Joannie Pneumatic Review

Reviewed by Kelly  on  6/27/2006

Title: Joannie Pneumatic
Company: Pleasure (Hip Video)
Length : 78 minutes
VHS Release: October 1, 1996
DVD Release: November 2000
Condoms: None

Director: Herschal Savage
Editor: Raymond Allen

BOXCOVER SYNOPSIS:
Joannie Pneumatic (Selena) is an ordinary mild mannered type. A construction worker transformed into one sexual cyber slut when a memory chip is implanted in her brain. Go ahead. Mount. Plug in. And download. (I’m impressed they didn’t go a bit more porno with it. You know, something like, “If you thought Johnny Mnemonic (1995) sucked just wait ‘til you see how well Joannie Pneumatic sucks.”)

THE MOVIE
The story involves a sex chip, some doctors, some construction workers, and a barmaid. At the center of it all is Selena as Joannie, a foul-mouthed construction worker who was raised to be a tomboy by a father who never got the son he wanted. She wants to fuck her buddy, Vince, who only has eyes for the slutty bartender, Tatianna. So, she becomes a test subject for Dr. Drake and Dr. London, whose previous sex chip had failed on John Decker. Throw in a pointless girl/girl scene and a goofy conclusion and there’s your film. The real story is that this is a typical mid-90s porn feature, with lifeless minute-a-position sex and a barely realized storyline. The whole affair is watchable almost exclusively due to the performance and simple presence of Selena, an ex-Denny’s waitress with vaguely exotic looks and a stupendously phat ass. She was a somewhat underappreciated girl during her career, similar to her doppelganger Chelsea Blue. Her performance as a tomboy during the first half is surprisingly effective, even though a doo rag and baggy clothes do little to hide her innately cute face. It’s once she gets jacked up and starts speaking in low tones and engaging in sensually mechanic sex that the results get a little disappointing. What this whole feature really needed was more energy. Far too often, you can’t escape the suspicion that some people were phoning it in. Industry vet Herschal Savage, handling rare directorial duties, does his best with his budget, but in the end the sex scenes fail to really take off.

THE SEX:
Scene 1: Tatianna (cover girl) w/Vince Vouyer and Dave Hardman (13 minutes)
Dressed in her best Mary Anne jean shorts and tied off plaid top, Tatianna is the bartender to Vince, Dave, and Selena’s construction workers. After a bit of exposition, Selena leaves, pushing a chair or two to the ground in the process. Soon enough, Tatianna, the beguiling floozy, is bent over in front of Vince looking for something to suck on while Dave has surgically attached his mouth to her pussy. Using the bar counter as the surface to fuck upon or up against, the trio goes through three or four positions concluding with an uncomfortable looking minute long DP. On cue, both guys drop small loads on her face. Tatianna is a sultry Latina so the sex here is not without a certain amount of appeal, but the whole thing feels rushed, phoned in, and overly edited.

Scene 2: Nicole London w/John Decker (14 minutes)
Meanwhile…Dr. Drake and Dr. London observe their colleague-turned-test-subject, Dr. Decker, as he bounces against the walls in his white padded cell. He volunteered to be the test subject for the latest generation of their experimental sex chip, and unfortunately it has rendered him an incoherent sex machine who can’t keep his hands off any warm bodied females or, in their absence, his own equipment. In other words, he’s been reverted to his former frat guy self. Redhead-in-a-bottle Nicole heads in for some up-close measurements, losing her professional veneer, i.e. white lab coat, almost as soon as she walks in the room. This leaves her wearing black underwear and staring at a nymphomaniac with a come-get-some attitude. They both put on quite the performance during the foreplay, and it all looks nice though it’s kind of funny seeing the cameraman’s foot during one of the overhead shots. They go through missionary and head-down-ass-up kneeling doggy before he pulls out and shoots off on her belly. Nicole looks freshly fucked and satisfied, but John continues thrusting in the air despite having a spent dick and she looks at him with pity. Nicole’s energy makes this a fairly enjoyable scene, but it again feels a bit rushed.

Scene 3: Selena w/Steve Drake (15 minutes)
And the two stories intersect as Vince and Selena see to a quick construction job at Dr. Drake’s office. Steve observes a small fight between the would-be lovers, and approaches Selena with promises of answering her sensual prayers. She agrees, and he pulls her in his office and we cut to them in surgery. Somewhere in-between he must have explained that she was to be the test subject for his new and improved sex chip. Steven clears the operation room after surgery so that he might play Frankenstein to his bride. Of course, the only real difference from before is that now Selena is half-naked, barely clothed in white panties, and wearing make-up with her hair done. She reacts to her makeover by asking Steve to show her what it is to be a real woman. So, he sucks her pussy and sticks his dick down her throat. With the surgical table as their surface, they fuck in missionary and cowgirl. Selena’s pleasantly plumb ass looks quite nice in the latter. She sucks him off to completion, meaning that most of the cum flows back on his cock. This is a decent scene.

