almost okay

Back in the day when porn flicks had a plot, the stars actually considered themselves 'actors' and the directors prided themselves on making 'films'. Often sporting higher production values than B-movies of the era, these flicks were shot on film and employed careful editing, props, period costumes and professional lighting... all the technical stuff that makes a movie a movie, porn or otherwise.

As X-rated movie directors go, Alex de Renzy was one of the best, and today we're featuring a pair of his early pictures, brought to you in glorious LO-DEF on the now-defunct VHS tape format, both starring the alluringly beautiful Desiree West, among others.

To start it off we have 'The Pleasure Masters' from 1975, an inventive sexual romp consisting of two unrelated vignettes that take place a century apart. The opening sequence is highlighted by a torrid three-way involving a husband and wife and their maid, and the second story is set in a turn-of-the-century brothel on the Barbary Coast.

Both parts of this movie are great, but my favorite scenes are in the brothel where Desiree plays one of the prostitutes. She has an unbelievable girl-on-girl with real licking and kissing sounds that are recorded as the action took place and not dubbed (which makes it twice as arousing, by the way) before one of the lucky dudes joins in. Eventually the entire cast strips down and there are several sex scenes running at the same time with something to suit every viewer's fancy.

De Renzy spared no expense on the set and the costumes, which are both completely believable for the time period depicted, right down to a horse and carriage driven along a rutted dirt road.

The storyline in this one involves some lucky guys traveling by night who get lost in the fog before finding a house in the middle of nowhere, which of course turns out to be the brothel. After they all get their pipes thoroughly cleaned by the friendly women of the place, the strangers depart for their original destination promising to come back.

But when the fog lifts and one of them does return, the house has mysteriously vanished and a policeman (comically dressed in a Keystone Cop uniform) informs him that the house in question burned down several years prior, killing everyone inside. You practically expect Rod Serling to lean in, take a drag on a smoke and say: “You have been traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the Twilight Zone!”

Next up is de Renzy's 'Babyface'. Made in 1977, the movie garnered de Renzy an Adult Film Association award for Best Director and is still considered a classic of the genre to this day, employing a solid plot, good acting and once again, some fantastic sex.

The story revolves around the bad luck of the main character, a giant of a guy who gets caught with an underage girl (the Babyface to which the title refers) played by a completely shaved Lyn Malone in what would be her only adult film appearance. Chased by a cop (Oakland Raider Otis Sistrunk) who thinks the girl was raped, the big guy eventually falls into a river and washes up in front of Amber Hunt's crib, where she and her roommate offer him a place to chill until the heat dies down.

The hiding place? You guessed it - another brothel! But this time the twist is that it's filled with studs who service local rich bitches, one of whom happens to be the young girl's mother. The big guy meets Desiree right off, and she fondles and strokes him as though she's checking the teeth on a thoroughbred horse she's about to purchase.

All sorts of crazy sex ensues thereafter... three ways, bondage, gang bang... you name it. Desiree even gets fake raped in one heated scene by veteran sex star Paul Thomas, who plays one of the studs working at the joint.

The climax occurs when the young girl's mother books the big guy for a session and wraps him head to toe in Saran Wrap before attempting to cut his junk off with a chef's knife! I can't recommend this one enough! It's like a Hershell Gordon Lewis movie with people fucking in it!

After a successful career making plot-driven features for the adult movie theater market, de Renzy joined everybody else by switching to video in the early nineties, changing his name to Rex Borsky and churning out hundreds of low-budget quickies.

A partial list of videos from the second half of de Renzy's illustrious career include: 'Anal Coed', 'Anal Sensations', 'Anal Siege', 'Anal Taboo', 'Anal Urge' (nothing to do with dropping a deuce, I'm pretty sure), 'Anal Carnival', 'Anal Cuties of Chinatown', 'Anal Delights' (not to be confused with 'Whipped Cream and Other Delights'), 'Anal Ecstasy', 'Anal Inferno' (too much hot sauce?), 'Anal Madness', 'Anal Rampage' (starring Edward Norton as The Hulk), 'Anal Rookies', 'Anal Savage', 'Anal Sluts and Sweethearts' (a touching story of anal love), 'Anal Thrills', 'Anal Climax'... Well, I think you get the picture.

A member of the AVN Hall of Fame, de Renzy suffered a stroke and died in 2001 at the age of sixty-six. Hmm... It's a shame he couldn't have held out until he was sixty-nine. I could have ended this with an obvious joke.

Hey, how about this one... Know what a 'Sixty-Six' is? No?

You do me, then I'll owe you three.