Playing With Venus Review

Reviewed by astroknight  on  3/8/2005

The Little Details

Running Time: 61 min.

Production Date: 12 / 10 / 2004

Director: Jimmy D. (uncredited)

Cast: Venus and John West

The Short Story

Initial Expectations: This has been one of the poorest and most unethically advertised virtual sex series out there. Although Venus normally does a great job, I’m expect Anarchy’s ineptitude and dishonesty to really hold this one back.

Initial Reaction: It’s quite possibly Anarchy’s worst Playing With yet.

Who Should Watch It : Extreme Venus fans

Who Should Avoid It: Anybody who can

The Technical Stuff

Audio /Video Quality: The technical aspects are okay. The audio is a bit flat and had a couple very minor and quiet background noises. The video is okay. There’s barely any grain and it’s lit pretty good.

Music: There’s music during the strip tease. It’s the only audio, which is too bad because it’s extremely repetitive and annoying. It does anything but help the strip tease be sexy and enjoyable.

Bullshit, Boneheaded, and Borderline Advertising: Trusting Anarchy’s cover claims is kinda like trusting a priest with a pocket full of candy and a bulge in his pants with babysitting duties. It just isn’t a good idea. The front cover has claims of Multi-Angle, Extremely Interactive, Strip Tease, Titty Play, Multiple Toys, Hand Job, Skull Fucking, Supercore, Tease Menu, Shot Exclusively for DVD, Point of View (P.O.V.), and Different Sex Options. The back cover also claims feature of Get to Know Venus, Multiple Preview Trailers, Photo Shoot, Bloopers, Behind the Scenes, Digital Stereo Sound, Multiple-Layer Menus, Website Access, All Region Coding, and PC DVD-ROM Compatable. Yes, in addition to all of my other complaints about Anarchy, I’m also going to point out that they can’t spell the word “Compatible”. As usual, very few of these claims are completely true. The true claims are Strip Tease, Multiple Preview Trailers, Digital Stereo Sound, Multiple-Layer Menus, Website Access, All Region Coding, and PC DVD-ROM Compatible. Either Behind the Scenes or Get to Know Venus is also a true claim, but I’m not sure which one I should say is true because the menu lists one and then you get the other. Due to the amount of bullshit, boneheaded, and borderline claims, I’m penalizing the overall score an entire point and a half.

For something different, I’ll start off Anarchy’s bullshit claims with the Bloopers claim. Simply put, it isn’t anywhere to be found. The same can be said for either Behind the Scenes or Get to Know Venus, because as I just said the menu lists one and then gives the other. As usual, the claim of Multiple Angles is complete bullshit. According to Anarchy, they don’t think this is false advertising because they use more than one camera to shoot the action. I guess in their world they’re following in the footsteps of early multiple angle pioneers such as the guys who shot the Marx Brothers movies. Unfortunately, even that explanation doesn’t make sense, because if you hit the little symbol that looks like it’s to be for different angles you normally get a completely different position. For example, with vag action you go from missionary to spooning and for anal action you go from missionary anal to doggie anal. The Extremely Interactive line is also a pile of crap, as I don’t know of another interactive DVD currently being put out that’s as primitive as this is. The Tease Menu claim is just as bogus as you never have any choice as to how Venus is going to tease you. There are two menus to the virtual sex, and one is for foreplay and the other’s for sex. I was tempted to put this in the borderline area, but when I selected the Play W/ Tits option and Venus started showing me her ass and then started playing with her pussy, it went right back to bullshit. The Multiple Toys claim is also bullshit. In the past, it was borderline as the girls had different toys, even though you never got any choice as to which toy is used when as Smash did in My Playtoy 3. Here there’s only one toy, and as usual you never get to make any choices about it. Hand Job also falls into the Bullshit category. Venus does stroke the cock a little during the blowjob, but that’s far from a hand job.

For the borderline side of things, there’s the usual claims of Different Sex Positions, and Point of View (P.O.V.). I’m not sure which meaning of Different Sex Positions Anarchy means here. If they mean you have several positions to choose from, then it’s a stupid claim. If it means there’s positions here that you won’t see anywhere else, then it seems like a bullshit claim since I think I’ve seen all these positions elsewhere. Finally, there’s the POV claim. Yes, there is some POV footage, but not much. Out of twenty sex areas where Venus takes you on, only about five of them contain footage which might be considered POV footage, and it makes up roughly ten minutes of the movie. You get to see quite a bit of man-ass as well as the bottom of John’s balls. I really can’t think of a single time when I’ve been fucking a girl and had a good view of my ass or the bottom of my balls, so I have a hard time thinking of most of the footage here as being POV. Finally, Anarchy gets the Skull Fucking claim added here. Yes, there is some skull fucking in the movie, but it lasts maybe five seconds and there’s no option anywhere in the movie to take you there knowingly.

