Frank Black is a researcher for the government tasked with keeping tabs on its citizens. A secret mind control program, pharmaceutically enhanced citizens, black ops, government brothels and a race to own our minds.
Scene Breakdown
Scene 1. Nikita Denise, Tyce Bune
Scene 2. Shay Sights, Wanda Curtis, Nick Manning
Scene 3. Michelle Michaels, Tyce Bune
Scene 4. Goddess Heather, Shay Sights, Wanda Curtis
Scene 5. Shay Sights, Tyce Bune
Scene 6. Mercedes Ashley, Sledge Hammer, Steve Holmes
Scene 7. Nikita Denise, Manuel Ferrara, Miles Long
Review by Gabriel Nine
Acid Dreams ostensibly concerns the covert use of LSD, sex and mind control in espionage by the CIA during the 1950s. The opening minutes affect a film noir style as a reporter explains how he met a scientist who discloses the experiments conducted by the central character, Frank Black (Tyce Bune). However, any notion that a strong narrative based around this potentially intriguing premise might drive the movie along is swiftly cast aside as director Ninn instead focuses on depicting Black’s own experiences with the drugs as well as those of the subjects of the experiments in a series of sex scenes that prove remarkably conventional underneath stylistic trappings that are ladled on with a heavy hand.
Through a Spartan dream landscape and visions of Black’s female colleague (Nikita Denise) in a pink ball gown, the first depiction of Black’s own drug experiment turns out to be a surprisingly standard sexual encounter. Bune and Denise copulate in some sort of industrial boiler room, a symbolic telephone on the floor. She rides hard and stares at the camera in a desperate attempt to win approval. The camera drifts off to the pipe work. It’s not a good start.
Minimal development of the scanty storyline occurs between scenes, and with acting and dialogue like this it’s not hard to see why the sex gets priority. Back in the “real world”, Nikita’s character challenges Black over his use of the drugs. Events just drift over to another scene, where some agent or other is secretly filmed while being enticed into a druggy sexual scenario by two tarts (Wanda Curtis and Shay Sights). Another trip begins, fast cut editing whisking us to another industrial location where the two women appear with fake tits bulging from their latex costumes and treat the poor boy mean. He doesn’t react too well, and it’s all terribly harsh. Underneath it all, it’s still a suck/fuck/anal/facial number. The girls are plastered in so much make up that, while giving the man a drool-soaked blowjob, Shay looks more like a drag queen than a woman. Exaggerated teasing, pouting and posing and some pretty mean spirited attitude during some ultimately lame and boring sex all makes for quite unpleasant viewing, and that’s not to mention the profoundly irritating editing.
More on that later, but as some sort of realisation of what’s happening strikes the agent, in his narcotic stupor he manages to shoot himself in “reality” and in the dream, which is a neat trick. But there’s no explanation of what this is about – instead, it’s time for Black’s next trip, which takes the form of an unspeakably bland sex scene. On a sweeping staircase and lit in soft orangey yellow tones, Bune couples with blonde Michelle Michaels, arguably the only pretty girl in the whole movie (Nikita Denise, maybe). Accompanied by what I can only imagine is an ironic soundtrack of bossa nova tinkering, every move they make is desperately overplayed as if to emphasise how terribly sexy it all is. But it’s not. It’s bloody boring! It seems to go on forever. Yes, she’s pretty, yes, she’s got sweet pert titties, but the whole thing plays like one of those extremely tiresome soft-core flicks used to pad out late night TV schedules.
Something about the following sequence of fast-cut and seemingly random imagery bugs me. It all seems so frightfully intense and I’m pondering the fast shutter speed shots used to capture the droplets of water, until I realise the indoor rainstorm images, as Tyce’s character is freaking out in a dentist’s chair while being soaked, remind me of the hilarious video for George Michael’s super-camp hit Fast Love, so it’s hard to take it seriously after that.
