Erotic Stories: Lovers & Cheaters 2 Review

Director

James Avalon

Cast

Ava Vincent, Bobbi Eden, Keiko, Alaura Bond, Jassie, Malorie Marx, Eric Masterson, Jack Spade, Steven French, Matt Bixel, Andrew Rivera, Jack Lawrence, Kurt Lockwood.

Genre

Vignette

Condoms

One (First scene with Jassie)

Female Orgasms

None

THOSE WHO MIGHT LIKE IT

Those who like decent production values, beautiful women, and a little context with their sex.

THOSE WHO SHOULD STEER CLEAR

Those looking for brightly lit, ass hammering, face slapping fluid-fests.

REVIEW:
I may be the only one, but over the last few years, I've found plenty to like about James Avalon's work.  He worked for Metro for a while, directing the Red Vibe Diaries series, among others.  As silly as the title sounds, the man knows a thing or two about eroticism--and I'm not just talking about the visual stimuli either.  He has a particular interest in the pitfalls and societal taboos of traditional sexual relationships.  Husband and wife; mistress and lover; lusting and cheating; hate and cruelty; and at the root of it all: fucking--plain and simple.  It's really a terrible shame that most porn directors simply ignore those more relatable aspects of our own lives in favor of some kind of porn girl hyper-fantasy to the exclusion of all else.  Avalon knows that starting with a basis in the familiar can enhance the meaning, energy, and indeed, the turn-on factor of the fantastical sex he depicts on camera.  He is by no means perfect, but at least he's trying.  Often times he misses the mark, but when he hits, I find his stuff to be a huge turn on.  This disc is part two in what I hope will be an ongoing series.  As I've never been impressed with Metro's DVDs, I'm glad that James Avalon has found a home at what I consider to be one of the best and most respectable hardcore adult studios out there:  New Sensations / Digital Sin.  Digital Sin's owner is no dummy, and his decision to pick up James Avalon and give him some leeway to create something more interesting than circus tent couch-porn is, in my opinion, just another step in the right direction.  I've seen part one of this series, and although it displayed Avalon's usual hit-or-miss inconsistency, the good parts were great, and even the bad parts were at least different.  Here's hoping that part two will take what was great about part one, and build on it.

"Late One Night"
Jassie, Max Bixel

Jassie is taking a shower "late one night" while a man breaks into her house and steals her underwear.  She is a petite, gorgeous girl who is right up my alley in terms of looks, and she's shown off with wonderful sexy detail in the shower.  When she comes out, she encounters her intruder, who then proceeds to, well, intrude her.  He ties her arms behind her back and blindfolds her before rubbing an ice-cube all along her gorgeous body.  I just wish the lighting weren't so damned dark.  Jassie only puts up the semblance of playful resistance before the ice cube turns into a strawberry, and finally, a glass dildo, which he feeds to her mouth.  Soon enough, unfortunately, she is released from her bonds and the jig is up.  She berates who we now know is her husband for being a "bad burglar".  Despite his somewhat unsatisfactory execution of her fantasy, he still gets his dick sucked as a reward.  (Bastard!)  A condom magically appears before he gets to fuck Jassie's tiny pussy in RCG, missionary, and doggy positions, followed by a poorly captured facial to top it off.  As far as pure eye candy goes, you can't really miss with Jassie.  As far as genuine sexual heat, though, all I can do is shrug and say, "Eh."  

"Dinner for Two"
Alaura Bond, Jake Spade, Steven French

Alaura's husband surprises her by bringing a coworker home for dinner.  She is not happy about this, as they were supposed to be sharing a quiet evening at home alone.  She rushes him off to the kitchen to have words with him, where he convinces her to just get through the dinner and they can have a nice evening together after he leaves.  The two men sit down, and Alaura expresses her displeasure by literally (and comedically) throwing the salad onto the men's plates.  Her husband finally reveals that in actuality, the man is the equivalent of a male escort and he brought him over for her benefit, which she warms up to right away.  The guest starts doing some silly dancing to some equally silly music, and before long she's giving him a rather deep and slobbery blowjob at the base of the stairs while her husband watches.  This is actually rather sexy, but eventually her husband joins them and it becomes a three some on the stairs amidst a nice backdrop of a fancy setting and nice looking lighting (albeit a bit on the dark side).  Although Avalon's music tends to be slightly better than most porn fair, in this particular scene it really doesn't work.  I'd much rather hear the sounds of the sex.  Additionally, Avalon plays with a few mediocre video tricks--nothing too obtrusive, but it's enough to wonder why the heck he's doing it at all.  A short double penetration and a dual facial cap off this very short scene.  Alaura looks very pretty, and there's some decent action here in places, but Avalon's video trickery just got to be too much for my tastes.

"911"
Malorie Marx, Jack Lawrence, Andrew Rivera

Malorie hears a window breaking while she's sleeping and gets up to call 911.  When the police arrive, they tell her they've been tracking a couple of escaped convicts in the area, and she all but salivates over their uniforms.  She finally offers to "massage" them and lo and behold, a threesome is born.  She not only massages one of them, she licks his back all the way up to his ear, and it's not long before he's returning the favor, only he concentrates his wandering hands more on her butt than anything else.  The scene does the Private-esque trick of swtiching back and forth from color to black and white, which I find to be frightfully unnecessary and annoying.  Moreover, the entire scene is way too dark, which just makes me want to throw something at the lighting guy.  When I'm able to get a good glimpse, Malorie looks as good as I've ever seen her.  Although a bit choppy, the encounter actually starts out with some genuine eroticism--that is until it turns into the traditional dick-bobbing, dual head, 2 on 1, double penetration, pornographic "love story".   I admit that that edge of nastiness is partly what I like about James Avalon, but for several reasons, it just doesn't seem to work here.  It's more carefully produced than most porn is, and the setting and the action look nice, but at the end of the day, even after they pop on her stomach and face (which I must say, does look rather wonderful), it just turned into something that was little more than average.  As far as the story goes, well if you have any insight into the predictable porn writer's mind, you already know how this one ends.

