Ultimate Pleasure Box Set
Surrender Cinema | Buy at Amazon | Review by Sinferno

Released just in time for Valentines day 2010, the Surrender Cinema Ultimate Pleasure Box is a hard cased compendium of soft core action. Anyone who has been following my reviews or has strolled through a video store knows what to expect from a Surrender Cinema title. Nonetheless, I will review all the movies in detail, making this the longest review of all time. With no further ado or colorful vocabulary tricks, let's dive into this and do something here today that even the MPAA won't do: "rate" these things.

DUNGEON OF DESIRE (2000)
This one contains a who's who of underground movie seductresses among the cast including Susan Featherly, Amber Newman, Mia Zottoli and perhaps my favorite 90's B movie temptress, Regina Russell cast as a redhead (as she often is in these things). It is unlikely you can ever watch Cinemax after 11 PM and not see at least one of these actresses at least once an evening, so even if you don't know their names, these actresses will likely seem somehow familiar to you, at least in the few moments before they take off their clothes and it all comes back to you. Seriously, between the four of them they have starred in over two hundred films, each with the same plot- and by that I mean none whatsoever. If this upsets or nonpluses you, I think you might have just be reading the wrong review for the wrong product. For the rest of you, come hither, and let me tell you a tale of thine B movie before ye, and what a veritable banquet of flesh it is. Forsooth!

Dungeon of Desire is the story of a photographer named Carrie who is so hungry for new footage for the next issue of Playpen Magazine that she takes her two models, Jill and Vicki, to an old castle to get some lurid shots of them posing seductively with official props and materials from the dark ages, utilizing them for a sexy lesbian spread. But before she can pull out her camera and get "medieval on their asses" in perhaps the most literal sense, one of the snoopy girls opens up a chest revealing an ancient chastity belt. Because the crazy women in these films can't stop messing around with things (or even with each other for that matter) they soon open the strange panties of propriety and are magically transported back to the Middle Ages. From there Carrie and Vicki are conscripted into servitude as chamber maids (lesbian attendants for the insatiable princess Gwen) while Jill draws kitchen duty. From there they are embroiled in a centuries-old tale of intrigue as they help Princess Gwen unite with her paramour Prince Eric all the while thwarting the desires of the evil queen, who doesn't really want them breeding for reasons which are too apparent (what with the kingdom being bloodline based and everything). Eventually, through much seduction and the dropping of clothes like so many fake English accents, a scene later they are able to use the chastity belt to return to their own time. Jill even brings home a souvenir of sorts, the head cook she befriended (had sex with) while she was trapped in the kingdom. I forget the cooks identity, but as Jill was played by Regina Russell I prefer to refer to him by the affectionate pet name "That lucky son of a bitch."

THE EXOTIC HOUSE OF WAX (1996)
A young college girl named Josie inherits a financially beleaguered wax museum, so she gathers her best friend Star and a couple coed male buddies: Pete and Andy. Together they seek to save the wacky Waxy establishment from the creditors. But little did they know (and much did I suspect) that this wax museum is actually enchanted with magical sexual energy. Not only are all the exhibits nude renditions of actual historical figures frozen in the act of getting it on (Cleopatra+Marc Antony, Romeo And Juliet, the Marquis de Sade), but whenever a certain pendant is placed around the necks of one of the exhibits, they come to life and actually finish the scene much for the enjoyment of the new caretakers who are so in disbelief by these hot displays that afterward they have to check the exhibits (and perhaps themselves) for signs of errant drippage. Things really heat up when Josie tries on the pendant herself and mauls Pete, fulfilling her own fantasy that we as viewers become voyeurs to, watching them as bodies writhing inside the glass for our enjoyment with the same simulated flesh display common to wax museums and unrated movies as this. I really liked this one. It's definitely best of the box. While most of the films in this collection seem to run under an invisible counter which dictates that a hot woman must become naked every ten minutes, this one actually took some time to develop the characters, making it hotter. Moreover, it just seemed to be of a higher quality than many of the others. The plot actually took a moment every now and then to show us not only what the people in this movie were doing but why, and it had a little something for everyone, breaking the rules of these very formulaic movies. For men, it had an impromptu four woman lesbian orgy which is something never again seen in this set, and for women it had a few glimpses of full frontal male nudity. Now granted while the plot was still stupid and all the wax "displays" were obviously models who didn't have enough acting sense to set perfectly still under the camera for ten seconds or so, there was a quality to this exotic house of wax which was anything but cold, dead and lifeless. While magical artifacts time travel and screwing historical figures is nothing new to the plots and playbook of a surrender cinema movie, this was was the first time I actually visited a museum and truly understood what "endowment for the arts" meant.

