Nu Wave Hookers

MOVIE TYPE: Feature

165 Mins.

VCA

www.vcadvd.com

DIRECTOR: Eon McKai

THEMES: Alt.Porn

CONDOMS: None

2006

9/05

STARS: Riley Mason, Joanna Angel, Justine Joli, Tiger, Nyuomi Zen, Sierra Sinn, Felix Vicous, Dana DeArmond, James Deen, Kurt Lockwood, Tommy Pistol & Veronica Hart.

www.VCAXXX.com

REVIEW-

(Since I waited to write this review until after the movie was over (a third time) I have a big collections of notes I made during the flick. Breaking with tradition, I am going to print some of these notes, unedited so you can get an idea of what was going through my head as I watched.)

How in the world can this movie possibly live up to the hype and legacy behind it? Maybe that gives away too much about how I feel about it, but too bad. Even if I hadn’t just watched it and even if I weren’t fighting the urge to simply type “Wow, did that suck” and call it a day, the deck would be stacked against Eon McKai’s addition to the New Wave Hookers franchise. Even though the Dark Bros. movie was shot over twenty years ago, it still stands up as an edgy, gritty fuck flick with comedy and above all, a sense of perversion to it. It was a pop culture movie to be sure, but one that never lost sight of the fact that it was fantasy. Guys, both young and old, loved the slutty way new wave or punk chicks dressed and wanted to fuck them. Even though Dark used mainstream porn chicks to pose (badly) as punker girls, the illusion worked. Truth be damned, it was fantasy. What about now? Eon is the poster boy for alt.porn which seems to me just another excuse to dress up stroke flicks, pretend they are art and then show them off for people who have nothing but utter contempt for the people who make, and more importantly, watch X-rated product. There doesn’t seem to be any sense of fantasy or sex about the movies and that makes me wonder what exactly it’s supposed to be. Porn doesn’t have to mean something to be good, but it has to bring something to table. If that something is nothing but pretty girls being fucked in the ass, then at least that’s something. Before this becomes a term paper on the state of porn, let’s get to the movie at hand.

NOTE #1: Wow, does this suck!

Hookers kicks off with Joanna Angel and Riley Mason stopping by a yard sale where they find a box of VHS tapes and an old player. One of the movies is the original adult classic “New Wave Hookers.” The girls take it home to watch it with some friends. (Tiger and Felix Vicious) The sets are so cheap and cheesy looking that we can only hope that McKai was trying to pay tribute to the low-budget look of the original. The title sequence is actually a pretty nice remake of the original without the great eye candy provided by Ginger Lynn and Kimberly Carson. Though the music is be more up to date, it isn’t the slam-dunk match that we had the first time around. (Guys my age have the Plugz running through our heads every time we see a hot girl dancing.) As the girls watch the movie I am struck by a couple of things. First, that there are some brilliant lines here. (Their reaction to a top-loading VCR, their curiosity about the meaning of VCA to name two.) Second, the acting is so incredibly poor that we can only hope that McKai just kept the first take for everything. I realize this is porn, but it looks like a drunken improve game.

NOTE #2: How much money did this thing cost to make?

While the girls watch the movie, Riley Mason is busy trying hard not to turn a trick with Dirty Harry. This guy is creepy on his best day and watching her squirm away from him is about erotic as watching someone bash their head against a mirror. (Or watching four bored girls on a couch watching porn like heroin zombies.) Riley does a voice over with the producer of the movie relating some of her tales as a young escort. It fits with the action, but serves to remind us of the overall anti-sex vibe that seems to be at the core of every alt.porn mess.

NOTE #3: Has side-show sex in gonzo movies driven us to this? Porn that is completely anti-sex?

The first actual sex scene comes about twenty minutes into the movie. (And it follows a lengthy scene where we get to stare at some go-go dancing bi-boys who look only slightly less bored than I am by this pretentious train wreck. Kurt Lockwood is one of the dancers and Joanna has a big crush on him. They hook up in a fantasy scene that bad on so many levels that I am tempted to make a laundry list. First of all, do not adjust your sets, clean your glasses or assume that you spooged in your own eye. (Somehow I think that no one in the world is actually going to spooge during this movie.) It is out of focus and as blurry as a scene shot through half an inch of Vaseline. This is a trick artsy porn directors use to cover the fact that there is no heat in their scene. Kurt uses the ‘romantic’ setting and look to grab her by the back of her head and shove his dick towards the back of her throat. (A trick gonzo porn folks use to cover up the fact that there is no actual sexual heat in the scene.) So we have a dispassionate scene that is only missing slow motion sex, echo-chamber music and a hot girl to be straight out of the very worst Celeste movie. Considering how everything looks this might be a good time to get out of your chair and call your optometrist and make an appointment before the whole world (Including the GOOD porn) looks like this. For anyone who cares, there is anal in this scene. Her finger up his ass and his dick in her butt, though not simultaneously.

