particularly crummy ballad whose lyrics consist mainly of la-la-la-la. It's embarrassing but fortunately for Ms. Rhodes few people will ever see it in this ephemeral Digital Playground programmer.

Oddest touch is just before listing 40 or so extras, the end credits list the "Crew" as just a long list of names, not saying what their jobs were. That's a great step backward in the history of credits and I took it as a challenge to determine who did what, inferred from their prior credits.