EXOTIC TIME MACHINE (1997)
A world bending time twister. A lovable loser named Leon has sex with his partner Daria in what looks like some sort of futuristic lab. After the act, when she makes fun of his performance, he sulks away and walks into a time machine, which someone apparently left running (I think it's a sad commentary on the future of mankind when we have finally mastered Einstein's theory of relativity but we apparently have forgotten how to engage the parking brake). Anyway, from there Leon emerges in France, to the court of Louie the Sixteenth, most notably beside the bed of the Marie Antoinette herself! But don't mourn for Leon. She doesn't even notice him at first as she is too busy having lesbian sex with Mimi, a particularly wanton chambermaid who seems to relish every touch of her mistress. From there it is a mish-mash of mistaken identities and botched plot warps in every sense of the word as Daria too enters the time machine herself in an attempt to retrieve Leon (apparently she liked him a little more than she let on). And there you have it. Before you can say Bill and Ted's Sexcellent Adventure, both Leon and Daria are encountering some of the most infamous characters in history, both real and fictional, meeting up with none other than the likes of Al Capone, Aladdin and King Louie himself. Eventually they get back to the future only to find that it has been overrun by their mean boss "Professor Colgate" who has now become a futuristic fascist of sorts because of all the changes they have made in the past. Professor Colgate the Nazi??? (Now there's the name of an ethnic obsessed idiot who sounds like he wants to cleanse your country while he whitens your population). Anyway, Leon and his squeeze make one final leap into the time machine to a more hospitable time and place far, far, from here: Daria's bed, fifteen minutes into the future, so they can make love again, trading the past hour and a half of historical hell on earth for a simple good time in the here and now. If soft-core action focusing on surgically enhanced sexpots over carefully constructed plots winds your clock, there might be enough here for you to take a time travel trip of your own, back to 1997 when jiggle films like this filled the top shelf of every family videocassette rental store. A veritable piece of video history filled with comely pieces of femininity clad in historically inspired dress which they remove within ten seconds at the start of every scene anyway. Fun stuff people, truly "Hysterically accurate".

EXOTIC TIME MACHINE 2 (2000)
Another trip through the time machine, and while it would appear that this is some sort of sequel, please leave everything you remember from the first film, as well as all coherent thought, at the time portal (you won't be needing them here). Exotic time machine 2 is the story of Darlene and Chuck, two future lovers clad in the EXACT same red and black vests and uniforms as the Shock Troopers from the 80's "V" television series-right down to the visible blank spots where the logos were torn off of them. Hollywood surplus anyone?

Late for work because they were busy screwing, they finally show up only to find that their superior, Miss Conrad, is trapped in a time portal. Before you can say "Where in time is Professor Conrad?" they immediately set out to fix time anomalies using time beacons (toy bumble balls) and warp into the 1960's and King Arthur's court where they essentially screw everything that moves to rewrite the pages of history with their very coital sweat as ink. But little do they know that their friend Melissa, who monitored the warp console, was actually consorting an organization of oversight called M-6 who apparently dress their henchmen like budget versions of the matrix's agents and wish to take over the time machine program. Of course, Melissa has a change of heart after professor Conrad comes back and slaps her around a little bit, and soon enough she too is lost in time, trying to set the world right, visiting Leonardo Da Vinci and screwing his assistant Guiseppe. Soon enough, everyone fixes the past through quick casual sex with historical figures (or their lackeys) and the future is restored for all eternity-or at least until Exotic Time Machine 3. (I don't need a time machine to tell you that the plot will be based entirely on tits).

Enough of the plot. Many people are checking this one out to see Holly Taylor in action. Ms Taylor has been reportedly named as Tiger Wood's Mistress #7 for those of you scoring at home. While the scenes of Miss Taylor are pretty much what you would expect for unrated films such as this, there is a particularly graphic masturbation sequence which is among the hottest moments of the whole Pleasure Box. Exotic Time Machine 2 was originally available in an R rated version, yet like all the titles in this set, this version is obviously unrated. Seriously, check out the scene with the two hippie chicks, it gives new definition to the phrase "love and piece".

