Crossroads (Wicked) Review

Reviewed by Diville  on  5/25/2001

Starring: Tera Patrick, Stephanie Swift, Alexa Rae, Coral Sands, Alex Metro, Hershel Savage, Mickey G, Tony Tedeschi

Directed By: Brad Armstrong

Wicked Picture's Crossroads proves that a porn movie doesn't have to be a huge production to be a big success. This truth is a little ironic, however, when demonstrated by a company that takes great pride in releasing pornography's equivalents of epics. Though directed by Dreamquest's Brad Armstrong, this is not adult's answer to Titanic. Despite it's lack of special effects and elaborate sets, Crossroads is a real porn movie with real stories, real characters, and hot sex. And also incredibly attractive women.

You know you've had a good day casting when you've got contract girls Stephanie Swift and Alexa Rae in your movie and they're not the ones selling the feature. Tera Patrick, who causes in men a euphoria not unlike that of crack cocaine, is the real star of the show. She appears twice, and the only thing that could have made her scenes better is that if they were shot with me balls deep in her rectum and a wad of hundred dollar bills clenched hungrily in both of my triumphantly shaking fists.

Set in a small desert town, Tera plays the part of the trailer dwelling girlfriend of a white trash boyfriend. I've known white trash women, and the most attractive among them don't look like Tera. In fact, I'm not sure there are any like her in the higher castes, either. But she's not the acid washed jeans and tube top variety of trailer trash. In addition to being painfully pretty, she's smart enough to know that she deserves better: a better town, a better boyfriend, and better sex.

Stephanie Swift, as a young innocent, has what Tera deserves--a caring boyfriend and open-ended possibilities. Of course, chance would conspire against her happiness. And Coral Sands, to whom I've never paid much attention until now, embodies a great sexual appetite kept at bay by her dreary surroundings and diner owning boyfriend, played by Hershel Savage. If all this description reads like back-of-the-box drivel, it's only because the plot is really inconsequential, as it is in most porn movies. But it serves well enough to motivate the film's characters into the sexual situations we've paid our money to see.

Not to sound too much like a stalker, but Tera Patrick is exactly what porn has been needing. That is, she's new, stunningly attractive, smart, natural, unlike any other girl in the business, and here spends most of her on screen time with a dick in her pussy and mouth. Or, with cum on her face which she coaxes out of Mickey G in the movie's closing moments. Unlike Alexa Rae's blow job scene, which is over almost as soon as it starts, Tera's scenes were apparently shot after lunch, as no one appears to have an eye on the clock. Besides, when Tera Patrick has sex, time stands still.

Stephanie Swift playing the part of a virgin makes about as much sense as O.J. Simpson playing the part a crime fighter, but here she is exactly that. For about five minutes, anyway, until she drags Eric Everhard into an empty barn and bangs him like a screen door in a hurricane. As a "love scene" I'm thankful that Armstrong chose not to shoot it with canopied beds and glowing candles. Even if it is just fantasy, I prefer to see the sex be a little aggressive, and when's the last time Swift was anything less?

Perhaps the biggest surprise is Coral Sands who is almost always relegated to supporting roles in smaller films. She's kind of like the porn equivalent of Parker Posey that way. Here, she's given the opportunity to really show herself. First, she's paired with Hershel Savage and again in a nastier outdoor scene with Tony Tedeschi. Like an American Roxanne Hall, Sands has a way of making us believe even the most routine sex is the nastiest fucking we've ever seen. I credit the angry curl of her lip, as if possessed by the horny ghost of Elvis. Some may be turned off by the jewelry hanging from her labia (I count three piercings), however, but I wasn't bothered. She's playing the slut, here, not the virgin.

In an industry that trades in pretty girls, the women in Corssorads are gorgeous. Tera, obviously, has caught the eye of adult's perverted public, and Alex Rae reveals her body in such a way that those who didn't pay much attention to her retirement, may now shed a tear. I only wish she had been on screen more. Stephanie Swift and Coral Sands both look like the kind of sexy women we might find walking among us in our own natural habitats. That is until they remove their clothes and go to work, and we are once again reminded that porn stars, while still very much human, are not always like the rest of us.

As extreme stuff seems to be moving more toward routine porn acceptance, Crossroads will most likely be considered a couples movie by many. That's fine, classify it that narrowly if you must. It will only serve to prove what I've been arguing all along: couples who like to watch porn prefer their fucking hot, not sublime. With most of the scenes ending in facials, this hardly falls into the category of a drowsy and haphazard Vivid production. This is a well produced movie-- as would be expected from Wicked--with images sharp and clear even in the night scenes. And the sound is sharp, as well. And extras are plentiful with a commentary from Armstrong and Swift, Behind the scenes footage, a photo gallery, and all the little bells and whistle you'd expect. In a word, it's professional. And in another word, it's sexy.