Besides, the whole ensuing sequence, presumably designed to imply Black’s visions during his trip, is just a string of visual clichés, from the fast cuts to yet more industrial locations to the ludicrously overstated posturing of Wanda, Shay and later the butch blonde Heather Tristany. She makes a dramatic entrance and flexes her considerable muscles over Wanda and Shay in some quite preposterous “lesbian” action. Why a CIA agent of the 1950s might be having acid-fuelled visions of a crop-haired, fake-breasted blonde musclewoman in latex is never quite explained, nor why lots of water is pouring over Wanda as she masturbates. This is meant to be sexy? Oh, I see.
Tyce emerges into the mix and has another firm but resolutely conventional porno sex scene with Shay. She’s in the latex outfit she wore earlier and looks no better this time around. Big implanted breasts. Drool a-plenty during the blowjob. A come facial. Slow-mo shots of Shay lapping strands of drool or come from Tyce’s cock. That’s it.
Back in the room where the secret filming takes place, another man is lured into the experiment. Steve Holmes plays a man who thinks he’s hired a regular hooker, and with her orange hair and “enhanced” breasts Mercedes Ashley certainly looks the part. But she’s slipped the man a little something in his drink and as he talks shit about white dicks and black dicks to her, things start to spin. Literally. They just wave the camera about until a black man emerges out of the bed in an almost laughably amateurish effect. The production values are oddly inconsistent – from earlier CGI effects to this surprisingly crude contrivance.
Holmes’ character is forced to watch as Miles Long and then Sledge Hammer take turns with Mercedes in a truly grim sex scene, that would be hard enough to watch without the infuriatingly vague camera moves and needless motion blur effects. This may be effective in implying the required altered state of mind but it’s all done with a total lack of subtlety. “Ghastly” is the word I noted. After the men all come on various parts of Mercedes’ body, the scene ends with Steve’s character in some mental distress on the bed. Again, that’s it. No explanation.
The final scene appears similarly unconnected, as Nikita Denise, dressed in a black gown and stockings, plays pool and is then taken by two men (Manuel Ferrara and a bearded man) while Frank Black clutches a drink and looks pensive. Nikita’s tongue flicking with Manuel is about the sexiest thing in the whole damn movie, and that is not saying much. Lots of saliva during the blowjobs and pussy eating, fucking, mean attitude, anal, DP and facials – in that order. Again lit with that orange glow, this scene is edited at a slower pace but still suffers from the vague camera moves and an overemphasis on close-ups. And with a trite line or two as a supposed conclusion from the reporter who began the whole thing, that really is it. The end.
Overall
Not to put too fine a point on it, Acid Dreams embodies everything I really hate about porn. Every visual and performance cliché in the book is employed – the fast cuts, the dissolves, the soft focus, gratuitous visual effects, the industrial locations, the camera stares, licking the latex, the “nasty” expressions. The camera irritatingly wavers around; shots are pulled out of focus in an annoying affectation. I find the idea that all of this indulgent visual trickery somehow constitutes “artistic” direction especially infuriating, as it is seems imposed with virtually no regard for the subject. Worst of all is the terribly overplayed and impersonal sex. There’s nothing natural about it at all and everyone looks miserable.
Although Ninn adds all the things that supposedly contribute to the notion of “production values” in terms of lighting, camera style, costumes, locations and visual effects (including some minor moments of CGI), I can’t help feeling that all of the visual embellishments do nothing to enhance his subjects. Coupled with heavy make up and latex outfits, Ninn has simply succeeded in taking some harsh looking women and making them appear harder. A lot of this movie simply looks ugly to me.
One could argue that this is Ninn’s style and as such all of the above is no surprise, but I simply feel that if that’s the case then it’s a style that does not make for what I consider good porn. Setting aside the jumbled and exceptionally vague story, if it even amounts to such, that merely acts as a very flimsy platform upon which Ninn imposes sex scenes that feel entirely out of place, I find nothing about this movie that seems sexier or more exciting or more insightful or profound, for all of its pretension. Quite the reverse: Acid Dreams feels superficial, heartless and alienating.
Some irony might be found in the fact that, through an oversight, printing error or other unknown cause, the Private logo seems to have disappeared from the cover.
