8 Masseuses

Porn legend Paul Thomas stepped out of his comfort zone to shoot 8 MASSEUSES, a French feature for producer Marc Dorcel (who also contributed the dreamy musical score). Unlike PT's familiar story & character-driven dramas, this well-photographed video has no dialog and is wall-to-wall sex.

Featuring a very attractive mainly American cast (exception is the always-reliable Angel Dark), movie is completely unrelated to Thomas's classic THE MASSEUSE pair of films that memorably starred Hyapatia Lee and later Jenna Jameson. Instead he has Juelz Ventura (who seems European, as do many of the performers even though they're made in the U.S.A.) as a madam at a château with swimming pool narrating the daily routine of her girls and their wealthy customers. There's nothing new here, but the video is consistently arousing and all of the women are quite beautiful in different ways (great casting). The studs provide big dicks, but that's what they were hired for.

I found this far more engrossing than the dozens of similar exercises of Andrew Blake and his several imitators/successors. Perhaps that's attributable to Thomas's skill as a director. He carefully develops several sex pairings (or threesomes) in each segment, logically building to a literal climax, before embarking on a new, unrelated scene. This helps maintain one's interest, unlike the lion's share of contemporary all-sex videos in which one interminable sex scene (the typical vignette lasts about half an hour or even more these days) drones on in real time virtually unedited with inevitable monotony. Per Dorcel dictates, vaginal and anal intercourse here always features visually distracting condoms being worn - one lauds the pornographers' encouragement of safe sex but this always detracts mightily from the fantasy atmosphere that is at the heart of voyeuristic porn.

I especially liked a later segment wherein an ultra-busty brunette Riley Evans (though usually cast as blonde) finishes the husband off while his blonde wife joins in or merely watches -this was especially well-done. I'm a big fan of Nic Roeg's cable classic FULL BODY MASSAGE starring Mimi Rogers and my all-time favorite hardcore vignette has to be Sarah Young's 1991 classic when she calls up Sean Michael's Massage Service for an out-call visit. So I was a natural fan for Paul Thomas's quality entry in the oil 'em up genre.