Direct to Plex in the UK, this is the latest in the unlikely British sex film revival that has so far given us Dirty Work (also currently up on Plex), Darker Shades of Elise, Graphic Desires and Dirty Games. Summer (Danielle Scott) and her husband Dylan (Stephen Staley) are experiencing marital difficulties, due to his stressful job at a law firm. Being ridden too hard by his bosses during the day, means that he is often too tired to be ridden by Summer at night. When accidentally catching her friend Steph (May Kelly) having sex, and managing to talk Dylan into masturbating to porn, fails to spice up her sex life, Summer decides the only way to save her marriage is to book her and Dylan into a swingers retreat. Despite the Fifty Shades of Grey imitation title, Darker Shades of Summer is the kind of sex drama that the likes of Stanley Long and Derek Ford were making back in the 1970s, with only the use of mobile phones and tattooed cast members breaking that illusion. True to the Ford/Long model Darker Shades of Summer decides to have its cake and eat it when it comes to the swinging theme. Titilating the audience as Dylan and Summer enjoy various sexual encounters at the retreat, but then going down the sensationalist route of having their decision to swing boomerang back on them in the form of blackmail, infidelity and violence. It's nice to see Danielle Scott, who has been a standout performer in low budget British horror recently (most notably the two 'Doctor Carver' movies) get a lead role, and unlike in her horror movie roles she is seen naked allot here. Unfortunately she is badly let down by her male co-stars in Darker Shades of Summer, whose acting renders unintentionally hilarious what were obviously intended to be powerful, dramatic scenes. Although the actor playing her husband does at least have an amusingly wooden Joe Dallesandro type quality to him. However scenes between Summer and Simon (Jack Ilco) the enigmatic MC of the retreat who she falls for, suffer in comparison to Darker Shades of Elise, which had a similar toxic relationship theme but a much more compelling actor in the bad guy role.
Darker Shades of Summer is something of a companion piece to the same people's Dirty Games, which shared the same locations, same leads and supporting cast including the irrepressible Chrissie Wunna and Aquaman lookalike Mark Haldor. It's a slight improvement on Dirty Games -which had a memorable scene of Chrissie Wunna being knocked unconscious by a big black dildo- but was otherwise a dud. Yet while Dirty Games was afforded an Amazon prime and physical media release, poor Summer costs nothing to date, having been ditched straight to Plex. According to the IMDb the film isn't actually meant to have been released until March the 1st, so possibly Plex have prematurely ejaculated by putting this out at the end of January?
The heavily tattooed cast members means that if you do get bored by watching them having sex, you can at least pass the time by trying to read what has been written on them.