Scene 4: Selena w/Vince Vouyer (8 minutes)
Vince is back at the bar, a bit depressed thinking that Selena just left him at the doctor’s office. This leads to a legitimately comedic moment where it turns out that our bartender has seen all the signs of jealousy from Selena, but completely misinterpreted them. Things come into focus nicely when Selena walks in looking hot, and within a minute Vince is more than happy to go back to her place and say goodbye to their friendship. Once there, he eats her out a little before deep dicking her in missionary. Her shapely ass gets some much deserved screen time in kneeling doggy and cowgirl, jiggling appropriately as he pounds her pussy or she rocks back on his cock. She blows him a little before he shoots his load on her chin. Her elation is short-lived as the first post-coitus words out of Vince’s mouth show him to be a dimwitted monkey basking in what he believes to be a newfound friends-with-benefits status. This scene needed to be much longer.

Scene 5: Davia Ardell and Nicole London (10 minutes)
Back at the office, Davia, a typical mid-90s blonde porn star who has just recently made a comeback here in 2006, is teasing poor ole John Decker through the observatory window. Nicole comes in and the two have a poorly performed physical altercation that ultimately leads to a very aggressive vag-fest with plenty of spanking. The reasoning for the sex is blurted out, but it’s hard to make out. Ultimately, it feels like they had nothing left so they just threw this one together. What’s funny is that Davia ends up fucking Nicole with a strap-on and she does so with more vigor than any of the actual guys did earlier in the film. Too bad they saved all of the energy in the film for the token girl-girl scene.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
Photo Session, Web Site Info. , and DVD Releases (7 trailers)-This is a bare bones DVD release from a time when simply having a menu and chapter stops was considered a special feature.

THE FINAL WORLD:
My porn viewing is dominated by older features nowadays. I like the storylines; I like the goofy Hollywood parodies. I like the campy porn acting to a degree. I like watching sex that seems to have a purpose and features girls in gradual stages of undress. I like the way girls used to look, though of course the hair-metal music video extra with stripper-implants is not the look I’m talking about. I like the glossy box covers. Moreover, I like putting in a porno and not feeling as if I am about to be bombarded with alarming doses of misogyny. However, with features I’ve encounter a couple of Ron Jeremy-Marc Carriere style videos, which I’d recommend watching before complaining again about the assembly line all-sex videos currently dominating the industry. Joannie is by no means as bad as any of that, but it definitely looks like something from when features were on their last leg and all-sex was primed to take over. In fact, watching it reminded me of what William H. Macy said of his time spent on porn sets researching his role for Boogie Nights (1997): it’s surprisingly boring. Of course, if there’s legitimate chemistry between the performers and the director and editor know what they’re doing the results can be amazing. I can find an old Paul Thomas scene starring Christy Canyon just as enticing as a modern Jake Malone scene starring Sunny Lane. However, when I’m watching something like Joannie and wondering how boring it must have been to film that’s not a good sign. I could throw it into the DVD player to watch with my girlfriend and not feel ashamed, but I’m guessing she’d ask me to put something else in before long.

RENT IT or BUY IT:
NEITHER.

Why I Write:
In this age of bowling alone where we’ve traded in our league shoes for our own blogs, accounts at countless message boards, and virtual high school via My Space, it seems natural if still wasteful that some people would actually detail what they like to jerk off to in the guise of adult film reviews. The manifest purposes for doing so can range from wanting to offer consumer advice to using the electronic medium to air your criticisms in the hopes of actually affecting change. When you read the ADT forum and see directors responding to reviews, you can definitely see the validity of the latter approach. Personally, I do it primarily because I have time on my hands at college, and that dream of becoming a legitimate film reviewer hasn’t come to fruition yet. Plus, I have found reviews immensely helpful in my own porn shopping so why not return the favor. Currently, my collection consists of films starring Avy Scott, Christy Canyon, Taija Rae, P.J. Sparx, Victoria Paris, Nikki Dial, Sunny Lane, and Sara Stone. That should give you an idea of what type of girls I go for. As for the actual pornos, I prefer features or vignette-based films, and my opinions on all-sex films tend to become repetitive. I detest Max Hardcore-style misogyny in any form.