HIDDEN BEAUTIES (THE AWAKENING) (1998)
A hundred years ago, a European Nobleman Named Lord Isherwood really knew how to live (and especially how to die). During the first ten minutes of the film he is shown making love to several wenches (his sentiments not mine). Eventually he invites three of them to his bed at once and keels over from a heart attack. This sudden demise of Isherwood really pisses off a harsh looking, Germanic speaking house matron named Natalya who swears them all to secrecy at once about the true nature of Lord Isherwood's passing and then pours them a celebratory drink, as the three toxic temptresses soon collapse onto the floor. But it doesn't end there. Suddenly the movie goes 100 years into the future to modern day California as a brother and sister named Judy and Eddie Isherwood find out they have just inherited a family castle in Europe. A place they have been dreaming about-literally, as it seems they both have been obsessively sketching pictures of this mysterious castle in their sketchbooks, and when news of the inheritance comes, and the pictures start showing a strange familiarity, they are on the plane at once, two coed friends in too, to keep the possibilities and sexual coupling options interesting. In mere moments and some transition scenes they knock on the door, only to find Natalya still alive (over a hundred years later) telling them that the inheritance was actually some sort of mistake, that she is actually the true heir to the Isherwood estate. Of course, no one questions these insane claims of entitlement even as the two Isherwood descendants have notarized court papers which actually give them legal title to the place. But such quarrels for legal title are meaningless anyway to the plot, for just as the Isherwood descendants offer to leave at once and go back to the States, it is decided that they should actually be allowed to stay and be treated as honored guests. WTF??? In a Vincent Price flick you might think you actually know what is about to happen to unwanted interlopers who try to lay claim to a cursed, haunted castle, but this movie slips off the weather worn rails of classical plot design and down the slippery dark tunnel of Softcore porn. The entire castle is infested with sexual energy, and pretty soon everyone is getting it on with everyone. Even the three women who were poisoned in the first ten fifteen minutes of the film come back to life (again a hundred years later) and together they too help unravel the curse which binds everyone to this castle of inequity, sex and grudges. It's hot enough, the castle sets make exotic places to screw, and the women drop their inhibitions with the same thespian mastery of their fake period dress a scene later. Just one question: Why did they call it Hidden Beauties? The breasts hang more ubiquitously from every nook and cranny of this castle-based feudal flesh feast than the torches. Had they called it "Hidden Plots" I would have commended the wit and cunning of the director, as it would have gotten the audience involved trying to figure a detailed, but elusive, element of the film that didn't exist anywhere in its entirety.

LOLIDA 2000 (1997)
Despite the cloned poster title and the obvious sound-alike looking title, viewers should know that this one has nothing to do with the controversial plot line of it's cinematic namesake or the infamous book by Nabokov. Lolita is actually a blonde girl in silver britches who broadcasts to us from the future where she is forced by the oppressive society of the day to destroy DVDs full of dirty dry humping. Perhaps they should have called this film Lolida 1984? But much like any other woman who punctuates her conversations with spontaneous fits of disrobing and some sexual exploration, Lolida is a rebel, a bad girl, so she decides to show them to us instead. What follows is three erotic stories of three people lost in sexual sci-fi situations of sexuality. These stories are like little mini surrender cinema featurettes, but play like they were cut from full length films, only with perhaps less coherence and plot that almost dares you to watch them and not fast forward to the next scene of dry humping. But for those of you purists who demand a few sparse paragraphs of dialogue before the next scene of dry humping in a film, here is a synopsis.

The first one is about Sherri, a beautiful girl who is plagued, tormented actually, by faint dreams of being fondled and partially disrobed by a guy with a budget creature green monster hand. Through hypnosis and some suspension of disbelief, we the viewer find out she was actually kidnapped by aliens. Through many flashbacks we discover as does she the exact circumstances of her abduction. Aliens kidnap her, strap her to a metal food service table, and lock her in a high tech holding cell that looks like grandmother's attic. Then the aliens kidnap a hapless Italian man who they want Sherri to mate with so they may study the proceedings, offering her freedom if she does so. She accepts, and suddenly she isn't afraid anymore. Apparently she has had enough to scream about in one day.

