Torero

Winner of AVN's 1997 "Best Foreign Film" award, Torero leaves little room to ponder the legitimacy of its merits. Under the astute direction of Joe D'Amato, the film is set (as well as filmed) in Spain and centers around the convoluted life of a famous bull fighter. Starring Rocco Siffredi (perhaps the biggest international porn star of all time) and American veteran Sunset Thomas, D'Amato front loads his production with enough star power to draw viewers into his tightly spun erotic tale. Like many of D'Amato's films, Torero is shot on 35mm giving it a slick and professional look rarely found in modern adult cinema.

Rocco plays the main character, Antonio, who is supposedly torn between his gorgeous Spanish wife (played by Olivia Del Rio) and an equally inciting American journalist played by Sunset Thomas. If you're looking for an extremely deep, logical, and credible storyline, then look elsewhere. While many pretentious directors get sidetracked by narrative details, D'Amato never gets distracted from recognizing his main goal of filming his incredibly attractive cast performing all types of nasty sex acts. In addition, the story never becomes intrusive or dominant, but somehow manages to hold everything together. For example, the story acts as simple in-betweens for the sex scenes. There's rarely a moment when the story persists for more than three minutes before some type of fornication occurs. In fact, there isn't a single woman in this film that Antonio doesn't screw at least once. It may not make for a very credible story, but it makes for some really great porn.

The sex scenes are relatively short and to-the-point, but are still effective and very watchable. It's been a while since I've seen a movie where every sex scene held my interest. One of the reasons that make the scenes so great is the way there are edited. Instead of showing us a penetration close-up for two full minutes, D'Amato carefully paces each scene and keeps the camera angles fresh: think of it as porn for those of us with short attention spans. The sex itself never gets dull and has enough debauchery to make any raincoater smile with delight. As you might have guessed, there's plenty of anal sex and every scene ends with some type of facial. Each scene runs for an average of about 7 minutes, and in that short time, is packed with multiple positions and penetrations. I didn't keep accurate count of how many scenes there were total, but there must be at least 8. In many respects, Torero reminds me of the adult films of the late 70s and early 80s, when the sex scenes were shorter, but more plentiful. That is certainly a trend I'd like to see return.

Although I think the film is fantastic, I am very disappointed with this DVD. It's a true shame that Torero suffers from one of the worst atrocities known to foreign films: dubbing. I'm not sure whether the original soundtrack was recorded in Spanish or Italian, but apparently it doesn't matter because it's been totally eradicated from this release and replaced with a laughable English dub. I'm not an expert, but I think it would be much easier to keep the original soundtrack and simply add English subtitles. Dubbing dialogue is one thing, but dubbing sex scenes is completely unforgivable. The last thing I want to hear are studio actor's providing approximate moans and grunts. On top of the audio woes, the picture looks like it was transferred from a video tape. There are several noticeable jumps and squiggly lines on the top and bottom of the screen that look more consistent with video tape than celluloid. I'd be very surprised if this was transferred from a 35mm print. The DVD offers no real extras other than a decent photo gallery. The pictures in the photo gallery look much more crisp and vivid than the frames of the grainy washed out feature, only adding to my suspicions about the transfer.

Torero is one of many classic adult films that deserve much better treatment on DVD. Fortunately, there are two different versions of this film. The one I reviewed here was put out by Gentlemen's DVD quite recently. There's another version that Digital Playground released some time ago that supposedly has a better transfer and the option to switch audio language tracks. Although I haven't seen the other version, I'm certain it can't be any worse than this one. But from what I understand, the other one still suffers from dubbing issues. If you're interested in this title, opt for Digital Playground's version. Maybe another company will pick this title up in the future and restore the native soundtrack, but until then you'll have to put up with horrendous dubbing.