Skin Deep (Plum) Review

Running Time: 83 min.

Production Date: Jan. 2000

Director: Nic Cramer

Cast: Silvia Saint, Gina Ryder, Dayton Rains, Brooke, Jon Dough, Ian Daniels, Mickey G., Alec Metro, Eric Price, and J. B.

Initial Expectations: I haven’t watched many of Plum’s DVDs yet, but I have some fairly high expectations after recently watching some of Silvia’s other work with Nic Cramer. Namely, Looker and Looker 2.

Initial Reaction: Lame. There’s virtually no plot and it’s advertised as a couples movie. The only really good sexes are the ones with Silvia.

Audio /Video Quality: I now know what people mean when they refer to ‘Cramer-vision. As I said earlier, I’ve seen two of Mr. Cramer’s other releases, Looker and Looker 2, both of which looked very good. Skin Deep , however, does not. I’m assuming that Mr. Cramer is a big fan of Christmas. It’s the only reason I can think of for having a red or green tint to every scene in the movie. None of the colors seem real. They’re all very flat and it gives the entire movie an unrealistic feel. The slight grain the picture has doesn’t help anything either. The only good things about the picture is that it’s in wide screen and the black and white scenes look very good. Thankfully, the audio doesn’t suffer as badly as the video does. It is muffled and hard to hear in the non-sex scenes, but the sex scenes are very clear. There’s also some background noises throughout the movie and a buzzing in the background during the final scene.

Music: The music is, well let’s just call it unique. It’s fairly well balanced, but it’s some really different sounds. A lot of it is like listening to the wind howl outside a house.

Review: Skin Deep dares to go where almost every adult film has dared to go before, and even forging this well tread ground it stumbles like a blind person in an obstacle course. Skin Deep follows Silvia Saint and her escort service. Each scene follows a different girl as they work hard. In between scenes, rather than having the dialogue of somebody calling Silvia at the office, it’s normally typed on the screen. I haven’t seen Silvia in enough movies to know if she has a good grasp on English or not, but there’s a lot better ways to deal with it than this. Having her as a hard working or in demand girl would give her the two scenes and wouldn’t make her appear incompetent. As it is, it’s almost insulting!

Things open with Jon talking to J.B., the bartender at his house. It appears fairly artistic, mixing both color and black and white scenes as well as throwing slow motion into the mix. If it weren’t for the problems with Cramer- vision, it might have worked better. Silvia arrives and before you can clean up the puddle of drool you’ve left at the sight of this bodacious blonde bombshell, she and Jon are going at it on the couch. The blowjob is very good and has some of the feel of the blowjobs on virtual DVDs. I’m really looking forward to Silvia’s My Plaything after this blowjob. And to think that Jon is getting paid for that! The rest of the scene, however, could have been a lot better. In between every position change the scene goes into a fuzzy slow motion sequence showing another part of the scene. Towards the end of the scene, Mickey G. walks up outside and watches Jon and Silvia going at it, unbeknownst to either Jon or Silvia. Silvia finishes the scene with an awesome facial. Even with how poor this scene is, I’m mourning Silvia’s retirement.

Gina Ryder is the next working girl, and Eric Price has requested that she wears something sexy. When Silvia prods him a little more, he specifies high heels. Okay. Let’s not get too wild and crazy here! Sadly, this is as sexy as the scene gets.

Violet (whom I think is played by Brooke, but due to the lack of credits I can’t be sure) calls back to the office. Silvia reminds her that she’s not a hooker anymore. She’s now an escort. Nice to get that clarification there. It’s the most plot we’ve had so far. We return to Brooke and Alec Metro, who do the horizontal mambo on the same couch that Jon and Silvia used in the opening scene. I just hope they had it professionally cleaned.

Of course, answering the phone at an escort service isn’t always a busy job. Silvia gets a little time to diddle herself before Mickey calls in to place his order. Apparently, he’s been stalking Silvia a little and she’d much rather be rid of him. He insists on placing his order for a blonde with big tits and ivory skin. Hmmm. Now who do we know in this movie that could fulfil that request? Dayton calls in soon afterwards, or at least I think it could be Dayton (once again I can’t be sure due to the lack of credits), and she and Silvia talk a little about Mickey. Sadly, Silvia and Dayton’s conversation is more exciting that her scene with Ian Daniels that follows. I felt like I had drank an entire bottle of cough syrup watching this scene. I was thankful that the movie had almost reached its end.

Mickey apparently realizes that Silvia can buy Mace and calls to cancel his request. Silvia walks in just as he hangs up the phone. Mickey tells her how he wants to start all over again, so Silvia bangs him. This scene was kind of hard to watch. It was a good scene, as it should be with talent like Mickey and Silvia. Sadly, I was still trying to find a clue as to where consciousness was after Dayton and Ian’s scene. Silvia decides that she and Mickey should get back together and that they can run the agency together. Awwww. It’s just like Snow White only with some anal sex and whores, oops I mean escorts, instead of the poisoned apple and dwarfs.

Skin Deep failed on many levels. As I said earlier, the picture quality was really screwed up. I rarely felt like I was watching real people. The colors were rarely real and the picture felt extremely flat. Silvia Saint should never feel flat! The biggest problem was the idea that this was a couples movie, as it was advertised on the cover. This means that it’s a movie for men and women to watch together. Apparently, Plum thinks that a couples movie is just tame, or even boring, sex which is only between men and women. I admit that most couples sex is or should be geared towards male / female sex rather than all girl scenes and group sex. This doesn’t mean that women don’t like to watch group or all girl sex, although most don’t. Almost every woman I know who have watched porn or who dislike porn are more turned off of it because of the lack of plot than the group sex. To spell it out for the slow people, this means PLOT! Plot isn’t a necessity for a couples movie, but it’s extremely hard to do without it. Couples movies are normally about more than just sex. A lot of time they’re romantic (note: most people don’t consider men paying women for sex to be sexy. The only thing that comes close to making Skin Deep a couples movie is the focus on male -female sex. This fiasco shows exactly how a porno, and especially a couples movie, should not be done. It should be buried far below just Skin Deep.

Extras: Trailers, bios, photo gallery, web site, and phone sex info. The only bios are for Silvia Saint and Gina Ryder. They’re both okay at best and neither one lists any of their other movies. The photo gallery is manual and pretty good quality. It’s a nice mix of full screen and smaller photos. Thankfully they don’t suffer from the tinting the rest of the movie does. There’s a good selection of trailers including Stray Cat, Evil Eyes, Looker , Prey, Shattered Vows, Intimate Strangers, Penetrator 2, A Clockwork Orgy, Eros Instinct, Poser, Flesh for Fantasy, and Back & Beyond. There are also several other covers listed. Most of the trailers are pretty decent trailers and many of the films are by Nic Cramer.

Themes: Straight, anal, rimming (male > female), spanking, toe-ing, and masturbation

Raincoat Factor: Medium high

Overall: Currently, Skin Deep can be found online for between $20 and $24. Unless you’re a major fan of Silvia Saint, don’t even think of paying that much. There’s virtually no plot to the movie, which I think is a must for the couples film it’s advertised to be. The audio is okay, but the video suffers badly. There’s also not much for extras.

Note to Plum: You’ve got a good start here by having Silvia Saint. I know that Nic Cramer can do good work after watching both Looker and Looker 2 but it doesn’t show here. Also, couples movies are normally fairly strong on plot, which is perhaps the biggest flaw of this movie. I’ve seen that you can do good movies, please do it more as you have some great talent to work with!

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