Wild Honey Parts 1-3 Review

Running Time: approx. 271 min.

Production Date: 10 / 1999, 01 / 2000, and 09 / 2000

Director: Nic Cramer

Cast: Sunset Thomas, Shawna Sexton, Paige Sinclair, Allysin Chaynes, Dillion Day, Zach Addams, Kyle Stone, Mickey G., Randy Spears, Michael J. Cox, Tera Patrick, Gwen Summers, Maren Beautte, Bacci, Chris Cannon, April, Kiki D’Aire, John Strong, and Nic Cramer in a non-sex role

Initial Expectations: Nic Cramer did a great job with the original Looker, so I’m going in with very high hopes for him doing a murder mystery trilogy.

Initial Reaction: There’s a lot of hits, but a lot more misses.

Who Should Watch It : Anybody who wants to watch sex without paying attention to a plot.

Who Should Avoid It: Anybody who’s looking forward to porn with a passable plot

Audio /Video Quality: The audio is pretty clear and decently balanced, but often a little on the low side. There’s also several background noises that are readily noticeable. The video is presented in the widescreen format, but unfortunately it’s non-anamorphic. There’s a couple flashes of remnants, but that’s about it for unintentional problems. As usual with Nic Cramer, the feature appears to have been shot on film since it has a slightly grainy look to it, but according to the cover Mr. Cramer shot the feature on video. I’m guessing that Mr. Cramer applied filters to the video after shooting it to give the feature a film-like appearance. The lighting is also a bit inconsistent, which stems from Mr. Cramer using a lot of natural lighting in his features. Although I prefer very clear features, it does give the feature a bit of an artistic feel, and doesn’t hold the feature back much.

Music: The music varies a little throughout the feature, but often has a feel about halfway between porn music and music from a mainstream movie. It rests very nicely in the background throughout the movie, and almost always enhances the scene rather than interfering with it.

Disc Problems / Complaints: On the first two DVDs, the feature is split over two titles on the DVD, with the break occurring just over an hour into the feature on the first DVD and about thirty seven minutes into the feature on the second DVD. Once you start the second title, you can’t go back to check out anything in the first title. This was a common problem in earlier DVDs, but by now Pleasure should have moved past it.

False Advertising: The cover states there are star bios, but I couldn’t find them on the DVD.

Menus: Each disc has a fairly simple but nicely done main menu that gives each DVD a very good first impression. The chapter menus let you choose a scene based on a scene number and a small clip of the scene.

The Feature: The Wild Honey trilogy is simply a boxed set of the existing Wild Honey 1, Wild Honey 2, Wild Honey 3 DVDs. Since I’ve already reviewed those three DVDs, I’ll concentrate on general and overall aspects here.

The Wild Honey trilogy revolves around a girl named Heather (or according to the box, Honey), played by Sunset Thomas. Yes, the “suck” alarm is already going off when they can’t decide on the main character’s name. Anyway, Sunset is the bitchy daughter of a rich pill popping widow (Kiki D’Aire at a fraction of Sunset’s age), and everybody around her just wants to get high, party, and fuck. Eventually they get tired of Sunset’s moodiness and somebody tries to kill her. Unfortunately for most everybody, Sunset lives, although her memory doesn’t until the end of the feature. As a storyline, this would be a great idea for a trilogy. There’s plenty to work with here, and with three movies to bring things out over, you should be able to keep a good pace and work in more than a little sex. Unfortunately, roughly ninety percent of the plot happens in the third part since the first two parts are more concerned with everybody fucking around the house.

To make matters worse, there seems to be absolutely no continuity from episode to episode. Some of it just seems extremely sloppy and careless, such as having Randy Spears finding Sunset lying in the surf in her clothes apparently dead at the end of the first episode, but at the start of the second episode he finds her lying on the beach wrapped in a plastic bag and covered with seaweed. I think Mr. Cramer was trying to work with a non-linear storyline, which I tend to like in mysteries. The problem with non-linear storylines is you have to have something tying the times together as the story jumps around or it just ends up feeling like a jumbled mess, which this most certainly feels like. Done right, you’re even left feeling like you should watch the entire movie again because you’re sure there were a couple clues or links here and there that you want to check out. I watched all three parts in one day so that I could get a good feel for the flow of the trilogy, and I ended up confused and hating it. One part of the trilogy would end at one place, and you wouldn’t get to the same place until the next part of the trilogy was close to its last scene. This should have been a decent storyline to build an adult trilogy around, but instead comes off as three half-assed pornos. I know many people often joke about porn being made around a storyline wrote on the back of a matchbook, but this feels like they wrote it on a matchstick, broke it in several pieces, threw the pieces in the gutter until the ink ran, and then picked the pieces out at random and did what they said. There is a little twist at the end that might excuse some of this, but it didn’t work for me at all.

Luckily, the sex isn’t nearly as bad as the plot sequences. In fact, much of it is pretty darn good. There’s some great talent here, namely Tera Patrick, April, Kiki D’Aire, Paige Sinclair, and of course, Sunset Thomas. They all do a great job and put some great effort into their scenes. Sunset’s the only one who takes it in the ass, and does it in the opening scene of each movie. This helped to give the movies a little bit of a monotonous feel, just because the only anal in the movie is in the first scene, and all the scenes are straight boy - girl sex scenes. I’m guessing this was to try and make the feature couples friendly, but it also made things feel redundant, which makes them get a little boring. When I’ve talked to people who’ve been turned off by porn and why they got turned off, it’s rarely been the nastiness of scenes. Instead it’s been that they were bored with it. Nic Cramer walks a fine line with the sex here, and I think might bore a few people because of it. Luckily, the aforementioned ladies do one heck of a job and each feature has at least a couple great scenes that should get the blood flowing in almost all of the viewers because of them.

Sadly, the plot sequences held back the sex scenes for me. With the exception of Randy Spears, there isn’t really a single likeable person in the entire feature. As the main character, we should feel a little something for Sunset, but she comes off as enough of a bitch that I was almost happy when things got to the murder. The people around the house seem thrown in, so half the time I was wondering if I missed something since a new character was just added. The acting also left more than a little to be desired for much of the cast, which didn’t help my attempted enjoyment either.

If all you’re concerned about is sex scenes, and you don’t want any of that nasty group or lesbian stuff, the Wild Honey trilogy might be right up your alley. There’s a couple good sex scenes in each installment, and barely a bad scene in the feature. If you want an adult film with a decent plotline that might stimulate more than just your genitals, which is just what I was hoping for here, the Wild Honey trilogy is probably going to annoy you and leave you thinking twice about watching anything else from Nic Cramer for a little while.

Extras: Each DVD has a photo gallery with two and a half to three dozen nice looking photos, phone sex information, and internet information.

Themes: Straight, anal, spanking, rimming (male > female), tit fucking, and masturbation

Raincoat Factor: High

Overall: Currently, the Wild Honey trilogy can be found online for between $23 and $37, with only two stores offering it at this time. Go out and rent the first part of this trilogy before you buy this one. If you like it, you’ll probably be happy with the trilogy at this price, and you’re still saving quite a bit renting one episode and then buying the trilogy compared to buying them seperately. If not, you’re not out nearly as much.

Note to Pleasure: It’s a great idea to sell trilogies like this as a bundle. I just with you would have done a better job on the overall DVDs.

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

Other reviews by Astroknight