Decadent Divas 14

It's easy to see why Hanna Harper is top-billed in "Decadent Divas 14." I don't want to go out too far on such a shaky limb, but I guess somebody thought she was the hottest thing in this film. She's cute, she's blonde, and she comes complete with her own value-add: a sexy British accent. Put her in a short latex skirt and there's no denying her sex appeal. Combine these assets with her sexual technique and you have this entire film in one girl: a lot of glitz and very little heat.

Hanna mixes it up with Brie Brooks, another good-looking blonde, in the film's second scene, which takes place on a stairway of the mansion purportedly belonging to the International Fetish Corporation. After the usual boot licking, the girls get down to business. Hanna, though, is more adept at the former than the latter: she's a light clit-licker, for the most part, and I don't think even Tera Patrick could make that exciting. (Well, okay, maybe that's going a bit far.)

On the other hand, the film's best sequence occurs in this scene. It may be the only time during a "Decadent Divas" film when I thought, You know, I can see some real fetish-appeal here. Of the dominant-submissive variety, it happens when Hanna goes down on Brie's high-heel shoes. Brie's standing, and Hanna's practically on her belly worshipping her feet.

It may not be the real deal, but it's near enough to produce a twinge, which is more than can be said of anything else in the film. The "Decadent Divas" scenes work best the closer they get to the truly offbeat (or, conversely, the less fetish-oriented they are). All that latex, those whips and paddles, the boots and high heels?generally speaking, what they all amount to is distraction. And it's not me they're distracting for the most part it's the girls. At least that's one explanation of the phenomenon so often encountered in these films: the lack of sexual tension between the performers. Who thinks these girls are into all this stuff when the cameras aren't rolling? Anyone? Anyone?

The film's threeway with Kianna, Bianca and Bamboo is sex at its most tepid and ill conceived. Bianca begins the scene as the dominant, but Kianna, who's already proclaimed her popularity with the IFC, isn't about to play second fiddle to her; so she begins to assert herself, and any tension that may have resulted from a babe-and-her-two-bitches scenario quickly evaporates. Then, too, as positions shift, the scene tends to leave one or another of the girls without much to do. Maybe it's time for porn directors to start hiring sexual choreographers.

And then there's Bridgette Kerkove, one of porn's busiest one trick ponies. Sometimes the trick works, but more often, I think, it comes across as assisted masturbation because I doubt even her co-stars can really take her anal extremes seriously. It may be that Bridgette is now attempting to top herself to the detriment of everything sexy. It isn't always easy getting those dildos in her ass, and you can't help but notice the way the insertion is often deleted or not filmed at all. She takes two monster dildos in this film, and the Behind the Scenes featurette shows her with one of them inside, telling the director that he might want to seriously consider taking his still photos now because she isn't inclined to put the thing in again. Earlier, when she's sizing up the toys before insertion, she quips, "I can't believe they make things like that." If that were only what happened behind the scenes, it wouldn't be worth discussing except as trivia, but I'll be damned if that artificiality doesn't show up on-screen, as well.

The "Decadent Divas" concept has always had great potential, but it's mistakes that continue to produce such lukewarm episodes as this one.