Smokin' Hot Brunettes Vol. 1

I just put Smokin' Hot Brunettes in my DVD player and it literally just spat it back out. That's not a good start at all. Maybe my player had the same distaste I did for the way Tera Patrick (who has never done anything for me sexually) is described as "the NUMBER ONE HOTTEST PORNSTAR in the World, Glamour Goddess Tera Patrick." I gotta be honest: she wouldn't crack my top 100. So I have a sour taste going in, as Vivid is again overhyping their talent without showing us the goods up front to back such claims up. But we have Audrey Bitoni and Stephanie Cane on the cover, and it's all brunettes, so maybe there is hope after all. At least, more hope than there is for my DVD player.

To Vivid's credit, this went straight to the menu rather than making us suffer through a dozen or so commercials off the bat. Progress of a sort. I could do without the biker gang theme of the menus, but that's something I'll just have to deal with, alongside Spyder Jonez calling himself RockstarPimp, a dated term the former and a degrading term for the latter. Good that he feels the need to talk to us for awhile. Stop it. Just stop.

Faith Leon is up first, and I really like Faith. She has a very cute face and seems exceptionally comfortable being in front of the camera. They go through a good though standard progression of positions before Spyder blows his load all over Faith's mouth and face. A good shot. Really it was just Spyder's excess of ink, especially for his physical conditioning, that was most distracting. Anything that takes away from the female talent when you're marketing based on the female talent is a bad thing. And the constant mentioning of the website is annoying as well. How very Vivid-like.

The fact that we keep getting these stupid vignettes between scenes, sometimes more than one, is beyond infuriating. Eventually Stephanie Cane makes her way in front of us, and that's nice, though Spyder needs to get the hell out of the way and let us look at her for a bit. Stephanie works herself over for a bit, and we see it from a camera angle that is about18 inches too low to really enjoy all of her. Then Spyder waddles his way in and gets his cock sucked for his trouble. Not the best set of positions here, and as much as I shouldn't rag on the guy, Spyder's gut gets in the way from time to time. Give him props though for the facial he delivers to Stephanie in the end, one that is really well captured. Again, though, we get a mention of the website in the middle of the facial. Stop that! Why don't you just put an ad for Geico in the middle of the scene somewhere? No comments as to who plays the gecko.

Audrey Bitoni is in the final scene. The ones in between were good, don't get me wrong, but I'm losing patience. They made a poor choice lighting wise in having her in an all white room with a black chair. She gets lost in the chair, the background is too bright, and the camera is too low to see anything besides her face and knees to ankles. I'm starting to think this scene is going to win the unintentional comedy award, having Audrey's hair blow like it's wind-swept, when the fan is blaring next to the camera the whole time. It's not sexy, it's a tropical storm. Another comical moment comes when Spyder goes to stick his finger up her ass and she squirms away, her leg hiding a probably annoyed look.

I'm trying. Really I am. The women are all very beautiful here, but this director and this studio cannot get out of their own way. You build a reputation by giving us quality. You don't do it by making every second a marketable moment. If this is going to be their attitude, it isn't going to work. And really, this is why Vivid seems to me to be in long term trouble. Wicked is still making better features aimed towards couples, as is Digital Playground. Zero Tolerance, Third Degree, and Elegant Angel have the all sex pictures nailed down with higher production values and less nonsense. I don't know what room that leaves Vivid, but they don't seem to know either.