I know some of the APN boys have little crushes on Fleshbot’s newest editor Lux Alptraum, so I am probably going to take some heat from them for pointing this out, but I don’t mean this article in a bad way. Posts like the most recent altporn-tagged one (below) on Fleshbot make me wonder if Vivid purchased Fleshbot from Gawker back when original editor John D. left. The gist of the Fleshbot article is that Club Jenna is totally ripping off Vivid-Alt by launching some sort of altporn line and including Joanna Angel in one of their titles. First off, Club Jenna has worked with alt superstars like Belladonna in the past, and Janine has more ink than Joanna Angel and Belladonna combined these days, so this is not Club Jenna’s first foray into altporn. Okay, I’m just going to stop and roll my eyes for a moment. Although APN covers Vivid-Alt releases, I have never been assigned one for review, but I still have a clue.

Has Joanna Angel ever worked for Vivid-Alt? I am 99% sure the answer is no. I think Joanna Angel did work for Vivid’s more gonzo lines in non-altporn roles, but she definitely worked in an altporn capacity for VCA after Hustler purchased the company. VCA was candid about getting inspiration for their alt titles both from original VCA titles like Cafe Flesh and from Blue Blood and SuicideGirls, going so far as to explicitly name their inspirations in DVD extras and press releases.

If Fleshbot had asked whether Club Jenna called their altporn imprint Undrgnd without vowels to avoid a trademark infringement lawsuit from Penthouse, that would have been a valid question. Penthouse did launch their largely unheralded Penthouse Underground altporn imprint some years ago. I’m not defending Penthouse as Penthouse Underground did tap porn director Guy Capo to direct for them and he was responsible for Gothsend, possibly the most awful embarrassing example of video altporn ever created. I have never seen a Penthouse Underground video, so they could be great, but the pedigree is questionable.

Back to Joanna Angel. Burning Angel has released video of her directly. Other more mainstream video companies with Joanna Angel in releases they have distributed include New Sensations, 3rd Degree, Digital Sin, Adam & Eve, Diabolic, Zero Tolerance, Video Team, Digital Playground, Mile High Xtreme, Red Light District, 5th Element, Evil Angel, Wicked, and even Penthouse, and of course Vouyer Media who is putting out her upcoming L.A. Pink feature.

Joanna Angel is a successful pornstar, so how is it derivative of Vivid-Alt for Club Jenna to hire her to do her job, a job she has already done successfully for many companies?

Hospital (2008) is the latest film from Benny Profane who self-produced the gonzo-gothic series Psychocandy. I was interested to see what Benny Profane would do using a different, art-porn style like he has with Hospital.

The film stars Mandy Morbid and her real life partner Zak Sabbath. Mandy started off as a Suicide Girl under the alias Adria and transitioned into porn with her first non-sex role as a chorus girl in Bullets & Burlesque (2007), also directed by Profane. Since then she has appeared in two other porns doing sex scenes including Shades of Romona (2008) and Young Hollywood (2008).

In Hospital, Mandy plays Lucy, a punk chick who is admitted against her will into a creepy mental hospital where she is to undergo archaic treatments for her sexual deviancy. The film oscillates between the asylum and flashbacks of her life.

Hospital begins with a prelude with Lucy sucking a very huge cock (or at least it appears to be so with the morphed camera lens and stark spotlight halo that illuminates only her and said cock, with the background in blackness). A distorted electronic voice-over of a woman commences chronicling Lucy’s aberrant psychosexual behavior that is symptomatic “in its repetitive nature and inevitability”. She then awakes to find herself on a hospital gurney.

Lucy wanders the long, ill-lit halls and soon finds herself a voyeur to a naughty nurse scene between Caroline Pierce and Sochee Mala. Both girls have piercings and tattoos, but are not what I would describe as nonconformist or alternative. The performances lack enthusiasm using the typical type of girl-girl action: pussy licking, fingering and a strap-on. The scene ends, then Lucy undergoes a flashback.

Lucy and her boyfriend (Zak Sabbath) go to celebrate scoring some cash after a con-job on Kimberly Kane. This scene is hot as the couple fuck like pros and Mandy’s voluptuous body bounces with enthusiasm. Zak sports a wicked tattoo on the side of his head that was attacked by a zealous barber. The scene ends with a tit-fuck and then Jak pours candy hearts on Mandy’s sticky naked hot-bod. At one point during the scene there is happy Doris Day style music playing as they kiss and embrace in a mockery of “family values” ideology and the sweetheart candies are perhaps evocative of this.

Back at the hospital, Lucy is cuffed to the shower by one of the nurses and symbolically purified with a water torture treatment.

The scene then flashes back again as Mandy passes Marie McCray (both wearing identical Asian-styled dresses) in a stairwell where they pull a switcheroo and exchanges wigs. Marie then enters a room in an abandoned warehouse where Daniel is playing a video game. Marie removes her wig to reveal her strawberry blond pigtails and begins to seduce Daniel. There is nothing alternative about Marie, except for her striped stockings and funky shoes, but she is a pretty sweet. Daniel is a great performer and he has amazing stamina. He is genuinely passionate through-out his performance and seems to inspire the same in his co-star. I love the way he man-handles Marie with playful choking and spanking. The scene is shot from several great angles including high above which gives you a strange voyeuristic bird’s eye view of the action. Several times during the scene, it cuts back to the two nurses who are monitoring the action and taking notes.

The scene ends and we cut back to Lucy who has a strange spiked helmet on her head. She awaits her impending therapy, in which Dr. Profane intends to cut a hole in her skull to drain excess the blood. His attempt is halted by a pencil to the skull after Lucy untangles herself from white bandage bondage. She is rescued by Zak and Coco Velvett who speed her off to the nearest sleazy hotel and a fairly hot girl-girl-boy scene ensues.

Hospital is a good attempt at something different within the alt-porn genre. It is stylish with a good use of camerawork and sound elements. Profane doesn’t overuse “avant-garde” aesthetics like distressed film look, jump-cuts, white-outs, or excessive editing techniques that are typical of Eon McKai. On the other hand, it is not as “dark, squalid, and ominous” as I had hoped and there are many missed opportunities within the medical fetish genre that could have been utilized. No straight-jackets or medical paraphernalia to make for the atmospheric mis-en-scene I was hoping for. I was expecting dark and creepy, like Chad Michael Ward’s Pain Box series sexed up, but instead got Profane’s whacky alter-world with fairly standard porn. Mandy Morbid and Zak are hot, and Daniel is super-fantastic. This is a fairly decent art-porn and more significant (IMHO) than the Psychocandy series.

Director: Benny Profane
Cast: Mandy Morbid, Zak Sabbath, Caroline Pierce, Sochee Mala, Kimberly Kane (Non-sex), Daniel, Marie McCray, Coco Velvett, Benny Profane (Non-sex).