Afternoon Delights (Caballero) Review

Distributor: Caballero Control Corporation Edition Details: Standard DVD Movie Specs: Genres: Golden Age Classic (1980s Shot on Film), Feature Film, Vignette Run Time: 83 minutes Rated: X Release Year: 1980 Director: Shaun Costello (as Warren Evans) Written by: Shaun Costello (as Warren Evans) Director of Photography: Bill Markle (as David Measles) Cast: Serena, Vanessa Del Rio (as Vanesa Del Rio), Samantha Fox, Veronica Hart (as Victoria Holt), Merle Michaels, Bobby Astyr, Gordon G. Duvall (as Sleepy Le Beef), Eric Edwards, Kenneth Schwartz, Christie Ford (as Claudia Rains), Tony Canoli, Phillp Rothstein, Alan Marlow (as Robert Random), Diana May (as Beverly Mays), Robin Sane, Alan Adrian (as Allan Jacobs), Dave Ruby, George Payne, Ron Hudd, Ashley Moore, Rod Pierce Release Specs: Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono Subtitles: none Video: Full Frame, 1.33:1 Video Format: NTSC Format: DVD Regional Code (for DVD/Blu-ray): 0 (All) Number of discs: 1

Afternoon Delights is a feature-style vignette film from prolific adult filmmaker Shaun Costello, using the pseudonym Warren Evans. Afternoon Delights tells the story of a weekly Tuesday night poker game where Pete Ferrell (Eric Edwards), Frank (Kenneth Schwartz), George, Gary, and Alan (Phillp Rothstein, Tony Canoli, and an uncredited actor) get together for a night of card playing. This Tuesday night's host Pete has come up with a new game to invigorate the game. Each of the men is to write down the story of one spicy secret of one of their ex-wives, which will be read randomly. At the end, they will each try to figure out which man wrote down each story. For the purpose of each story, the ex-wife in each story will be referred to as Mrs. Smith.

In adult entertainment, a standard vignette movie isn't hard to put together. All you need are several interesting premises coupled with some enjoyable sex scenes, none of which usually relating to each other, and you have a vignette movie. A feature-style vignette movie, where there is a connective thread that ties all of the vignettes together, which often don't have much relation to each other, is a much harder feat. Not only does the premise for each vignette have to be good and be coupled with an enjoyable sex scene but then you need the connective tissue to make all these unrelated vignettes somehow relate to each other. More often than not, the connective tissue seems weak and doesn't carry the feature-style vignette movie.

Afternoon Delights is an example of an excellent feature-style vignette film. The connective tissue is the Tuesday night poker game where all of the footage, except for a blowjob, is non-sexual. Costello has assembled a good set of actors — Eric Edwards, Kenneth Schwartz, Tony Canoli, Phillp Rothstein, Christie Ford, and an uncredited male — who do a really good job with carrying the plotted material. Each of them narrates a story, of a Mrs. Smith, obviously, each of these are the vignettes that make up the bulk of the film. Outside of the narration from the poker game participant reading the story, each vignette is almost dialog-free.

Each of the Mrs. Smith vignettes are well-done as well. The best being Vanessa Del Rio's Mrs. Smith. Anyone who is familiar with Vanessa Del Rio knows that she can melt the screen and her sultry sexuality as she is tramping in an adult movie theater, playing Costello's 1977 film Dirty Susan, that leads to a gangbang. This scene is the highlight of the film, however, that isn't to indicate that any of the other Mrs. Smith scenes are bad at all.

Costello manages to work in all sorts of different types of scenes and fetishes into Afternoon Delights. No matter what the viewer is into, it's likely that Costello has worked it into Afternoon Delights. In addition to Del Rio's gangbang, Serena's Mrs. Smith gets a double penetration while auditioning for a porno film, Samantha Fox's Mrs. Smith is a mistress with a slave (Alan Adrian), Merle Michaels' Mrs. Smith takes on some construction workers, and Veronica Hart's Mrs. Smith is violated by dentist Dr. Harkness (Bobby Astyr) and his nurse (Diana May) while under sedation.

Usually, vignette adult films just end up being rushed and poorly done vehicles for unrelated sex scenes that leave fans of feature-style adult films frustrated and disappointed. Afternoon Delights is one of the exceptions to that and is highly recommended to fans of the genre.

Caballero has done an acceptable job with their DVD release of Afternoon Delights. Afternoon Delights was shot on 16mm film designed to be blown-up to 35mm for theatrical projection. It appears as if Caballero has utilized a video master that was in decent shape for their release. Afternoon Delights is presented in the Academy aspect ratio of 1.33:1 in 480i. The image contains heavy grain and a low definition looking picture. There are some jumps in the film along with print damage and artifacts. The image is free from glitches in the video and sports good colors. The film, itself, has been broken up into seven title tracks which makes little sense but is often how Caballero has mastered their DVDs.

Afternoon Delights is presented with an English Dolby Digital 2.0 monaural audio track. The audio contains a heavy hiss throughout the film which is distracting, however, it doesn't cause the dialog to become unintelligible. The audio doesn't provide a great listening experience though.

The only extra that Caballero has included on this release is a photo gallery.

Afternoon Delights is an excellent vignette feature film from prolific golden age director Shaun Costello. Costello put as much work into the non-sexual portions of the film as the sexual portions of the filmmaking Afternoon Delights feel, even though the sex scenes really aren't connected, like they all are connected and that the film is one continuous story. Afternoon Delights is well-worth watching. Caballero has done a less than stellar job with their DVD release of Afternoon Delights with an underwhelming video sourced transfer.

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