From the Blue Room Feature 'A Look at Andrew Blake'

As if acknowledging my frustration with his recent softcore fare, Blake followed up The Villa with HardEdge, a film that lets you know right up front that it's going to be something different, something much harder-edged than Blake's other 21^st century efforts. The first minutes of the film give us an uglier-looking production, with significant grain and harder music. The girls have a nasty, drugged-out look. They wear more makeup and are generally less appealing. This time around, the stars are Kelle Marie, Adriana Sage, Nika, Justine, Julia Taylor, and Faith Adams.

And then, here it comes—at about the 11-minute mark, the first male in an Andrew Blake feature film in about 10 years. He spends about 5 minutes fingering the woman, then out comes the penis, in slow motion, into her mouth, slapping against her skin…finally, some hardcore action after years of waiting. Is the scene worth the wait? Well, it's a great scene until the guy puts his penis in a high-heel shoe. See, then we have some problems. The scene progresses into high-gear foot fetishism before it gets to penetration. If you're into feet, this is the scene for you, but if feet don't do it for you, you'll find yourself fast-forwarding to the sex—and finally we have a strong Andrew Blake sex scene, complete with varied positions and artful close-ups. In the end, of course, he comes to fruition on her toes.

Targeting that harder audience, perhaps acknowledging the current trends in porn, HardEdge disappointingly devolves into scenes involving spitting, and asshole licking and fingering. Even a hardcore cunnilingus scene at the midway point is lacking in sensuality, according to my wife, because of the strange blood-red finger marks striped across one woman's ass. The scene suggests violence to her, and this notion of violence carries through more obviously in two simulated slapfests between three women. One of these scenes suggests bondage and rape. There's also a scene of banana insertion that's unnecessarily ugly. Despite essentially "getting what I asked for," I was disappointed in HardEdge, because instead of going for sultry and sensual hardcore, like the Andrew Blake films of old, it goes for unsightliness. Grade: C-

As I mentioned, HardEdge looks grainier than other recent Blake films, but it's still an accurate transfer. The 1.85:1 anamorphic-widescreen effort captures exactly what Blake wants it to. Detail is terrific, and colors are intentionally oversaturated. The digital 5.1 audio track is aggressive and involving. The Raoul Valve music is harder-edged, per the title.

For supplements, HardEdge devotes the second side of a disc to 100 minutes of Featurettes. As far as I can see, these short films are untitled, but they involve actresses—with their names scrawled across their bodies for identification—writhing around and playing with themselves. We get Kelle Marie, Adriana Sage, Nika, Nicola, Justine doing these private shows, then we get some lesbian couplings. All of the above are in the "nasty" mode of HardEdge. The models frequently wear sneers on their faces, and there's lots of makeup and, in general, more penetration.

The most interesting featurette is a 50-minute behind-the-scenes documentary by Celeste called The Making of Andrew Blake's HardEdge. This is a spectacular glimpse of Andrew Blake at work. His set is exactly as I imagined, involving hours of preparations and a focused Blake behind the camera, composing every shot. The models sometimes just lay there, looking bored as they wait. Ever-present behind the camera is Celeste, one of Blake's actresses. She engages the models by interviewing them casually, asking about their sexual fantasies and visits to strip clubs. I got a real kick out of watching Blake work—the first time I'd ever laid eyes on my porn hero!—and hearing him say things like, "Kelle Marie has a set of world-class boobs." Interestingly, we get to see a lot of real-time filming of footage that ends up in slow motion on film—it has a very different look from the end result. Some choice quotes from this piece: Justine says, "I'm so lucky! I get to go down on Adriana Sage in 10 minutes!" And how cool to hear Blake say, at one point, "Stand by for your orgasm!" This is a wonderful documentary, and I'm grateful Blake and Celeste produced it. For me, it's the highlight of the disc.