The second one is about Casey, a futuristic female star pilot who finds herself in the clutches of the evil Kelvins. They capture her, they chain her up, they confiscate her cargo, and sentence her to ten. They do all kinds of things to her which are implied rather than shown because it saves on the construction of elaborate sets and cumbersome plots. The long and short of it is Casey is locked in a cell with a beautiful (completely human) woman from an alien race called "felines." With neither a whisker of a cat creature effects nor a "pussy" joke to speak of, the two women get it on. Casey eventually makes acquaintance with a salty male prisoner down the hall who she negotiates with to escape. First negotiations freeze over as they decide they don't need the other's help, and then they heat up again as they find the most basic use for each other. From there Casey is interrogated by a butch lesbian guard who always did seem to have an eye for her. She is strapped to the ceiling by her wrists as her female tormentor strips her naked and mauls her in a particularly unrated fashion. So lost in the moment of passion is her tormentor that she doesn't notice when Casey suddenly slips her hands free and traps the evil lesbian in her own restraints While Casey escapes, the dominatrix thrashes about helplessly, angrily in the loose fitting prop restraints. This final scene made me smile for hundreds of reasons and none of them regarding my sense of justice..

The final scene involves a trucker named Jake who has sex with a waitress in a truck-stop bathroom and discovers that when he emerges from the bathroom it is 1955. A local yokel informs him that he has time slipped, so he consoles himself by having sex with the women in the diner. This enrages the local hep cats so he runs to bathroom and time slips again until he is in the post apocalyptic future, watching two women have passionate sex/fight each other to the death on a rubber mat. Jake tries to act as referee on that action as he is driven away by the locals back into the time chamber/ toilet. From there he emerges a final time back in the days of prehistoric cavemen where he watches as two cave women get it on and again tries to pull some time slipping action of his own...But the cavemen suddenly tire of seeing this spaceman sex fiend diddle their women and attack at once, driving him away a final time, finishing what he started. What happened to Jake? The film stopped caring so why the hell should you?

At the end, Lolida says she will continue broadcasting despite the wishes of the powers that be. And then the film ends. What?? I guess they were leaving hope for a possible sequel, but ten years later, I can safely assume one is not going to broadcast to an earth frequency soon. Look, this was stupid, cheesy crap that played like a loose collection of bits of scrap from the floor, but if you are still reading this and you have love for such things, I will concede the scenes were worth seeing but the plot put the "sigh" in sci-fi! Typical surrender Cinema product: it aches the loins while it hurts the head.

FEMALIEN (1996)
Femalien is the story of a lovely alien woman who wants to study us, using her vagina as a specimen jar from which to take samples. It probably sounds evil, sneaky and ten kinds of malevolent, but Surrender Cinema aliens are incapable of the hatred for humankind that most cinematic space creatures are known for, preferring instead to feature sexy alien characters who just want lay mankind, one willing participant at a time instead of laying it low with a good old fashioned HG Wells inspired alien death ray. Some days I miss the brutal simple mindedness of Golden age Sci-fi aliens (especially the brutal part).

Once Kara warps into a vacant house (which just happens to have a fully stocked closet), she wastes no time in getting involved with humanity and the nature of our breeding cycles. From watching the neighbors making love in their yard to personally diddling most everyone who crosses her path, she is surely bringing a galaxy of pleasure to everyone she meets. There are all sorts of subplots about her saving a failed diner from a greedy massage therapist, about her strange affair with a Chippendale's looking surfer dude coffee shop employee, and her ability to give people maddening sexual fantasies just by touching them, but there is only one thing about this film worth discussing and that is Kara herself.

The only reason this film works is because of the character of Kara, and even then only because she is so stark and maddening on an ironic level that you simply don't know whether she is the ultimate interstellar bimbo or merely profoundly retarded. Of course she is played by a woman with all the stripper-inspired sensibilities that you might expect from a Surrender title female protagonist. No surprises there. But governing this killer babe from beyond is the mind of what seems like a small child, or perhaps a cartoon character. When it comes to outer space visitors from afar, try to imagine Kara as Natasha Henstridge from Species only with the personality of Robin Williams from Mork and Mindy and you might get a general idea of what I am talking about. Her entire personality reverts from idiocy to intimacy and back again with no possible explanation whatsoever. In one scene Kara appears unable to even master the most basic social skill of ordering from a waitress, and yet a scene later she casually inspires, orchestrates, and actively engages in scenes of group sex with strangers she met only moments before. And trust me, once the clothes come off she is anything but childlike or innocent acting.

