Director: Rod Vicious

Cast: Cute Angie, Jamie James, Zeina Heart, Lady Jade, Kelly Summer, Shanna Ryder, Katrina B, Emmanuelle, Sarah

Length: 200 minutes

As a young girl, I read many a British novel in which young ladies of good breeding were sent to exclusive finishing schools where they learned the finer points of etiquette. At the hands of firm-yet-fair headmistresses, the girls were prepared for their launch into a life filled with white-tablecloth luncheons, formal balls and festive dinners with heads of state. So it was with great anticipation that I screened Fetish Finishing School, a title devoted to one of the lesser-known aspects of that rarified world.

Audio/video quality: This movie was made on the cheap, and it looks it. The lighting, while adequate, is garish and unpleasant. The sound is also less than impressive, with the limited dialogue getting lost amid echoes and ambient sounds. Overall, the quality isn't much better than amateur videos made with home video equipment. The disc's chapter menu allows you to go directly to any of the different scenarios, but doesn't let you navigate directly to a specific portion of the scene.

Extras: An odd "bonus scene" is actually a 27-minute short, shot partly in black-and-white. In it, the unhappy proprietrix of an escort service punishes one of her girls for disappointing a client -- she's handcuffed, humiliated, spanked, walloped with a flogger and forcibly made to service her boss. When the unhappy client arrives, he and the dominatrix boss lady give her a pretty harsh lesson in sucking and fucking. The whole segment is pretty brutal -- hot, if you're into BDSM and humiliation play, but could be offensive to those sensitive to such things.

An 8-minute behind-the-scenes featurette shows the girls laughing and having fun during set-ups (everyone is, interestingly, speaking French) and there's a photo gallery and trailers for other Elegant Angel releases.

Scene 1:

The plot focuses on a young girl (Shanna Ryder) whose family is fed up with her unfortunate habit of lying on the dining room table and masturbating. Fortunately, the educational guide points to a mysterious Academy, where our heroine is lectured by a stern man with a terrible fake German accent that she's "to learn how to behave in an appropriate manner at all times" as she's strapped to a St. Andrew's Cross. It's immediately obvious that the dress code at the Academy is somewhat lax, as Ms. Ryder is allowed visible piercings in the classroom. (Hmm ... this isn't at all like the finishing schools in those books I read so many years ago.)

Her instructor (Lady Jade) begins interrogating the poor girl regarding her reasons for being sent to the school. She puts clothespins on her nipples and swats her a few times with a riding crop, but confuses things a bit when she attaches clamps to her own nipples. Odd, that. It would appear that some serious thwacking of the recalcitrant Ryder is about to commence, but no – she's set free of her shackles, and her previously stern mistress begins to finger, fondle and otherwise pleasure the captive girl, which really makes no sense at all from a disciplinary standpoint. The two young women take it to the floor, where they smile and moan beguilingly but never seem to really lose themselves in the moment, awkwardly changing position every 15 seconds as if determined to try every possible girl-girl combination before the next song comes up on their iPod. Pink plastic phalluses are employed and then discarded as 20 minutes of oral pleasuring is pursued, accompanied by no music or dialogue, just rather ineffectual moaning.

Scene 2:

But wait! There's a new development! A title card informs us that the new girls (Zeina Hart, Cute Angie) are sneaking into the dungeon in the middle of the night and "putting to practice what they have learned during their classes." I can only hope that their classes have offered considerably more than we've seen so far, because there's been precious little fetish in this finishing school, if you know what I mean.

On first impression, this dungeon isn't much to speak of. For a fancy finishing school, the décor involves an awful lot of ugly industrial-grade carpeting. The security is extremely lax, as well – lingerie-clad girls are languishing in barred cells, but the keys are left in the locks for anyone to open! It quickly becomes apparent that these girls haven't learned anything more complicated than the previous students – Ms. Angie props up her legs in an impressive swing, but Zeina does little more than lick her and finger her (although the razor-sharp tips of her French manicure do look uncomfortable when jammed into her pussy). More use of a phallus-shaped object occurs, but at least this time it's not employed like a jackhammer.

Scene 3:

Next up, two young students (Katrina B, Sarah) attend their first class with Mistress Jamie (Jamie James). They're to be taught the art of submission! Which, again, translates to "basic girl-on-girl action." Mistress Jamie's wearing an exceptionally cool pair of black platform shoes that lace up her calves. Another impressive, custom-made phallus is employed. It's become painfully clear by this point that any actual fetish-related lessons at this school are being administered off-camera.

Scene 4:

Elsewhere at Hogwart's, Cute Angie is placed in the shower so she can "clean her perverted body," as Mistress Jamie tells her. Angie showers, spending an inordinate amount of time letting water run down her ass, and using a washcloth without soap -- one of the first classes at Fetish Finishing School ought to be on how to bathe properly, because she's really not doing it right.

Back in the dungeon, the "lesson" is again extremely tame. After a few light taps with a crop (which is then discarded entirely), we're back to standard cunnilingus, followed by some genuinely arousing strap-on action as Jamie takes Cute Angie from behind while wearing an enormous black dildo. For the first time in the film, the actresses appear to be enjoying themselves, which salvages this segment's lack of anything, well, fetish related.

Scene 5:

Finally, four students (Emmanuelle, Kelly Summer, Lady Jade, Shanna Ryder) bend themselves into as many convoluted poses as they can while moaning, playing with nipple clamps and phalluses and, for the most part, looking bored. Maybe this was an unwelcome homework assignment, because they really don't seem particularly enthusiastic about it.

Final thoughts: For a low-rent production, the camerawork isn't bad and the general quality of the DVD is merely adequate, although the sound is terribly uneven in quality and volume, and there's no soundtrack music except during the bridging title cards. As for the theme … well, someone obviously got the use of a private dungeon for a day's filming, but didn't have any conception of how to add BDSM elements to the strictly mainstream action. All in all, a lesson in tedium more than in fetish.