Not Far From Heaven Review

Reviewed by astroknight  on  12/6/2003

The Little Details

Running Time: Cover claims 90 min. Due to the authoring it’s a major pain in the ass to check this claim, but it seems pretty close.

Production Date: 1 / 1 / 2001 and 3 / 30 / 2003 thru 4 / 1 / 2003

Director: Shawn Ricks

Cast: Victoria Givens, Rebecca Love, Fabio Scorpion, Avena Lee, Daniella Rush, Malitia, Jason McCain, John West, and Tommy Gunn

The Short Story

Initial Expectations: There’s some nice talent here (such as the great Victoria Givens!), but since Lord Perious has often seemed like it has trouble finding its ass with both hands and a diagram I have a hard time getting too excited about it.

Initial Reaction: The movie’s not that bad, but the job on the overall DVD makes me wonder if it was done by mongoloids.

Who Should Watch It : Fans of extremely artistic porn

Who Should Avoid It: Anybody who doesn’t want artistic porn or who wants a well put together DVD

The Technical Stuff

Audio /Video Quality: The audio might have been okay if the music didn’t drown it out completely. You can almost hear it a few times, and I think if you could have heard it the scenes would have been better. Heck, there are areas where the wind in the background is louder than the performers! The video varies a bit. Most of it is nicely clear, but there are a few areas where natural light bleaches out the color, a few remnants, and some bad pixelation. To help out some of the artistic feelings, there’s some wild editing and a mix of full screen and non-anamorphic widescreen aspect rations.

Music: The music is repetitive and way too loud. It might have been okay with a decent balance, but the level it’s put at hear only hurts the scenes.

Disc Complaints: As usual with Lord Perious’ more recent DVDs, there’s no time stamp. This is one of my biggest DVD pet peeves, and since time stamps used to be included on Lord Perious’ DVDs, moving backwards as they appear to be doing doesn’t give me much hope for them as a studio. They make things even worse by not appearing to know how to author the DVD. There’s plenty of chapters, but each chapter is given its own title. This means that not only do you end up not having a clue how long the feature lasts (which I like to know as it gives me a feeling on whether or not I can believe what a company puts forward on their cover), but once you enter the next chapter, you can’t go to a previous chapter without going through the main menu.

Menus: The menus are pretty basic. The main menu has a little animation behind a still photo of the stars. The chapter menu lets you choose a scene based on a small clip of each scene.

The Feature

Not Far From Heaven collects a series of five unrelated sex scenes. The only thing which appears to connect the scenes is that most of them are fairly artistic and in each one the girls play to the camera. It’s almost like a series of porno music videos.

Scene 1 - Victoria Givens and unseen men

Victoria Givens, who’s still the ultrahot dark haired beauty here rather than the stereotypical bleached blonde, starts things out. She shows off and diddles herself a little before several sets of hands covered in black gloves come out to caress her naughty bits. They take her right to a double penetration without any other warmup, and even give her a toy as a pacifier while Victoria plays to the camera. Victoria takes the DP in a couple positions before the scene fades back to make it appear that it was all just in her imagination.

This is a different scene. It seemed like it was ripping off a few other scenes that I’ve watched that were similar to this, but it worked pretty well anyway. I think much of this credit goes to Victoria as she does a nice job here and held my interest almost the entire time even though the DP seemed to take up half the scene.

Scene 2 - Rebecca Love and Tommy Gunn

Rebecca starts out the second scene stripping down and teasing Tommy before riding his tongue. She lets him stretch her out with his fingers, and even gives them a taste test, before giving him a little enthusiastic oral love in return. She rides him before helping him work himself to a pop by sucking him, and finally taking a nice facial without shying away from it at all.

I couldn’t help but hope that Rebecca made a few extra bucks for working with Tommy here. He seemed like he wasn’t sure what he was doing quite a few times, and even looked like he was trying to hide from the camera one time. Maybe he was supposed to, but in that case either Shawn Ricks better find somebody who can do it, somebody who can get to the edge of the shot without looking pissed because he’s not the focus of the scene, or somebody who can work the camera well enough to not have stuff he doesn’t want in the shot in there. Rebecca plays to the camera throughout the entire scene here, and does a great job of it. Yes, she overplays a lot of the scene, but she did so in a way that didn’t throw me out of the scene, and it might have been due to how she played to the camera. Whatever it was, this scene worked for me!

