Sexually Explicit 5

The old DVD liners keep touting B. Skow as a great visual stylist and master of tease. I don't know if resting on one's laurels applies to the Adult Entertainment industry, but in his case I've admired several of his recent story-line features, but gonzo crap like this series is lamentable.

Quality has deteriorated rapidly, as the first of the "Sexually Explicit" DVDs had interesting if brief story vignettes introducing the action. Latterly, Mr. B. has decided on the cutting room floor approach currently so popular in porn. Back in the day of theatrical release, concise was an exemplar of a good movie -get the story told in 75 minutes or less, and even in the video age, those VHS releases were kept to 90 or perhaps 120 minutes. Nowadays every last bit of garbage footage is tossed into the release as if quantity somehow meant quality.

Volume 5 here has four attractive girls, and stretches their on-screen exposure to nearly 4 hours. My interest lagged severely at the beginning with Girl #1: Alli Rae, since we're treated to a dumb interview in the feature (rather than stuck where it belongs in some "bonus section" to be easily skipped). She comes off as a complete idiot, and her remarks are such to encourage the more patronizing (see: George C. Scott trying to save his kid in Paul Schrader's "Hardcore") to want to stage an intervention on her behalf.

But instead Mr. Skow gives us over an hour of her posing, staring at the camera, running off at the mouth and ultimately humping a porn stud.

The other girls are a relief after this desultory opening, and certainly August Ames' extreme beauty is worth a gander. But stretched over 2 DVDs this is clearly too much of a bad thing.

For me, in the world of Adult the term "award-winning director" is nearly synonymous with hack. B. Skow is migrating toward hackdom at warp speed with so much of his output junk like this. I take refuge in his stiil-in-print and laudable many story-line films.