Lights & Darks Review

Reviewed by Joe Shaver  on  4/29/2006

I’ve never really cared for Doug Jeffries as a performer, but after seeing LIGHTS & DARK I’ve concluded I like him much better as a performer than as a director. It’s unbelievable that anyone could take such a hot cast and make such a lukewarm film. Yet he’s done just that. The idea is pretty good. Centering the action around a coin laundry where one normally separates the lights from the darks but having white boys and black boys come (or cum) together. The problem was in the execution. The direction lacks imagination and he’s badly serviced by his cameraman. Either the cameraman has one leg considerably shorter than the other or else he has an absolute fetish for oblique angles. Such shots only disorient the viewer.

A swirling pattern reminiscent of a similar device in Hitchcock’s Vertigo changed the setups between and within the scenes themselves. I know this was to simulate the washing cycle and would have been OK to have separated the scenes but it occurs within the scenes whenever the blocking changes. The result is a series of static tableaux. The actors in are in position that they hold for eons. Then there’s a spin and we encounter another tableaux. I’ll choose just one scene for an example:

Brandon Lee arrives with a laundry basket to a deserted warehouse where Blu Kennedy and Rick Razor are awaiting him. Blu—clad only in a jock—approaches. He and Brandon kiss. SPIN. Brandon is seen in a cage. He’s sucking Blu’s cock while Rick is eating out Brandon’s ass. SPIN. Brandon is out of the cage and sitting. He’s still sucking Blu’s dick. Rick sucks Brandon. SPIN. Blu fucks Rick. SPIN. Blu fucks Brandon. SPIN. They jack off.

Now I think Luca DiCorso to be one of the sexiest guys on the planet. I’ve gotten a boner just looking at his picture. But to see him suck a cock in the same position from Tuesday to the following Monday and ride a dick in the same position for an even longer period of time wears thin pretty quickly.

Jeffries has done the seemingly impossible making extremely hot guys boring. He continues to direct. Future efforts can only get better.