Scene 3 - Rebecca Love and Malitia

Rebecca starts out the next scene in some sexy white lingerie, and touches herself a little before being joined by a black lingerie-clad Malitia. The girls start things out naturally, briefly explore each other before exchanging oral favors. They even play with each other a little before Malitia breaks out a strap-on. She fucks Rebecca in a couple positions before letting Rebecca work on her with a dildo. They move on to share the dildo and keep things going before finally finishing things up with a some nice kissing.

This is a decent lesbian scene. There’s okay chemistry between Rebecca and Malitia, and I think it would have come across much better if they weren’t both playing to the camera constantly. That said, they do make the scenes enjoyable and put some nice energy into it, and the variety of the scene makes it easy to get into.

Scene 4 - Avena Lee and Fabio Scorpion

Avena Lee, an attractive Oriental (I think) with braces and a killer natural body starts things out showing off in what looks like one of the lesser traveled parts of a western ranch before Fabio Scorpion magically appears. Fabio worships Avena’s body under and around an outdoor shower with the help of a little baby oil. Avena warms up Fabio with some great cocksucking before climbing up to ride his cock. She takes care of him in both cowgirl positions before laying back and taking a decent facial.

This is a pretty good scene. Avena plays to the camera just as well as the other girls, and puts some nice body language into the scene to go with her eyes. The art direction is pretty good here too, and the audio is a little better balanced so that you can hear Avena pretty well through most of the scene.

Scene 5 - Daniella Rush and Jason McCain

Daniella Rush starts out the final scene walking up to a house, going inside, and changing into some white lingerie. She takes a bound and gagged Jason McCain out of the closet and directs him to the bed. She slowly releases him from his restrains as he works her over with his fingers and tongue. They work up to Daniella sucking Jason’s cock before she climbs on to ride him. Daniella also lets him nail her from behind in each of her holes and sucking his cock clean a few times after it’s been in her ass. She finally finishes things up letting Jason give her a nice ball blast on her tongue and face and lovingly sucking out every last drop.

This is an amazingly weak scene, and barely even feels like it belongs in the feature. Even the style of the scene is different. The only things that could be considered artistic about the scene is that it’s poorly lit, in non-anamorphic widescreen, and the music is blaring. The camera angles also leave plenty to be desired, making the scene feel like the top and bottom of the screen were chopped off to give it the widescreen ratio rather than building the scene around the aspect and also keeping plenty of what I wanted to see hidden. The only really good thing about this scene is the facial finish. Other than that, I think even some of Daniella’s bigger fans will be disappointed by this scene.

Far From Heaven is an okay porno which I think a strong majority of people will either love or hate. There’s a lot here for people to complain about, such as the excessive playing to the camera, the heavy art direction, and the blaring music. I had the thought more than once that it looked like Shawn Ricks was trying to get himself a job in the music video industry while watching the scenes here. The only thing missing to make the feature more artistic is elaborate costumes, sets, and make-up jobs. If those things don’t bother you, however, there’s a lot for you to like. The scenes are nicely shot and the art direction is done pretty well. The girls are very nice looking, with Malitia easily being the least attractive girl in the movie, and seem to get into the action pretty well. There isn’t a ton of chemistry built up due to the art direction, but the girls were into it enough that I was able to get into it too. Far From Heaven is a decent done piece of extremely artistic porn.

The Extra Stuff

The photo gallery lasts about two minutes with five seconds per good looking snapshot or full screen photo. There’s also a cumshot recap featurette and weblinks.

The Down -n- Dirty Sex Stuff

Themes: Straight, masturbation, DP (toy), tease, lesbian, toys, B&D, anal, ass to mouth

Raincoat Factor: High

Condom Usage: Only between Rebecca Love and Tommy Gunn

The Bottom Line:

Currently, many Lord Perious DVDs can be found online for between about $4 and $25, with stores pretty much offering them at both ends. Aim for the low end here unless you like highly artistic porn. I wouldn’t go over $10 even if you do, as the overall DVD isn’t that well done and has almost no extras and inconsistent technical aspects.

Note to Lord Perious: Please hire somebody to do your DVDs who can at least do an average job on them rather than this kind of slop!

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

Other reviews by Astroknight