Design for Desire Review

Running Time: 102 min.

Production Date: 7 / 13 - 14 / 2000 (feature) 2 / 08 / 2001 (cover)

Director: Nicholas Steele

Cast: Kristal Summers, Adriana Sage, Felecia, Isabella Camille, Lea De Mae, Zora, Nina Ferrari, Dale DaBone, Mark Davis, Joel Lawrence, and Steven St. Croix

Initial Expectations: Nicholas Steele has been kind of hit and miss with me lately, however there’s some nice talent here that make me hope this is more of a hit than a miss.

Initial Reaction: The only word that should be used around this DVD is “PULL!”.

Who Should Watch It : Anybody who doesn’t care about the audio in a movie or who can lip-read

Who Should Avoid It: Most everybody

Audio /Video Quality: The audio basically sucks. It’s horribly out of balance to the point that all I could really hear from most of it was a hum from my speakers. Even the hum drowned out most of the spoken audio in the setup scenes, and in the sex scenes I could barely hear the music. Even worse, the audio problems continued through the entire DVD including the extras. Even the bonus scene, which sounded great in the original feature, was plagued by this horrible audio. The video was better, but not much. It frequently changed styles and felt like whoever edited it might have had ADD. There are several slightly artistic effects applied here and there, and some of the scenes even go back and forth between a full screen and a non-anamorphic widescreen format. I originally started watching this DVD on my DVD-ROM player, but due to the problems I also tried it on my standalone Marantz player. It was a little better, but not much.

Music: As usual with Nicholas Steele, the music is provided by Saint, who I feel is one of the best composers in adult films today. He has a very techno / new age feel to much of his music that sets him apart from most of the other music being used in adult films today. It often overpowers most of the other audio, but that’s not saying too much with the audio here. Sadly, even much of Saint’s score is very hard to hear.

Menus: The main menu has a nice bit of animation to give it a fun and friendly feel. The chapter menu shows a small clip of the scene with a title for the scene. It also lets you choose between the main scene or the pop at the end with the Hot Shot option.

The Feature: Design for Desire appears to have something to do with designer Steven St. Croix being ordered by his boss to work with Kristal Summers, who I think is supposed to be a model and who he doesn’t really want to be around. Since I couldn’t really hear any of the dialogue to actually know this for certain, I made up my own plot. Joel Lawrence plays a powerful man who has been pissed off at the world for years because he loved the movie Howard the Duck while everybody else thought it was just another comic book movie that should me made into a drinking game. His master plan starts to form when he finds his henchman, Steven St. Croix, broods almost as well as Dolph Lungren, one of his favorite actors, and dresses in a similar fashion. He puts Steven together with Kristal Summers, who has loved all things Leonardo since Joel took her to see Titanic four times in the same weekend. She even demanded he take her to see The Beach, which let Joel know he was in complete control of her, body and soul, which made her perfect to team with Steven since he knew Kristal could crush Steven with her massive chest should he ever try resisting. Joel sends his two agents out to make the preparations so that soon, very soon, Howard the Duck can earn its rightful place next to Ghandi and never be mocked again. It isn’t the most logical or well thought out plot, but then again, neither is the success of Ed Powers.

Felecia and Isabella start things off with some decent kissing before Isabella drops down to warm up Felecia’s strap on orally. Surprisingly, she doesn’t get it as soon as she’s finished, as Felecia drops down to warm up Isabella’s pussy orally a bit before starting it in her from behind. Felecia gets her turn as she rides it reverse cowgirl. It slowly comes to a fairly abrupt end as the girls almost think about kissing a little, but that’s about as close as it gets to a firm ending. It’s an okay at best scene, but has an annoying streak across the bottom of the screen that’s extremely noticeable. It also concentrates way too much on the close-up of the penetration. I don’t think I ever saw Isabella’s face as Felecia was fucking her, and you rarely saw either girls’ face as she was being fucked.

Steven St. Croix reaffirms his status as “lucky bastard’ as Lea De Mae starts sucking his cock in bed. She works the tip with her mouth and pierced tongue while stroking his shaft, and then demands repayment by spreading her bald pussy over his face while spanking herself. Steven apparently really knows how to lick a slit, as Lea goes back to sucking his cock a little before she lets him ram it into her from behind. Surprisingly, this is the only position Steven and Lea fuck in. After he nails her for a few minutes, Lea rolls onto her back and lets Steven spray her down with his ball butter. It’s a really disappointing scene. It’s frequently out of focus, and the camera seems like it doesn’t really know where to look. Lea is a stunning woman, and almost always worth watching, but this time, keep the remote handy.

Zora leads Mark Davis down to Kristal Summers on a leash. Mark’s dressed like he was just brought out of his cell after starring in The Porn Stud in the Iron Mask, while Zora’s mask is a little more ornate and definitely very cool. Kristal removes Mark’s mask on the stairway and he gets things started by sucking her tits as Zora gives his cock a little attention. Mark, proving he’s a giver, he picks up Kristal to eat her out as Zora runs her tongue across his body and her ass. After setting her down, the girls team up to suck Mark’s cock, and Zora even gets her head back to give Mark’s cornhole a cleaning. They each take care of each other a little before Kristal hops onto Mark’s cock leaving Zora to lick his ass and her pussy a little more. Mark fucks each of the girls as they go lickety-split on each other in a 69 and in a line as he fucks each of them from behind. They finish things off kissing as Mark decorates their tongue and noses. It’s a very hot scene that has some great style. I’m really kind of surprised that neither girl took Mark in the ass, but the scene generates enough heat that it would have almost been wasted. Surprisingly, this scene almost makes up for the two that preceded it, and made me rethink my original opinion of Kristal as just another inflated bleached blonde.

