Fuck

Extremely dated a decade later, this "award-winning" Brad Armstrong opus has the demerits of most of his Wicked super-productions: not mere hubris but essentially forgetting what he's supposed to be doing. The talented actor/director has achieved legendary status in the Adult industry, partly due to the fawning cronyism endemic to this "outlaw" culture, but he wastes a lot of his time on bloated ego-tripping spectacles. I vastly prefer the craftsmanship and ingenuity of his small-scale stories.

Film, reportedly shot on 35mm rather than video, is surprisingly short, running only 83 minutes compared to the 3 or 4 hour lengths of comparable epics. It is marketed on 2 DVDs with fancy packaging like other big-budget porn in the wake of the success of Digital Playground/Adam & Eve's hit "Pirates", but this type of production has become as extinct as the dodo bird.

That's because audience preferences have changed drastically, and most porn consumers rent, down-load or stream an individual scene (running perhaps half an hour) and have lost interest in Adult feature films.

Worse yet for Brad and this project's legacy, it is edited with flash frames and agitated clipping that works against the continuous sex representation preferred by a public only interested in getting off. Brad's artistic and sometimes intellectual pretensions are wasted and pointless.

"F*cK" actually falls into Armstrong's occasional forays into abstract erotica, the art form perfected by "Andrew Blake" or whoever was using that nom de porn at the time. There's no narrative, no characterizations and no dialog, just Jessica Drake narrating pompous (no script credit either) descriptions of male and female evolution over the decades. The misogynist and even racist overtones of what Brad presents are par for the course, as in most porn this type of baiting the viewer is considered a plus -written off as "naughty", iconoclastic or just part of the outlaw tradition. I found it offensive merely from a "that's stupid!" point of view.

With big-name cast, shooting schedule covering a two-week stretch, lavish sets and costumes, and shooting on film this commanded a far bigger budget than typical 2006 porn, especially compared to gonzo quickies which, after all, were earning plenty of money for pornographers back then. But what does Brad come up with? Six concise vignettes (each too short to be a modern-day streamer) that mainly look nice, but are boring and devoid of interest.

Opener is a Conan the Barbarian clone, with Tommy Gunn sitting on his throne in slavish imitation of the iconic Schwarzenegger still that sold the original, humping two exotic breast-plated femmes: busty stripper Exotica and striking blonde Lori Lust. So confident is Brad in his craft and power of persuasion, that he quickly sabotages all the time and effort that went into styling and costuming by having Tommy wearing a rubber - the safe-sex Wicked policy of using condoms adhered to throughout the film, despite its inappropriateness to the fantasy scenes depicted. Statistically, the % of video titles released in 2006 featuring condoms would likely be less than 1%.

Ice La Fox is an interesting choice to portray the goddess Kali in the next vignette, giving blow jobs and hand jobs with her other arms portrayed by "helping hands" Jeneveve Jolie and Wicked contract star Carmen Hart.

Hart returns as part of an ensemble portraying a misogynistic dinner party in which she and other beauties (contract star Kirsten Price, Katsumi and all-time fave Mia Smiles) are carried down the staircase literally on platters to be "served" to the assembled gentlemen. This dumb orgy is carefully choreographed by Brad, right down to Mia getting her facials and drinking spunk from a goblet where one of the studs has deposited it. Most striking element is merely Mia having big breasts a decade after her initial stardom (and the way I remember her, still fresh and unscathed by the porno wars).

Brad plays the race card for punning reasons in a silly segment presaging today's IR craze. The bosomy and under-appreciated Trina Michaels guest stars as a dominant modern woman, on her bed heavily bejeweled with her furs and two Dobermans. Brad has the two fierce black dogs morph into Black porn stars Sean Michaels and Mr. Marcus to hump Trina, condoms flying. Michaels gives Michaels some long-dicking in her posterior, yet no d.p. is delivered by the stingy auteur, just requisite facials.

Jessica Drake stars in the remaining two segments: first in a four-girl daisy-chain of babes bedecked in Lady Pompadour hairdos and outfits supposedly portraying living dolls. This exercise emphasizes anal sex as well, with dildos and even a dildo-achieved d.p., and is clumsily staged so as to feature all-time Sapphic great Felecia (her name misspelled consistently in on-screen credits) but render her unrecognizable.

Finale is likely the most successful segment, titled "Android", but originally called "Robot" on the clapperboard shown in the "Making of" featurette. (That plus bonus filler is on Disk 2 of the set, when in fact all the footage would have easily fit without any compression on a single disk). Eric Masterson with his platinum blond haircut is the scientist who creates her as a perfect woman, and then indulges in typical fetish-genre (see: Tanya Hyde or Dana Vespoli videos) medical instruments porn, in which a speculum shows us the inside of superstar Drake's pussy and when she's not fitted with a bejeweled butt-plug has Eric reaming her with a metal dildo. That's entertainment!