Cast: Harlot Fever, Laurie Vargas, Mariah, Liz, Betty, Carmen, Rocklulus, Aaron, Tom, John
90 mins.

You get the feeling from watching Home Grown Video's "Natural Bush 36" that the company didn't actively seek out women with hairy bushes, but simply gathered together some of the homemade videos submitted to them that happened to display lady pubes. With the exception of one of the five women featured here, no one says anything about their pubes or makes a big deal about them. For hair pie connoisseurs, however, the bush is the thing and it will not be ignored.

That one exceptional lady, Carmen, does possess a fully sprouting snatch, while the others' hair quantity rating ranges from so-what to acceptable.

Typical of HGV product, the five vignettes are unrelated to each other and come in a variety of styles. A couple of segments make passing attempts at narrative plot, while a couple are Ed Powers-style interviews with real people about to have sex. Some of the sex seems "acted," while some of it is genuinely hot.

The first bit involves a long-haired rocker, Rockulus, interviewing Harlot Fever for a job performing at his bachelor party. Harlot, a black-haired, pale-skinned stunner with a slender build, gives the boss a lap dance while wearing black lingerie and red boots. Soon, they're both naked, with Harlot delivering witticisms like "Say hello kitty" (as she spreads her pussy lips) and "That's quite an instrument you've got" (as she plays Rockulus' skin flute). Harlot has a pierced clit and nipples and a strange tattoo on her back, which would lead you to think she's a sex monster, but her fellatio is slow and tentative. All ends happily with a condomized hump and a jizz-splash on her butt.

The cocksucking is stepped up considerably in the second seg. Latina cutie Laurie Vargas is awakened by her guy Aaron tickling her with a rose. She talks to him while looking into the camera as she cooks him breakfast, her bra conveniently slipping off. A brief shot of Laurie fingering her dark quim leads to the twosome out in the yard, where the girl goes gobbling, employing lots of spit and even smearing some ice cream on Aaron's rod (Edy's Light is the sex aide of choice). There's standard screwing as well as anal, culiminating in a huge vanilla mouthful for the smiling Laurie.

Two large ladies, Mariah and Liz, are up next in a doctor's office scene. The female gynecologist, sporting an awful lot of cleavage and tattoos for a supposed member of the medical community, slips on a rubber glove to give her patient a once-over. There are good closeups of the prone woman's nicely hirsute spread beaver as the slicked-up glove rubs and probes, causing some hard-to-fake pelvic quivering. The doc shows a little tit, but otherwise remains a giver rather than a receiver.

A petite Asian girl, Betty, and her bald, bearded white boyfriend, Tom, are all cuddly for an interview with the unseen director. They seem to be a real couple, but nothing of value is learned from the barely audible chat. It's when they stop talking and put their mouths to work on each other in a 69 session that things get interesting. Strangely, the loving duo refrain from fucking on camera, though Betty does take a facial at the end -- and doesn't seem to enjoy it all that much.

Closing out the show is Carmen, a slightly older woman who resembles a hippie version of Catherine Keener. She clearly is a nonpro and appears both eager and a little hesitant in her interview. She reveals small breasts with very thick nipples and some baggie drawers out of which escape some stray dark tendrils. She seems too granola-librarian to be in a sex tape, but before you can say, "Where'd you get that granny dress?", she's naked and rubbing herself off. Enter bearded young hippie John (his curtain matches her drapes) and she's sucking and fucking and getting all stiff-clitted like the best of porn players. After it's over, she takes a shower and that's when her bush really takes on its full glory.

THE DVD

Home Grown Video specializes in amateur porn, which means the quality of its scenes depends on the skill of the nonprofessional videographers who submit to the label. The five vignettes here, all presented in standard full-frame aspect ratio, are adequately shot and edited.

The disc has some technical glitches that impinge on your ability to just pop it in and play (with yourself), but nothing so serious as to disqualify it completely. The main annoyance is the user's inability to speedily get through the preliminary ads for phone-sex and the HGV web site and on to the menus. There's a good deal of blank screen time as you wait for your button commands to be obeyed.

Once you get going, though, all is well. The main menu is full of live-action frames highlighting each girl (and thankfully not giving away any explicit action too early); each girl's menu, in turn, lets you choose to play her entire scene or pick from "Foreplay," "Lovemaking," "Climax" and so on.

The extras are strong: 14 nonexplicit trailers for other HGV product; a blooper reel featuring girls farting, loud pussy farts and other goofiness (none of it outtakes from the feature at hand); and a bonus scene with big-boobed brunette Claudine, taken from an earlier HGV title. It's all identical to the extra stuff on HGV's simultaneously released "California College Student Bodies #53." The trailers are for "Backyard Amateurs #1," "Big Breast Amateur Girls #1," "Amateur Anal Attempts #4," "Natural Bush #32," "Cherries #48," "Cream Pie #43," "Deepthroat Virgins #20," "Eye Contact #37," "Handjobs Across America #16," "Sex Kittens #26," "Well Hung Amateurs #3," "Sex Machines #10," "Homegrown Video #687" and "Housewives Unleashed #19."

THE LAST WORD

Granted, the term "natural bush" doesn't necessarily mean "full, thick, long bush," but fans of hirsute honeys will probably think that's what they're going to get here. Those folks should be aware that while there are female pubes on view, there's not much that's extraordinary in that regard. The women, however, are far from the living blowup dolls of professional porn, which is refreshing, and the sex for the most part seems genuinely felt. The DVD is worth a rental, but unless you find yourself instantly attached to one of the ladies here, you won't need to own it.