NOTE #4: Is it just me or does the whole alt.porn thing feel like the next step towards integrating gay and straight porn?

Joanna does her time with Harry as well and gives us the voice over commentary. Listening to these tales of young prostitution while watching him ooze all over her is fascinating on some level. It’s kind of like listening to soundtrack from a “Meatholes” movie while watching Ed Powers try to convince a young girl that this isn’t going to be the most repulsive experience of her life. (And it’s about as erotic as that combination as well.)

NOTE #5: If “New Wave Hookers” was about fantasy, that hot young girls might enjoy being slutty, “Neu Wave Hookers” is about the destruction of that same fantasy.

Riley gets her shot during a scene with James Deen on a playground set. The good news is that the scene is a little clearer than the last one. Now it looks like you’re only looking through the bottom of a Coke bottle. Rather than just blast every little thing that is wrong with this scene I am going to point out the good things. Riley isn’t bad looking and the music is pretty good. We do get some decent shots of the sex and unlike other blurry pseudo-art smut we get to hear her talk dirty. At least half of the shots are way off though. I would like to think that McKai is doing this on purpose to be interesting, but I have my doubts. This is the best sex scene of the movie but it is still about a cold as a Bill Cowher scowl and nearly as sexually enticing.

NOTE #6: This is porn made for and by people who hate porn and aren’t very fond of sex.

I actually like the transition into the Sierra Sin DP. As she ponders being double stuffed, her friends clear out of the room, Felix Vicious moves the VCR from the foreground of the shot and fantasy is set. This is much more creative than the harp music/slow fade we would normally get and a strong indication that there is something good at the core of McKai’s filmmaking. That would have been perfect, but we have to sit through some bad lip synching by James Deen and Tommy Pistol (With some help from Sierra.) Not that the music video portion is bad, it just seems odd to set up the scene twice. I think it’s just an excuse to ramp up the running time, show of McKai’s true aspirations and to squeeze in a cameo from Veronica Hart. (I know why they chose her, but why not pop in someone who was actually IN the original NWH?) By the time we actually get to the sex, the guys have to rip off her neon stockings to get to her skinny little frame. (I suppose the decades out of style clothes fit since she’s fantasizing while watching the old tape.) The music playing now is some insanely homo-erotic dance club song that makes me long for the nauseating echo-chamber elevator music that we get in Andrew Blake films. Sierra can be a hot performer, but her flesh is glowing more than her torn clothes as she gets plugged by the two guys. I know it’s supposed to look this way, but it’s just annoying. Those of you who remember the big DP scene in the original won’t know whether to laugh or weep.

NOTE #7: I need to apologize to Guy Capo, James Avalon, Michael Ninn & others for calling their movies “pretentious.” After seeing this, I am forced to re-define the term.

The girls decide that they need to find out the “truth” about the movie so they break into VCA headquarters. That seems like a good idea and gives McKai an excuse to give us a long riot girl/Charlie’s Angels dress up/break in sequence that is set to a really good song. Once inside the girls stumble upon the “Dark Report” that explains that when casting the movie, the Dark Bros. couldn’t use real punk girls because they were too wasted. (As if some of the actual porn chicks in that movie didn’t look out of it.) (Yeah, but they looked coked up, not bombed on heroin.) They read a story of how Greg Dark (Played by Pistol) met a young girl named Traci Lords (Played by Dana DeArmond) at a car wash, checked her ID and then fucked her. The most interesting part about this scene is the series of pop-up factoids that appear before the sex begins. They include some good stuff about Traci and a few well-placed jabs at MySpace. Sadly the sex that follows is about as crotch-stirring as watching a popsicle melt. (Which ironically we had to sit through just to get this mess of a scene.) Tommy whips her in the face with his flaccid dick for so long that we have to wonder if he was doing this scene old-school with not help from any pills. I don’t think he ever really gets it hard and Dana is about as hot as Traci is talented. (When not on her knees or back that is.)