In some ways this makes her a charming quirky character. In other ways it makes you wonder if she came from outer space at all, or if she just escaped from a mental institution and likes telling bizarre stories. Okay, granted there are special effects which would support her claims to be a visitor from afar, but they aren't exactly convincing...(Personally I've seen more authentic computer rendered space ships in a game of Galaga). Still, Kara is "crazy-beautiful" in every sense of the phrase, so this might work for you. It's just the ratio between these two personality traits that bothers me, and the fact it changes every five minutes.

FEMALIEN 2 (1998)
Another Surrender Cinema feature about aliens that love humankind, and I mean that in the basest, yet beautiful sense. For those of you just tuning in, Femalien was the story of Kara, hottie alien babe from worlds afar who came down to earth to study our breeding patterns and then to personally participate in them. Well apparently Kara hasn't checked in with the home world in quite some time, so they have sent two fellow space travelers, Xeda and Trion, to track her down and bring her back home by any means necessary. I know what you are probably thinking by now, and it probably involves the two women on the cover of this thing brandishing cattle prods, paralysis nets, and all sorts of badass Boba Fett brand of bounty hunting to bring this Kara to justice, let me stop you here. The woman on the left is Kara, and the woman on the right doesn't even appear in this film except for a brief flashback in the credit sequence from Femalien (so don't go counting your sex kittens before they are snatched). In reality, the characters of Xeda and Trion are actually a couple- a man and a woman who look like a couple blonde models from California and speak with the same level of insight about the nuances of our modern world as a couple of babes lost in the woods who are also a long way from home. Yet there are other players in the game of this tale of interstellar intrigue. No sooner did the older, hotter versions of the kids from Disney's "Witch Mountain" touch down than a lone UFO enthusiast, Lester, and his reluctant girlfriend, Terry, start to seek the travelers as well, but only after some preliminary sex which always seems like the ultimate star-map of the surreal spacey plot-line of Femalien 2. In addition, there is a creepy governmental Man-In-Black figure who wants a piece of the alien action himself, even though it appears he is the whole puzzle, (if not the most coveted piece indeed).

It is sad, humiliating, and patronizing to talk about the plot of this film. Character development and dialogue has been replaced by disrobing, and all associations end in sex scenes that obscure the underlying plot of alien intrigue as much as they expose the succulent perfect flesh of naked bodies in all stages of unrated action. Is this bad? Not if this is what you want. Oddly enough, it still has a slightly better plot than the original Femalien, but the sex scenes are not quite as hot (Duh, say movie fans everywhere about any two possible films ever compared to one another). Eventually, Xeda and Trion learn to love one another as only a man and a women can, the two UFO nuts reconcile as well, and even the FBI guy stops by to help complete the quest for Kara in perhaps the only way that he ever could. For consenting adults who would like to see a bloodless, budget-less version of Species, this film will seem out of this world. For all you other extraterrestrial buffs who insist that their on-screen aliens exhibit some form of superior intellect and some sort of creature prosthesis effect other than severe breast augmentation, this might not be the one that makes you believe in intelligent life from space. However, it has been my personal experience that most women love Surrender Cinema, and if the special lady in your life likes soft-core, Femalien 2 might just give you a "Close Encounter" that even Spielberg couldn't muster.

VIRGINS OF SHERWOOD FOREST (2000)
Another time warp – to Sherwood Forest this time. Roberta is a modern day director of music videos with a nightmare cast and crew. In the first five minutes, it is all but obvious that her cast doesn't heed her instructions and constantly sneaks off to indulge their baser instincts with one another when they should be on set. Things are so chaotic, in fact, that she receives a bump on the head in a stage mishap and is magically transported back to the days of old Nottingham. A welcome change of pace for this harried director, right? Not so much. It seems that every member of her whole unprofessional crew has been transported back with her. For example, the snarky male lead of the video they were shooting is now none other than Robin Hood himself, and he isn't so much of a gallant figure as the old Errol Flynn portrayal of yesteryear, but rather a complete and utter raving douche-bag. Of course, with her makeup girl now becoming a ravenous lesbian and her bookish assistant becoming the female man-hungry Sheriff of Nottingham, you won't care much about the fact that it makes neither a quiver or quotient of sense.

