Traces of Love

TRACES OF LOVE makes no pretentions to being anything else other than a straightforward, five scenes, no-nonsense porno video. Although Tabitha Stevens is featured prominently looking hot and sexy the cover of this DVD, she shares only one girl-guy scene which comes late in the video...almost too late, it seems, to save this feature from being anything more than mediocre. This is my first review of a Dreamland Video DVD, and I hope that in the future, the company chooses to release older films from their catalog instead of nondescript titles like this one.

The plot is a disjointed, almost incoherent mish mash about the lead actor getting into sexual encounters for no apparent reason. A large part of the problem in following the plot and enjoying the sex in this production is that the sound is completely off synch with the video by as much as 20 seconds! Literally, the sound trails the movie for the entire film, so that the whole thing seems badly overdubbed. I tried this disc out with two other name-brand DVD players and got the same results. This is an incredible flaw in this DVD, that almost demands a recall. However, since the film itself was lackluster to begin with, I couldn't muster much interest in wanting to view a corrected copy even if it were available.

For some reason, director Thomas Paine only uses one guy for all the sex scenes; actor Chris Gannon definitely gets to indulge in the fantasies of all male porn viewers, although this movie isn't exactly up to Andrew Blake or even Rodney Moore standards. In fact, my favorite scene was a girl-girl session featuring sexy blonde Taylor Moore (who was first introduced in UP AND CUMMERS 7) and Temptress who engage in some great french kissing and carpet munching while Chris looks on. In truth, both Taylor Moore and Temptress have done better, more passionate scenes in other movies but this is the best TRACES OF LOVE has to offer. They make fairly good use of a double ended dildo during their lovefest, but the scene ends rather awkwardly without any real climax.

For fans of Tabitha Stevens, viewers will enjoy her dressed up in the same white nurses/angel-type costume that she wears on the cover (a rarity in porn for the actress in a video to look as she does on the packaging) when she gets it on with Chris Gannon. However, this scene seems to have been done strictly by the numbers. Although Tabitha gives great head, and can ride on cock like the best porn starlets, fans deserve better than just a single scene. At the very least, we should have seen her engaged in some lesbian loving, or at least a threesome just to make things a bit different. Blonde and hardbodied TJ Hart has two scenes in this movie, and both just seem to be mirror images of the other: cunnilingus, followed by a blowjob, leading into a couple of cowgirl and missionary positions and ending with a cumshot on her stomach. TJ Hart is solid performer, but her two scenes here are one too many. Again, if she was paired with another girl along with the main stud, it would at least have broken some of the familiar monotony. The threesome with Autumn Hayes and Ellen DeVyne is a very good opener to this movie, complete with a teriffic double blowjob and lots of varied sexplay, but it is also too darkly photographed and clumsily directed to be anything better than average. Again, this introductory scene looks like it was filmed more as an afterthought to the movie, than as part of the storyline.

Picture quality on this DVD is average for this dimly-lit, shot on video feature. The sound is generally good, as far as clarity and audibility go, but is horribly off-synch with the movie (as discussed above).

If there really isn't much to be said about TRACES OF LOVE, it is because there really isn't too much there to begin with. At a feature running time of ninety minutes, this DVD also has the usual slide show feature and trailers of so many other porn products like it. For simple porn viewing (if you can do without a coherent soundtrack, that is), this release is no better or worse than your average porn production. I recommend TRACES OF LOVE only for fans of the actresses featured in this film.

Technically, this transfer is average, with noticeable amounts of color noise, edge and contrast pixelation. The real problems arise when you get to the audio. The disc claims to be in Dolby 5.1 surround, but is actually in 2.0. The DVD also has the dialogue isolated on the left channel, with music and sound effects coming only from the right, which might explain the echoing quality which makes the dialogue tough to hear. Additionally, the audio is a full 12 seconds behind the picture, making it virtually unwatchable. The DVD-ROM blackjack game mentioned on the package is also nowhere to be found.

Extras: Live-play still gallery, trailers.