NOTE #8: I have finally found something more excruciating than the song “My Lumps.”

Riley gets her shot at Kurt, sharing him with Nyomi Zen. (Because he “likes Asian girls”) They must be running out shit to smear on the lens because if you squint a little bit, this one almost looks decent. Nyomi is by far the best looking girl in the movie and she spends an inordinate time around Kurt’s asshole. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.) For a little while this almost looked like one of Ninn’s “Hookers” flicks and we can at least be happy about that. Hey, Riley has some really nice tits and there is some sexual heat coming from this scene. It’s still way over-glossed, but I have to be fair. Had the whole movie looked like this then the overall rating would be higher. Kurt finishes off with a finger up his ass and gives the girls a big load to share. (Wow, this almost felt like an actual porn flick for about five minutes.)

NOTE #9: Reading the positive reviews some people I respect gave this movie I have to wonder if they were watching something else entirely.

Finally we get to a big lesbian orgy that will put an end to this movie. (We have to be pushing six hours of running time don’t we?) Felix Vicious pops up in this one and that’s always a good thing. There is less gloss to this scene and it gives us a lot of the same over-done bullshit that lame gonzo porn gives us. (Fake gagging and half-assed rough sex shit.) If you like the girls in the mix, then there is some decent toy play I guess. I just lost interest so long ago that I feel like I’m picking things out to like rather than just reacting to what is here. If you like lesbian gang bangs, enjoy.

NOTE #10: I have to believe that the people who have raved about the movie are trying way too hard to like something that is neither likeable nor strokeable. Perhaps they don’t want to appear as if they don’t “get it.”

Whew, it’s all done. Before we wrap this up, let’s cover the bonus materials. If you didn’t get enough pointless, pretentious bullshit from the movie, please listen to the audio commentary. You will OD on self-important non-sequiturs and see what it’s like to be a room full of people who have clearly bought into their own hipness. (Just a note, I listened to the commentary on my third viewing of this movie. I took someone’s advice and watched it a second time before starting the review and then a third time while writing this to hear the track.)

On disc two we get photo galleries of the girls that are pretty good as well as a hard-core gallery. The trailers are of McKai’s other work so you can get a feel for what he’s all about. There is a BTS reel and a blooper that focuses on Kurt Lockwood’s ability to take fingers in his ass. The Making of feature is pretty interesting actually. (And every bit as strokeable as the movie itself.)

Finally on disc three we get a really nice bonus. The edited version of the original “New Wave Hookers” flick doesn’t have the Traci Lords scene, but it is still a pretty damn flick. Come one, it has Ginger, Kimberly Carson, Kristara Barrington and starts with the line “Did you know that pimps play tennis?” Fuck, do yourself a favor, just watch this movie and use the other two discs for coasters. (Full review here https://www.rogreviews.com/reviews/read_review.asp?sku=1568)

NOTE #11: There just aren’t enough words to explain why “Neu Wave Hookers” sucks monkey anus.

Now for the big finale, but what is left to say? It would be easy for someone to dismiss my utter distain for this movie as my own tragic lack of hipness. This isn’t about tattoos and piercings. That I could understand. This is about a really poorly made adult movie. The sex is uninspired at best and hard to watch to boot. McKai brings the worst aspects of feature porn together to create a colossal mess. It looks out of focus, often out of frame and no one even tries to look like they are having a good time. The acting is beyond horrendous. He often has them holding scripts in an attempt to appear nonchalant, but even that backfires. Instead of looking funny, it just looks lazy and stupid. The music is pretty good so that’s a plus, but now we are really grasping at straws. Is this the worst adult movie I’ve ever seen? Probably not. It’s no “Fossil Fuckers” that’s for sure. On the other hand, it’s right down there with “Anal Ball” as a huge waste of time. It isn’t good as stroke material, isn’t remotely interesting as an adult feature, has horrible acting, lame sex and in the end is completely pointless. Now just imagine how much I would have hated it had I actually compared it directly to the first “New Wave Hookers.”

In the end, I should have stuck with “Wow, did that suck.”

www.VCAXXX.com