Lies of Passion

This rather obscure VHS Adult feature is neither fish nor fowl: it classifies as pornography due to its explicit hardcore sex content, but in every other respect is merely a dull romantic movie. The lack of any pacing, rather uninvolving story and general dullness do not recommend it to any 1992 audience and over 30 years later one wonders what was the point?

The only explanations that make sense to me are: the movie was shot with hopes of crossover revenue from cable TV or overseas sales where it coul have value shown with the relatively brief and vanilla XXX footage removed; or the presence of popular femme porn talent would win it sales or rentals at Adult stores almost automatically.

In any event, Raven stars and gets a crew credit portraying an extremely unlikeable character, but not a flamboyant villainess that one would enjoy watching in a soap (think: Joan Collins). She is jealous of her husband Randy West's cloxeness with his sister Victoria Paris (not incest-time, just caring about her) and feels deglected, so she concocts a scheme with her friend Tiffany Million to get a guy to date and seduce Paris and take up her time and affections.

Now this sounds like a potential Couples movie, but it's too dull - why would couples wanting to watch something a bit sexy and stimulating be happy if bored to death? The plot involves giving he chosen lothario, rich layabout Steve Drake, Victoria's diary that Raven has purloined, from which he can impersonate the kind of guy she would care for.

Their scheme works, and in ultra-corny fashion Victoria finds out later and is very angry at Drake, dropping him. When her hubby Randy finds out he divorces Raven. It's all so predictable it would be rejected as a mainstream script (with the XXX instructions tidily removed). But the actors all do a fine job in their acting, and the characters behave like real people might, not just arbitrarily having sex no matter what the context.

Earning brownie points with me and others who believe Adult Cinema can provide storytelling rather than default to an all-sex-content medium) is not enough. "Lies of Passion" demonstrates that porn actors can act, but it fails to entertain.