Girl Number 9

The generally reliable Skye Blue underperforms as director of this typical Adam & Eve release, a poorly cast, stillborn example of Couples Romance porn. I doubt if even a watered-down pay-cable version will attract many eyeballs out there in Video Land.

Dolly Leigh, who has failed to impress me recently in "The Finisher" and "Sorority Sex Party Experience" gets the lead role, as a hard-working student, one of whose jobs is manning the phone at Girl #9 position in a call center of a phone-sex outfit. Her name is Vanessa,. But she uses the handle Angel with her horny customers.

I recall phone sex really catching on with the public around 1981, when Gloria Leonard capitalized on the new medium and it entered into popular culture. As a cinematic device it is a non-starter, so Skye Blue strains to make it work by having Angel's (and her co-workers') sexy conversations illustrated for us poor viewers by being enacted by porn talent. Sometimes the talent includes the girls themselves, or involves totally imaginary non-characters having sex, a filler type of cheat.

I was taken aback that the sorry screenplay is the work of Melissa Monet, an Adult filmmaker who I greatly admire, but who didn't do a credible job this time out. Main plot line of Vanessa finally falling for the pesky fellow student Lucas Frost is weak, made intolerable by the casting, as Lucas is wooden as always and so unappealing to suggest a stalker rather than a potential beau.

Casting is further deficient by having several of the gals being exactly the same types, with Alexa Grace (best of the lot), Alyce Anderson and Daisy Stone seeming like an actress and her understudies, rather than co-stars. If someone is studying diversity in porn casts, "Girl Number 9" could be a poster child for lack thereof.