Just one minute while I discuss the Nina/Sheriff of Nottingham character. As the plot and characters shift between eras, her transformation from mild mannered librarian to hot bitchy vixen is so utter and complete that you won't even recognize her when she emerges as the main antagonist in the middle ages era of the film a mere twenty minutes in. Now granted, I have a thing for bad girls onscreen, but I can't imagine why they made Shannan Leigh into a tertiary villain when she is much hotter and a better actress than the girl who played Roberta, the poor "babe in the woods" trapped in our usual Surrender sci-fi wonderland. If there is one thing that Disney has taught me over the years (and it's very damned little admittedly), it is that bad guys/girls should always be portrayed as less attractive than the heroes/heroines, especially in simple visual movies with dumb or nonexistent plots. This not only makes these movies satisfying on an almost subliminal level, but also somehow pleasing at the film's "happy ending" conclusion as goodness and beauty is restored visually onscreen. Because "Roberta" was less attractive when compared to "Nina," I didn't care if she made it home successfully or whether the Sheriff locked her in a barn like the lesser specimen of flesh she was, so no further discussion of the plot is warranted here as far as I am concerned.

However, "Virgins" has got all the unrated sex which I recommend you stare at unblinkingly, because it will take your mind off the extremely lame fight choreography where the players battle one another with plastic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sais painted to resemble small daggers (seriously). But it's well enough, for when the Sheriff personally captures Robin Hood and his trusty fellows in a bloodless attack on his camp, she tortures each and every one of them in her bedroom in a brutal interrogation technique where she apparently tries to get information out them by smothering them with her huge succulent breasts. Oh well, at the very least it explains how the "Merry Men" got their name.

PLEASURECRAFT (1999)
In space no one can hear you scream, orgasmically. This details the story of the cargo ship Prometheus, a space vessel with more than a wink and a nod to a certain famous Sci-fi work from Gene Roddenberry. But while Star Trek captains are merely content to explore and discover new forms of life, the boys on Prometheus spend most of their days having sex with computer generated females inside the virtual chamber (that's a Holodeck to all you Trekkies out there). But all that changes when this four man squad of space truckers are entrusted to deliver a cargo that quickly becomes a labor of love: three beautiful space women, empaths in fact, who immediately bond with any man they sleep with and pretty much make him into a mindless, flesh craven slave (you know, pretty much how all the men act in these sorts of movies). It takes all of fifteen minutes for the the women to wander unchallenged from their cargo bay and start screwing the all male intrepid space crew until they are seeing stars like they never have before. It is only the quick thinking and stern resolve of the ship's commander, Captain Harris, who keeps this whole film from ending up as just one unrated outer space orgy atop a pile of silver clothes. Ultimately it becomes known that the purpose of the women is to be exploited by being given as gifts to an opposing race, the Hubriens. Obviously, it is hoped that the seductive, mind-washing sexual nature of the empath women from Critos will befuddle the enemies and allow for a tactical advantage, which will allow alliance forces to catch the alien menace with their proverbial pants down. At this moment, Captain Harris is forced to decide between his duty to follow orders or to do what is morally right. Lucky for everyone, what is ultimately decided is that they will dupe the alliance, clone the women with some last minute technical wizardry, and spend the rest of their days cruising the heavens, engaging in all manner of sexual improprieties with the alien women that Captain Kirk could only dream of. This one fraudulently alludes to a lot of outer space ambiance. Persons, places, and exotic otherworldly things are never fully shown, explored, or developed; Triax minerals, alien Mutabians, and talk of a sensual pleasure planet are inexorably missing. Aside from the interior spaceship sets which are very good, this one is best enjoyed with the sound off, as the technology is scientifically atrocious, but the sex scenes, while not "out of this world," are biologically compelling.