"Double Entendre"
Bobbi Eden, Keiko, Eric Masterson

Eric has an affinity for sports, and is winding down watching the television after work.  His wife, Bobbi, wants him to take out the trash, and has a hard time getting his attention.  When she finally convinces him to do it by tossing a box of microwave popcorn at his head, the doorbell rings.  He opens the door to an old girlfriend from high school (Keiko), who both Eric, and I, think looks quite ravishing.  Aside from Keiko's undeniable good looks, however, nothing is as it seems to be and after a complex revelation of who's in what relationship with who, the girls start carressing and stripping one another on the couch as Eric looks on.  Eric joins in and it soon becomes a three way sucking and groping session.  Both girls get worked over fairly well, but the scene is very edit happy, and that gets hell-annoying after a while.  My preference, in the pure looks department, is for Keiko, but both girls are plenty beautiful here, and lighting in the scene isn't quite as dark as it has been so far on the disc.  They share his cumshot on their faces, with Bobbi getting the brunt of it, and this is a nice looking, albeit wholly unremarkable scene.

"Face Off" / "Masquerade"
Ava Vincent, Kurt Lockwood

Ava is an old favorite of mine.  She's been around for years, and she still looks as good as she ever has.  She's a blonde with a nice body and an ok smile, but if memory serves (and believe me, it does) she has a real talent for fucking that easily transcends any trivial shortcomings she might have in the looks department.  She comes home to find a card and a present on the kitchen counter.  Inside is a costume and instructions that she's to attend a masquerade party.  She reads that it will be a night of "erotic adventure", and she can do whatever she wants with whomever she wants.  The note claims that he (her husband) doesn't know what the costume looks like, and that he may or may not be attending.  When she arrives at the party, she finds several naked party goers crawling around on the floor and flirting with one another.  She also finds a note on the mantle of a fireplace that simply says, "Find me."  She manages to "find" a man in costume, and eventually he coaxes her upstairs and blindfolds her.  He slowly strips her, groping her gently the entire time, and I must say, Ava looks downright beautiful in all her naked glory (although once again, the scene is so dark that you have to either accept the "mood", or be a bit frustrated at your inability to get a really good "Red Light District" look at her).  While blindfolded, she gives him a damned hot blowjob while he gently pins her arms behind her head, and then behind her back.  And, then...  Oh my....

::shiver::  OK!  That's it.  He's bending her over the back of the bed, shrouding her with the netting hanging overhead and I'm watching her blindfolded face as his cock enters her for the first time.  This is fantastic stuff that, for me at least, combines the visual with the psychological in ways that are hard to describe.  Finally, this disc has provided some solid evidence that James Avalon can indeed score a real hit when he wants to.  Although the scene doesn't end quite as mesmerizingly as it begins, this is still porn that goes a step above and beyond, and it's enough to reaffirm my belief in James Avalon's talents.  Kurt finally cums on her stomach, and then leaves her alone to wonder "who was that masked man?"  In a short denouement tacked onto the end of the scene, she finally gets her answer.

TO SUM UP:
For all the grief I give James Avalon for his post-production video tricks or his lighting that is beautiful but just a little too dark, you might all be wondering why I keep insisting on watching his stuff.  All I need to do is point to the last scene on this disc to make my case.  Maybe it's just me, but when done well, this kind of psychological juxtaposition of beautiful people and the situations they find themselves in can do more for me than a hundred hard pounding, goo dripping, ass spanking, hair pulling, scream-fests that populate most all-sex vids on the market today.  The final scene, for whatever it's worth to you, gave me shivers, and I'm tellin' you people, that doesn't happen to me very often anymore.  This is the psychological suggestion that makes weeding through James Avalon's work so rewarding.  Obviously I liked scene five the best, but there were plenty of moments peppered throughout the disc that I found compelling.  All the girls looked beautiful, the lighting may have been dark at times, but it was very pretty as well.  The settings were opulent and stellar, and when the video effects didn't get in the way, the camera work was quite nice.  I can't give this disc huge marks overall, but for someone who's looking for at least an inkling of psychological exploration in their porn, I'm not sure there are very many other directors out there who do it like James Avalon does.  It's a real shame, but ultimately, you've got to get it where you can.

EXTRAS:
Do not underestimate the extras on this disc.  Although there really isn't much here, what is here is well worth it.  Not only does this disc have a bonus scene, but it has a 2004 AVN award winning bonus scene, and what I believe to be the best scene of the first chapter in the Erotic Stories: Lovers and Cheaters series.  It features Dani Woodward,  Barrett Blade, and Kurt Lockwood, and it, too, has that Avalon magic about it.  If you don't own Erotic Stories part one, this scene is the ultimate advertisement for it.  Dani is gorgeous, and in a nutshell she ends up fucking her lover while her husband sits tied to a chair in another room, unknowing that his wife is cheating on him not twenty-five feet away.  She runs back and forth to service both men independently, and it's a fantastic scene.  Beyond the bonus scene, though, there are only a few trailers and a photo gallery.