Kelly's Heroes: Operation American Pie: Collector's Edition

Passion Pictures

Genre: Feature

Director: David Brett

Cast: Zana, Billy Glide, Allysin Chaynes, Mark Cummings, Violet Blue, Steve Taylor, Brooke April, Dale DaBone, Kianna, Julian, Nikita Denise, Eric Frost
Non-sex roles: David Brett, Herschel Savage, Dave Cummings, Scott Taylor

Length: 117 minutes

Date of Production: 11/30/01 to 1/2/02

Extra's: Behind the Scenes footage, Bloopers, interviews with David Brett, Violet Blue, and Allysin Chaynes, double sided dvd cover, photogallery

Condoms: Yes

Audio/Video Quality: The picture was presented in 1.33:1 ratio full frame color. Sadly, the picture looked, much of the time, really weak. If the grain was the worst problem, the color saturation was. Other problems included a soft focus, a piss poor transfer, and video noise way too often. What was a pain to me was that some of the outdoor scenes looked good; good enough that I was amazed no one thought to tape a few of the sex scenes there. The audio was in Dolby Digital English but I didn't notice any separation between the channels and no DTS track, as advertised, was on the dvd. The sound wasn't the worst aspect of the movie but it wasn't very good (well below average).

Body of Review: Passion Pictures is a small company trying to break into porn, focusing on the feature/plotted porn genre. With companies like Wicked Pictures releasing movies like Hercules, such small companies have a tough road ahead of them. In their latest release, Kelly's Heroes: Operation American Pie , the company shows some promise in terms of the content, but falls dreadfully short in the technical department. In the interview with the director, he stated that he's learning how to make movies. If I were he, I'd hire some better technical people to assist in that endeavor, or at least help speed up the learning curve a bit. Having seen several of Passion's releases this past week, I appreciated the humor and continuing improvement of the non-sex stuff, but porno's are primarily made for the sex.

The problem with the sex here is that most of it was fairly routine and by the book. There was no attempt to make it erotic, thus killing off the couples market, no attempt to address the raincoaters, thus killing off the perverts, and no attempt to make the sex itself fun enough to entertain the rest of us, thus sinking the project before a single edit took place. That the non-sex stuff was getting better from the earlier releases shows promise but the order of operations for fixing this line of movies should be: technical values, sex, story. The first two aspects are crucial and the last is only icing on the cake. The extras were better than before but the lack of the advertised DTS track, the second/third string cast (with a few exceptions), and reliance on a plot centered on an evil scientist releasing a disease and the porno equivalent of Charlie's Angels used to stop him was pretty bad. If you're still interested, here's a breakdown of the scenes by cast:

Scene One: Zana, the blonde with large implants, and Billy, had a scene in front of a fireplace. The production values were really, really weak here; making me think the scene was captured on a spy-cam set to infrared mode. They seemed to be having fun but I couldn't stand to watch it (yes, it looked that bad).

Scene Two: Allysin, sporting her new implants (at the time), took on Mark in the back of a van. It was fairly average sex with oral and straight only.

Scene Three: Violet, in a love-swing, had sex with Steve. Oral and straight only with a bit of warmth, if not a lot.

Scene Four: Dale, as the evil terrorist, boned Brooke on a metal table. Again, the lighting was so bad that any heat rapidly went out the window.

Scene Five: Kianna, the Asian with large implants, took on Julian, on a couch. The picture wasn't much better than the last scene but her hand assisted oral and titty fuck helped me forget about it for a moment. It ended when he boned her houchie for a while and popped. Not bad sex, even if the technical stuff stunk.

Scene Six: Nikita, looking good, and Eric, looking like a street punk, had sex in a dark room. This was the best scene of the whole show. There was some energy and even chemistry between the two performers. Maybe it's just that Nikita was the best lay of the movie but the others, several of which have done solid scenes elsewhere, seemed tired.

Summary: If the technical stuff were better, I'd at least be able to suggest this as something higher than a Skip It but the kid gloves get taken off after the first two releases. The technical limitations, weak sex, bad acting (although Dale and Herschel were suitably over-the-top), and false advertising all combined to make this one worth passing up. I can understand a first movie, like Ally McFeal looking bad but unless Passion gets better quick, I'll be writing them off.