VIRTUAL ENCOUNTERS (1996)
In the early nineties, Virtual Reality was the tech buzzword of the day. As the promise of technology and computer processing power began to double exponentially, Sci-fi writers,digital engineers, and even mild mannered geek gamers everywhere began to dream of the technology the new millennium would bring- a day where we interacted with the world inside a computer, not with joysticks or external controls, but by being able to experience digital environments not only through the senses of sight and sound, but by taste, touch and smell. Just as in the case of the flying cars that sci-fi movie makers have been promising us since 1950, virtual reality is still an embryonic concept, even a decade into the new millennium. Who among us didn't watch Star Trek the Next Generation in this era and fantasize about having a Holodeck of our own: a private, programmable arena where we could hold bloody arena battles to the death against fictitious enemies where no one actually got hurt, and afterward gala celebratory orgies with drone women where we suffered no ill social consequence for our immoral behavior? If you had similar fantasies, and I can tell by your guilty grins and nodding heads out there that more than a few of you did, well let me say that Virtual Encounters is from this bygone day where virtual reality was the license to dream, and until Nintendo comes out with a new game called Wiifuck, this product might be the closest you get to Virtual Sex (short of humping your T.V.) at least for several more decades. So let's jack in, shall we?

Virtual Encounters is the story of Amy, a beautiful bored executive type who feels no passion toward her boyfriend. As the ultimate selfless (and ultimately a self-serving) present, he buys her a gift package from a place called Virtual Encounters where she can go and experience the innermost, private recesses of her own sexuality without judgment or pressure, even as she is casually talked, (seduced actually) into all manner of coupling by the computer named "Rob" whose personality is smooth and every bit as sexually manipulative as the horny, all seeing, all-knowing computer from Demonseed, yet whose voice sounds exactly like KITT on the new and recently canceled Knight Rider series (voiced by Val Kilmer). You know the voice? It always said things like: "Sensors detect a soft-core porn premise, Michael. I suggest you proceed with caution..."

Anyhow, once Amy shows up and gets plugged in to the machine with the requisite high tech helmet and blue, form fitting Lycra body suit, she starts to visit different vignettes, each which represent a different part of her sexual drives. There's a strip club, a cave, and a romantic candlelit bedroom scene, but I am assuming that deep Freudian dream analysis would be wasted here, so I am not going to go into great details. The one thing that does become obvious as she visits scene after scene of sex in strange fantastical places is just how much Amy is beginning to enjoy herself. At first she is merely content to silently watch other people have relations, but soon enough, as Amy explores deeper into the realm of her own fantasies, she herself becomes the star of the show, engaging in scenes, embracing different sexualities, even as experienced through different bodies. Yes that's right, in three consecutive scenes she shifts from playing the erotic dancer at a club, to a lesbian making out with her girlfriend in a concrete water fountain, to a cave guy, having sex with a hot cave girl. Each one of these scenes is portrayed by different actors which Amy apparently "becomes" at the beginning of the scene. You know this because she looks down at her hands (or her penis where applicable) as if seeing them for the first time, all the while Rob the computer justifies the bizarre otherworldly change in player saying something like "You always fantasized about being dominant/subservient/represented by another actress in your own sexual fantasies so here you go." By the time the film focuses on her and another women involved in a final S+M routine with full bondage restraints, I finally think I know what the problem is regarding Amy's frigidity: she is a lesbian! But nevertheless, at the close of the movie, Amy gets so worked up she drives straight to work, has sex with her beau right on her desktop the moment he walks in, and afterward, as she and her lover lay nestled together in an impromptu afterglow, she picks up her phone and invites her sexy secretary (who she had been flirting with for the duration of the film) to come her office for a minute...Damn. Someone's going for the high score.

And that is pretty much the crux of the film. The name Virtual Encounter is a ponderous, pretentious name for a movie full of simulated sex, perhaps as much of an oxymoron as the classification "soft porn" itself. But if you are a fan of soft-core, or you are like most women, there is much here to put the tingle in your input port. The different scenes are so thematic that you won't care that they don't make a whole lot of sense, and being the fact that Amy can warp into different sex scenes featuring entirely different actresses without so much as a brief and usual ponderous character exposition, this film does promise a lot of bang for your buck, especially since it runs about an hour and a half. Knowing the budget, content, and intellectual limitations of these sorts of films, my only gripe is I wish it would have had a villain character to cause some sort of conflict or a sense of danger. For example, if the male computer "Rob" itself would have short circuited, became obsessed, or gone all Tron MCP on Amy the minute it saw her naked, it would have been a better film. Moreover, some special effects would have been nice to show the transition of Amy into different characters, but because this film is from 1996, I am willing to forgive this as morphing technology was neither available or affordable to most studios at this time. While this sexy sci-fi look into the future was neither about virtual reality or actual human encounters, it does go to show how much personal computers have become a part of our every facet of our daily life in 2010. Amy is just the first person to use technology itself as a vibrator. In this capacity, Virtual's unrated antics are both a false silicon promise of a technosexual future that never fully loaded plus a gigabyte of silicone boobs to boot.