Finally, for the boneheaded side of things there’s Supercore and Shot Exclusively for DVD. If there were other formats for this type of feature the second claim might make sense, but listing it here seems idiotic. Then there’s the Supercore claim. Maybe it’s just me, but advertisements seem like they should be something people understand. How many people out there know what being “Supercored” is?

Menus: The main menu is pretty cheesy. It has a clip of Venus being fucked with the choices slapped over the top in a basic font and an icon of a couple tools next to your selection. It doesn’t come close to giving a good first impression.

The Feature

Ever since brunette Venus went from being a Penthouse Pet to being a hardcore porn star, she’s been turning heads. She always seemed to give her all in her scenes, and has always been a head-turner even when her clothes were on. Part of me is surprised that this is her first “virtual sex” release.

For selections, you can have Venus strip, play with tits and play with toys. Heck, there’s even a section for musturbation! How this differs from masturbation I can’t say, since it looked like the same thing to me. There’s four options for Venus to suck cock, two vag options, two anal options, two doggie options, and five “Supercore” options. In “Supercore” Venus takes a bit of ass to mouth, lets John finger her ass, smokes while getting fucked in the ass, and adds the dildo for a technical DP. You can even have the real pop shot, which Venus takes nicely on her face, whenever you’d like.

Unfortunately, Venus doesn’t do anywhere close to her normal level job here. She often looks a bit bored, and there were times when I wondered if she stoned as well. Everything else about the movie brings it down as well. The outfits look like they were taken off a back alley hooker who sold them for the couple bucks she needed to get her next dime bag, and the camera work has so much motion that I couldn’t help but wonder if the hooker shared her dime bag with whoever was behind the camera. This is probably the worst job I’ve ever seen from Venus.

Anarchy’s “virtual” system has always been one of the worst out there, and it takes a couple steps down here. Yes, it starts with them not even being competent enough to spell the word “Masterbation”, and that really stands out on the menu. Heck, everything stands out on the menu because it looks to take up roughly twenty percent of the screen. It sits in the upper left corner, and takes up roughly the top half of the screen vertically and the left third of the screen horizontally. The choices are listed so large that I was expecting my neighbors to call me on the phone and ask me what the fuck “Supercore” is. As usual, all their virtual system consists of is a listing of the sex acts that some people might put in the chapter menu. There’s no looping to any of the segments and they’re normally poorly listed as well. It’s just direct action access put on the screen with the movie! I shouldn’t say that, since direct action access would probably be able to tell you “missionary” and “spoon” rather than just “Vag” with a different symbol next to it that’s supposed to represent an imaginary multiple angle. Of course, when a company can’t spell “Masturbation”, “Missionary” probably is a bit of a stretch for the intelligence level. The menu is also extremely annoying because Venus’s head is often put in the upper left corner of the screen so the Menu System for the Blind covers up most of it. People with the stomach flu have put out better things than Anarchy’s “Virtual Sex” menu.

To put it simply, Playing With Venus is a piece of shit. Heck, with the job Anarchy did with this one that’s about as nice as anybody should be able to put it. Venus is done up like a cheap whore and gives what might be the worst sexual performance I’ve ever seen from her. The “virtual sex” menu is a joke, and is made even worse by the string of false, borderline, and just downright stupid claims that pepper the cover. It all works together to show why Anarchy was one of the worst companies in the adult industry in 2004. I really hope Playing With Venus isn’t representative of what they’re bringing to the table for 2005.

The Extra Stuff

Trailers are included for Shooters, The Narcassist, Blasted, Anal Life, and Johnys Vision. There’s also web access, a photo shoot featurette, and a Get to Know Venus featurette.

The photo shoot featurette lasts almost seven minutes. This featurette sucks. It looks like the entire thing was shot from an unmanned tripod in the corner. It rarely gives a good angle, and even spends a little time looking at the ceiling in the room. I’ve seen old people bound to wheelchairs move around better than the camera work here. You get to hear Venus talk for a little bit, but it just isn’t enough to make this featurette worth watching.

Get to Know Venus lasts seven and a half minutes. Okay, when you select it you learn that it isn’t really Get to Know Venus, it’s the behind the scenes featurette. You get to see some of the scenes being shot as well as getting a couple interviews with Venus between shoots. It’s a pretty good featurette, and worth checking out if you’re a fan of Venus.

The Down -n- Dirty Sex Stuff

Themes: Straight, interactive, tease, smoking, masturbation, toys, anal, DP (toy), DPP (toy), and ass to mouth

Raincoat Factor: High

Condom Usage: None

The Bottom Line:

Currently, many of Anarchy’s interactive DVDs can be found online for between about $10 and $25 with stores offering them everywhere in between. Don’t even think about paying the low end for this one. The sex is pretty boring and the virtual aspect is a little below the technical level of chimpanzees. The technical aspects are decent, but there’s only a fraction of the extras advertised on the cover. Leave this one in the dust!

Note to Anarchy: I hope you apologize to Venus for the travesty you’ve done here!

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

Other reviews by Astroknight