Pink

Director James Avalon tried out a new approach in "Pink", opting for a documentary-style feature about the fashion industry. It reminded me a lot of the current cable-TV offering Erotic Fashion Show/Lesbian Fashionistas from Avalon's contemporary Nick Orleans, except that James' oldie feature is terrific while Nick's newbie is a dud.

The runway shows, backstage peeks and living room sex action is knitted together with numerous interviews of the characters, seeming to be off-the-cuff (but scripted by James) and about as credible as those "real people" (played by real out-of-work actors) declarations one sees all the time on TV commercials. The funniest of these is an earnestly sexist guy (I think he was played by James Bonn, but I'm hardly a Bonn expert to id him) whose ego is as big as The Donald's.

In the BTS short subject Avalon admits there was no screenplay, and the picture lacks a story and forward movement as a result. But it is a flashy, highly entertaining let's pretend slice of life, essentially showing us what the high fashion world would be if it were populated with porn talent rather than mainstream talent. These girls make up in sexiness and uninhibited behavior what they lack in visual perfection.

Main gals are Coral Sands, who especially sans makeup backstage seems remarkably plain looking to be an Adult Entertainment star, Alexandra Nice, Caroline Pierce, busty Gina Ryder, Lola, Syren and Avalon's great actress of this era, Gwen Summers. The video is sold on the basis of Coral's "first boy/girl scene", which sounds awfully quaint (and totally irrelevant) 17 years later.

Among the highlights is a show-stopping threesome starring Nice, delivering a d.p. I had just seen her in the classic "The Perversions of the Damned" and she definitely is a key player of this turn of the millennium era, one you don't hear much about. Herschel Savage gets a dialog credit for his amusing turn as a fey fashion designer, avoiding the clichés of such a role and proving to be more endearing than mere figure of fun. After watching him on screen for more than 40 years now, I'm convinced he could have become a solid mainstream actor, not in stupid horror films or comedies but in legitimate projects given the chance.

This feature holds up very well and demonstrates that one can make an erotic film without going gonzo or at the other extreme overwhelming the sexual content with uninteresting "story" scenes.