VIRTUAL ENCOUNTERS 2 (1998)
Another go round with virtual reality sex, and the game is the same, but this one isn't as much fun to play as the original. For one thing, the original had Amy, a poor ,bored, uptight blonde exec who gradually blossomed into an insatiable woman who had no problem expressing herself sexually at the film's close. In this one, we get Mel, a prototypical college kid geek who simply cannot get any play. To make matters worse, his roommate Sam is a blatant womanizer who is everything Mel wishes he could be. This drives him to do what any lonely man would do: he orders a "Virtual Encounters" kit for his home computer consisting of glasses, glove, and manual (box of tissues sold separately). When the kit arrives, he logs into the surrendercinema.com website (Seriously!) and starts having virtual sex with Ginger, a virtual reality drone whose fleshed namesake is a real life classmate he secretly has feelings for. Of course Sam, the dick to Mel's douchebag character, discovers what his roommate is doing online and soon enough they start charging fellow students to realize their fantasies while they and we vicariously get to experience them through the perspectives, and often the bodies, of soft-core adult film stars. That's just one of the many mistakes in this movie. Sometimes the actors in cyberspace would be played by their real life student counterparts, and other times (usually in the case of a male client) their onscreen avatar would be represented by a professional adult film actor who looked nothing like the kid jiggling his joystick on the other side of the glass. Moreover, whenever a student would come to use the Virtual Encounters rig, Sam and Mel would insert their likeness into the game by taking a Polaroid of them (fully clothed) and then putting the picture into a common scanner. And granted, while many of the women of this film were lacking in both academic and emotional depth, at the very least you could hardly say they were two dimensional images, (especially not once they removed their clothes). The craziness didn't stop there. Mel and Sam seem to be one of six people who attend this school, so it shouldn't surprise you when they are one of four people in their art class, and the other two people are nude models they are supposed to draw. Virtual Encounters was a better film than this one, and you can't blame the usual sequel blues. In the original, Amy became an insatiable sexy monster who used the lessons she learned in virtual reality to become an ultimate temptress that allowed her to become master of her own sexuality, if not everyone else's in her real life world. In this one, a shy self-loathing geek buys a robotic glove and creates a virtual reality of his own design using his live action masturbation fantasies about a certain real life woman who doesn't even know he is alive. Even at the end when he finally seduces her, makes love, plugs into his dream girl for the first time without the benefit of power cables, I thought it was a little sick, perhaps even a cry for help, or perhaps in his case technical support.

What more is there to say about this product? The most obscene thing about this boxed set is the twelve pages I took to review it. My mother always said that I shouldn't watch hardcore pornography because it would make me go blind. I never understood that, but after watching some eighteen hours of this softcore stuff, I can see how you might, and that's by the constant eyestrain of desperately trying to see some penetration. But if I have said it once, I will say it again: most women love Surrender Cinema, and this boxed set takes up only a little bit more room as a PC computer game, so it's not like you have to sacrifice a whole bookshelf to this sophomoric soft-core smut. However, while these cheesy sci-fi stories were almost entirely plotless in design as they were topless in execution, in the quiet ambiance of a private home screen showing on a love seat built for two, it does help create a fun fantasy filled environment that a couple of consenting adults could create a real life happy ending to.

Sinferno Says...
Yucko/Neato Factor: There are some of Surrender Cinema's best erotic series here and there has never been a boxed set of this magnitude before. Three complete two movie series and six single films all in their most unrated form.
Production Values: Some of these are from the days of VHS so the computer graphics are hardly omnipresent. However, the women are simply beautiful and inspire fantasy enough by their mere presence. One irksome thing, there is no chapter selects on the individual disks so if you like a particular scene, be prepared to search for it with the old cue-review song and dance from your VHS days.
Realism: I wish modern twenty first century life was exactly like these futuristic time twisting movies from a decade ago. Seriously I do, but eventually the human race would die out from all the dry humping.
Value for Price: For $90.00 it averages to $7.50 a film and about quarter a boob.
Plot: Best enjoyed when you have no blood left in your brain.