Michael Zen has a big rep in the Adult Entertainment industry, but his several entries into the fabulously successful Kirdy Stevens/Helen Terrie "Taboo" series are an embarrassment. Watching this one left me flabbergasted -similar to my reaction 30 years ago in a theater watching both "Mommie Dearest" and "Monsignor" by the late Frank Perry. So it was entertaining in a perverse "camp" way.
The video is extremely well-photographed, far better than today's "high definition" touted product, in terms of lighting, angles and yes, definition of the image. But the content is stupid and idiotic.
The lovely (but here one-dimensional, stone-faced in every scene, way beyond mere underplaying) Chloe is a rich wife whose older hubby Mark Davis isn't satisfying her. The many sexual couplings that unfold over a crisp 83-minute running time are erotic, but the gimmicks of presenting them and weaving them into an ongoing storyline by usually reliable screenwriter Raven Touchstone are preposterous (and as in a Coen Bros. movie, lightly mocked by the director). This really disappointed me, because I was watching "Taboo 19" precisely because Raven wrote it, as part of my current review of her career.
Germ of a good story deals with double-dealing and treachery, as virtually every major character is venal and up to no good, trying to bamboozle Chloe. Davis is plotting with his daughter, as the unusual looking Sweetie (Melanie Stone) plans to get Chloe to adopt her, and end up together with Chloe's money. Along the way dad & kid have two exciting incest scenes humping in the bathroom.
Fans of the "Taboo" sagas know that quality pretty much petered out around the fourth or fifth edition, though I am enamored of Red Ezra's "Taboo 21" which took an interracial theme as the title taboo in place of incest. Zen also emphasizes, more-so than incest, interracial sex in this edition, as Chloe's masseur well-played by Byron Long (he actually has a character here -can't recall seeing him in non-gonzo action) humps the white girls a few times and is also a schemer, blackmailing Davis into getting a piece of the scam action.
Certainly the double-crosses are fun and so is Chloe's intervention in her own interests, but most of the plot twists are ludicrous and arbitrary. The silliness was within reason until Sex-Scene #7 when Chloe's mom, attractively overage redhead Madison, is humping an old fart played by the decidedly unappealing Dave Cummings. (Note that this is not the wonderful Adult star named Madison but another actress whose meager credits include "Granny Takes a Tinkle", directed by I.P. Freeley.)
Dave falls off of Madison's chest on the floor, dead of a heart attack. She declares: "Don't die on me, I haven't got off yet". Madison proceeds to take the false teeth out of the corpse's mouth and masturbate with them. Scene ends with a closeup of the false teeth in a bubbly glass (polident or Alka Seltzer?) on Madison's night stand. I call this description a spoiler, because I had the glorious thrill of watching this unexpected crap without advance warning - as insulting a porn sequence as one could hope for.
There's other stupidity on screen plus plenty of showy stuff that only makes Zen and Touchstone seem demented. For example, the key subplot is Chloe's burning desire to become pregnant: Davis isn't up to the task, and when she scoops up "sperm" from a facial by Byron, that doesn't work either. Late in the film she has a three-way with two blond studs, and both of them penetrate her vagina simultaneously, but both are wearing regulation condoms, resulting again in a very sloppy facial and Chloe whipping out her trusty little vial to scrape up more "sperm" for the artificial insemination cause.
Yes, "Taboo 19" is bad beyond hope.
The video is extremely well-photographed, far better than today's "high definition" touted product, in terms of lighting, angles and yes, definition of the image. But the content is stupid and idiotic.
The lovely (but here one-dimensional, stone-faced in every scene, way beyond mere underplaying) Chloe is a rich wife whose older hubby Mark Davis isn't satisfying her. The many sexual couplings that unfold over a crisp 83-minute running time are erotic, but the gimmicks of presenting them and weaving them into an ongoing storyline by usually reliable screenwriter Raven Touchstone are preposterous (and as in a Coen Bros. movie, lightly mocked by the director). This really disappointed me, because I was watching "Taboo 19" precisely because Raven wrote it, as part of my current review of her career.
Germ of a good story deals with double-dealing and treachery, as virtually every major character is venal and up to no good, trying to bamboozle Chloe. Davis is plotting with his daughter, as the unusual looking Sweetie (Melanie Stone) plans to get Chloe to adopt her, and end up together with Chloe's money. Along the way dad & kid have two exciting incest scenes humping in the bathroom.
Fans of the "Taboo" sagas know that quality pretty much petered out around the fourth or fifth edition, though I am enamored of Red Ezra's "Taboo 21" which took an interracial theme as the title taboo in place of incest. Zen also emphasizes, more-so than incest, interracial sex in this edition, as Chloe's masseur well-played by Byron Long (he actually has a character here -can't recall seeing him in non-gonzo action) humps the white girls a few times and is also a schemer, blackmailing Davis into getting a piece of the scam action.
Certainly the double-crosses are fun and so is Chloe's intervention in her own interests, but most of the plot twists are ludicrous and arbitrary. The silliness was within reason until Sex-Scene #7 when Chloe's mom, attractively overage redhead Madison, is humping an old fart played by the decidedly unappealing Dave Cummings. (Note that this is not the wonderful Adult star named Madison but another actress whose meager credits include "Granny Takes a Tinkle", directed by I.P. Freeley.)
Dave falls off of Madison's chest on the floor, dead of a heart attack. She declares: "Don't die on me, I haven't got off yet". Madison proceeds to take the false teeth out of the corpse's mouth and masturbate with them. Scene ends with a closeup of the false teeth in a bubbly glass (polident or Alka Seltzer?) on Madison's night stand. I call this description a spoiler, because I had the glorious thrill of watching this unexpected crap without advance warning - as insulting a porn sequence as one could hope for.
There's other stupidity on screen plus plenty of showy stuff that only makes Zen and Touchstone seem demented. For example, the key subplot is Chloe's burning desire to become pregnant: Davis isn't up to the task, and when she scoops up "sperm" from a facial by Byron, that doesn't work either. Late in the film she has a three-way with two blond studs, and both of them penetrate her vagina simultaneously, but both are wearing regulation condoms, resulting again in a very sloppy facial and Chloe whipping out her trusty little vial to scrape up more "sperm" for the artificial insemination cause.
Yes, "Taboo 19" is bad beyond hope.