Wishbone

WISHBONE follows scrupulously the formula of latter-day hardcore Joe Sarno video porn: a couple of cheap-cheap sets; transition shots of the heroines walking around on Queens sidewalks; mechanical humping in sexy underwear; dumb plot line. But for some reason this one works.

Krista Lane, inexplicably hoarse (perhaps deep-throating several times too often), has the lead role, but not top billing. She portrays Madame Divine Bellew, a medium & psychic who picks up a wino lolling on the sidewalk by the El tracks (Damian Cashmere) and converts him into a love stud via hypnosis.

Post-hypnotic suggestion has the word "Vladivostock" causing an instant erection, "Siberia" cueing him to give boundless sexual pleasure to the woman before him, and "Timbuktu" causing his lust to subside.

While she's using her pocket watch to put Damian in a trance, the other key plot elements are listlessly recited directly to the camera by co-star Megan Leigh. She's Lee Anne McCall, secretly in love for years with her best friend's husband. I listened to her exposition and subsequent plot elaborations several times, but Sarno's script simply makes no sense.

Essentially Anne Quincy (Porsche Lynn) is married to Frank (David Morris), who is McCall's dream lover. But simultaneously Anne has been engaged to marry Javier (Vladimir Correa) for the past four years. The complications and intertwinings of these relationships, all set within the two crummy bedrooms utitlized for the video, one replete with Sarno's ratty old rattan chair prop, are idiotic, thanks to the unexplained "Porsche has a jealous husband and is also engaged to be married" conundrum.

But the injection of the horny Cashmere into the picture makes all the difference. He's outfitted with a paper bag over his head, complete with eye and mouth holes cut out, in silent homage to Murray Langston's The Unknown Comic persona of Chuck Barris "The Gong Show" '70s fame. And his XXX antics here are a lot more entertaining than the pretentious sludge that constituted CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND.

Lynn gets top billing since she was by far the biggest star at the time, but both Leigh and pointy-nippled Lane steal the show. Actually, it ends up being a showcase of Damian Cashmere's big dick -always on display in many a Sarno opus, but never dwelled upon at such great length (pun intended) as in WISHBONE.

The resulting package is funny and sexy, but alas, sloppy too, as Sarno muffs even simple scenes, such as the cute gag near the end when Lane is voicing over her thoughts for our benefit, lips not moving, yet Cashmere "hears" her say "Siberia" anyway. Sarno could easily have had her talking to herself aloud, but manages to mangle even this cue.