Sex Pix

I hated Chris Nolan's much-admired "Memento", but -ignore my inconsistency - I loved James Avalon's "Sex Pix" which draws direct inspiration from it. This is a challenging Adult project but Avalon is up for it.

Sunny Lane stars as a girl suffering from amnesia, and we see her story unfold backwards. Avalon mischievously opens the picture near the end of her saga, and then goes into a series of 10 flashbacks, each showing a scene that took place slightly before the preceding one. The story unravels with more and more explanatory information provided, in a far better (and fairer) manner than Nolan's hokey approach.

Linking it all together is a set of nude Polaroids Sunny has with her, serving in place of the tattoos/reminders Nolan emphasized. These "sex pix" point to Kurt Lockwood as the villain, but it turns out most satisfyingly that Avalon has a clever (and logical) trick up his sleeve to explain the mysterious writing "Do not trust this man!" written on the back of the Polaroid featuring Kurt and Sunny together.

Lane, eminently reigning as jail-bait supreme when this was shot, is perfectly cast as the bewildered heroine who nonetheless gets down in a hurry to any sex thrust upon her (call it muscle memory). Veronica Hart turns in one of her best late-career non-sex performances in a big role as the lady who runs a BDSM sex club called Club Sin, where much of the action takes place.

Evan Stone won an industry award for his over-the-top performance as "Cowboy", a guy perpetually bleeding and wounded, but that never stops him from having sex and getting into additional fights. Avalon does something which has subsequently been nearly banned from porn: staging many ultra-violent scenes (generally involving Stone) in which plenty of blood is spilled and actors violently mistreat each other. This is completely apart from the controlled bondage/fetish BDSM action at the club, and the mixing of the two (plus tons of straight sex) in one feature is verboten nowadays, probably more due to self-censorship than fear of getting locked up. If you've been wondering why Cinemax's classic "Banshee" has not received the dreaded porn-parody treatment, that's why.

In the big cast, other talent worth singling out includes always-uninhibited Kelly Wells providing plenty of anal action, many a stud appearing in orgies, exotic looking Veronica Jett whose final sex scene attacking a truly big dick is saved for the Bonus section of a second DVD, and a very young, svelte Alektra Blue, doing a live shower-sex act with Tyla Wynn and nearly flat-chested, something of a shocker for an actress I have always admired for her big fake tits. (I had a similar shock of recognition watching Madison Ivy cute and flat-chested in "Gabriella Nude", years before her similar enhancement surgery.)

Avalon emphasizes cum-swapping, ATMs, and staring directly at the camera at the end of a sex scene here. He even provides an amusing commentary on the BTS short subject, noting how at Adam & Eve there were strict rules: only one ATM permitted per scene! That helped explain for me the contrast in his more free-wheeling work (as seen here) for a gonzo label like Red Light District Films.