Taboo 17

As I write this the earliest Kirdy Stevens Taboo titles remain best sellers on DVD, 35 years after playing successfully theatrically. This lesson on the value of quality storytelling in porn has been lost on today's distributors and filmmakers, and Michael Zen contributed to the minus column with his several clunkers in the series.

His contribution with volume 17 is to substitute rather trite BDSM activities for the incest or later interracial "taboos". Misty Rain plays a cat burglar who delights in tormenting her victims, especially Tony Tedeschi. Highlights of the fetishistic exercise are two well-staged cocooning scenes where the likes of Sydnee Steele (truly statuesque this time) are trussed up naked in Saran wrap.

Having watched several real fetish videos lately, I can attest to how difficult it is to make that genre interesting, beyond merely showing tableaux of various forms of S&M for enthusiasts to gaze at. Such is the case here, where the regular sex footage is more interesting, and in that context it is fun to see ubiquitous contract star Julian humping away minus his later trademark huge back tattoo.

I had the misfortune of purchasing a DVD that was sloppily mis-mastered: First half of the video is missing, instead one gets a "please turn the disc over" message on a one-side disk - a constant error since the DVDs have a label where the video information should be.