Adriana Sage pairs up with Dale DaBone in a dungeon sequence next. She’s done up in red and black fetishwear with plenty of studs showing, and including a nice collar and arm and wrist bands. She even has her nails, lipstick, eyeshadow, and nails matched to the red and black on her outfit, which really helps to set things off. She slowly sucks his cock, and strokes it when she licks his balls. Dale rewards her stooping down to lick her snatch as she braces herself using the chains that hang around her. The chains continue to be handy for Adriana as she slides a leg over Dale’s shoulder while he fucks her, and later turns around to grant him access to her slit from behind. Adriana finishes things up by taking a decent helping of Dale’s creamy goodness on her face and in her mouth. It’s a fairly hot scene, but once again the camera angles seemed to lack a bit. Adriana’s a beautiful star, yet her face is rarely shown. She seems to get into the scene fairly well, but the camera doesn’t show it too well.

Nina Ferrari comes into Joel Lawrence’s office after Steven St. Croix reports on his progress towards the master plan. She looks nice, and is helped out further by her very sexy lingerie and navel and hood piercing. She sends her legs to the sky so Joel can lick her pussy, and he gives her an energetic finger fucking to prepare her as well. Knowing they have to work as a team to fulfill this stage of the plan, Nina prepares Joel as well with a good, sloppy blowjob before climbing on and riding his cock. She hops off to allow him to fuck her from behind, and has him finish himself by blasting her ass with his guy goo. It’s a pretty average scene that, without any real audio, couldn’t really compare to the two scenes before it.

Finally, Steven St. Croix and Kristal Summers work as a true team and become as one, which is the point behind most pornos. After getting out of the dress Steven has been dreaming about, she moves down to suck his cock. She rewards him further by not letting him wait to fuck her, and instead moves right up onto his cock. She also lets Steven fuck her in the almost mandatory doggie style as well as missionary. Steven finishes things off with a spray that looks almost like it was done with a stunt cock. It cuts from Steven stroking himself all over the place to jiz flying through the air and onto Kristal with no cock even being shown. It’s a pretty good scene up til then, but the pop cut is so laughable that it almost ruined the scene for me. Kristal was looking pretty hot in this scene, so if Steven can’t perform with her looking like that, he might want to move behind the camera and concentrate on the behind the scenes features like he did for Caribbean Undercover and Sex Island.

Unfortunately, with technical problems like this, it’s next to impossible to really give Design for Desire anything other than hot lead. Most things about it seem pretty average, but there’s enough of it that seems borderline without the audio that it often comes off as being as silly and stupid as many people’s stereotypical view of porn. It’s really unfair, since there are a couple really well done scenes here, one with Adriana Sage and Dale DaBone and the other with Kristal Summers, Zora, and Mark Davis. It also has some nice style to it that makes for some unique setups. I can only hope that Adam & Eve uses them as a bonus scene in another movie as I’d really like to see, and hear, them as they’re supposed to be. As is, the best thing Adam & Eve could do with this feature is to kill it. Even if they gave it away to people it’d look like they really didn’t care about their customers due to the non-existent quality control.

Extras: Bios are included for Isabella, Joel Lawrence, Lea De Mae, Mark Davis, Nina Ferrari, Steven St. Croix, Zora Banks, Adriana Sage, and Felecia. Each bio includes a bit of personal information, a still of the star, and a link to “Action Shots”. Trailers are included for Sex Across America: 1st Stop Las Vegas, Sex Across America Second Stop: New Orleans, Sex Across America Third Stop: San Francisco, Sex Across America: Fifth Stop: Hawaii, Crystal Dreams, Sex Spell, Caribbean Undercover, Emerald Rain, The Fiesta, Invisible, A Midsummer Night’s Cream, The Puppeteer, Sex Island, A Witch’s Tail, and A Wolf’s Tail.

The photo gallery contains thirty seven photos that are nicely arranged in the thumbnail format so you can see them all over two screens. You can then select a photo that looks interesting and blow it up to near full screen size, which also includes a note on who each star in the photo is. It’s a very nice touch that shows a lot of care.

The opening scene from The Real Thing between Steven St. Croix and Heather Lyn is included as a bonus scene. Heather Lyn starts off with cowboy Steven St. Croix, straddling him as he sits on a bench so she can kiss him and he can kiss her nipples. She dismounts so she can drop to her chap covered knees and suck his cock right down to the base while rubbing her pussy. Heather moves up to fuck Steven in the very appropriate reverse cowgirl before letting him get behind her and ride her bare back. They finish it off with Steven popping his gun on her ass. It’s a pretty average scene. Several of the segments are very long, and there’s at least two spots which appears to be repeated at least once and possibly twice which really brought the scene down for me. There’s also a bit of motion to some of the scene that might give some people motion sickness problems if they’re very prone to it.

Finally, there’s a twenty minute behind the scenes featurette. It appears like there was some nice interviews with a few of the stars, such as Felecia, Isabella, Mark Davis, Dale DaBone, and Kristal Summers, but thanks to the audio problems we’ll never really know. You can pick out a word here and there, as it starts, and it does improve a bit as the featurette goes on, but it never even gets up to what I’d consider lower average. If that’s not bad enough, the longer the featurette goes on, the worse the audio and video synch together. I was fully expecting that by the end of the feature Kristal Summers would be sounding like Joel Lawrence.

Themes: Straight, lesbian, toys, group, fetishwear, rimming (female > male), shoe worship, and spanking

Raincoat Factor: Medium high, if you can get past the technical aspects

Overall: Most of Adam & Eve’s titles can normally be found between about $15 and $25. If you even consider paying the low end for this DVD, please somebody at least ten times that amount to slap some sense into your dumb ass.

Note to Adam & Eve: After watching this feature, I just have to wonder who you lost a bet to.

If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me .

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