Atomic Vixens: Escape from the Valley of the Sluts!

Studio: VCA
Director: Ron Royster
Cast: Lacie Heart, Mika Tan, Justine Joli, Jade Starr, Ashley Steel, Leah Luv, Marie Luv, James Deen

With a Mexican surf rock theme song topping a soundtrack of MySpace bands, a loosely connected comic book plot about an evil organization (L.I.M.P.) bent on controlling Earth’s women, and a trippy series of scenes with game performers like Lacie Hart, Mika Tan and Justine Joli, Atomic Vixens: Escape from the Valley of the Sluts (whatever that means) is the perfect porn confection to bring together that hard-to-please cholo, lipstick lesbian, and Vatican emissary crowd in one non-threatening embrace.

Filmed in Erotivision, less a technology than a philosophy summarized by director Ron Royster’s earnest wish to “just want to eat pizza with pretty girls, man,” Vixens is a Pretty Girl-heavy evolution of American International Pictures like Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine that delivers where the good doctor did not; the bikinis come off and the go-go girls go-go for each other.

Each scene in Vixens is introduced with a comic book storyboard that is a helpful way of setting apart what might normally be formulaic sex scenes from their counterparts in similar-budget movies. What makes “Vixens” an instant party classic (I, personally, no longer attend these parties, but still) is the glee with which tarted-up space-babe Mika Tan does a full Bond-girl scrim dance (and screams “I taste like dog!” in Tagalog during her scene with Jade Starr) or extra-bendy Justine Joli performs a solo scene in which she rips her lime-colored tights and bites her own toe.

Another way Vixens digresses from formula is the paucity of scenes with guys. James Deen seems to appear as an afterthought, a last-minute attempt to hit certain marketing points. Not needing to share the restroom with anyone, he delivers an equally-hammy performance to the ladies. Royster seems less concerned with giving screen time to the fellas in this movie than creating a male-gaze Sapphic Wonderland. And he succeeds.

This movie is chock-full of pretty girls doing sassy, non-threatening things. As such it appeals to the widest cross-section of porn’s current audience for video-based product: couples and the emerging “alt” market (I can’t bring myself to use the word “alt” without quotes just yet, the same way I write “President”). It creates its own niche.

Watching Vixens, I thought that people who enjoy technicolor Elvis movies, the original Pink Panther‘s ski lodge party scene, tiki culture, and especially old Playboys would really dig it.

In Octavio Arizala’s guest-directed scene, a pairing of soon-to-be-Vivid Girl Lacie Heart (Vixens was shot in November ‘05, and Heart signed with Vivid early this year) and Ashley Steel, the two play fembots in an Esquivelian spaceship. We don’t really know why they’re there or what they are doing, but it looks nice. Heart screams “Give me head” in Latin.

Disc Two features extended photo galleries as well as a ponderous but engaging behind-the-scenes documentary and manifesto by Cat Purcell, aka Cat Pee. With an arresting Upper Peninsula Michigan accent, Purcell combines backstage footage of the shooting of the movie in downtown Los Angeles and at Hollywood’s hipster transient hotel, the Vibe, with her theories about what makes good lesbian erotica (“if any girl tapped my clit for fifteen minutes like you see in ‘lesbian’ porn movies, I’d kick her in the head,” she snarls) as well as musings from her own body of knowledge culled from her then-three weeks’ experience with the adult industry.

To be fair, one can learn all about the vicissitudes and heartbreak of the adult industry in a short time but, like hobbits, it can still surprise you after a hundred years. Particularly vexing is Purcell’s adamant fluffer denial. There are fluffers; they are just rare, like angels.

While this bit of juvenilia should probably have been put on the extras of Purcell’s upcoming Alpha 15 movie, including as it does footage of Purcell as a standup comedian in Kansas City and a scene with Ron Jeremy as Jesus welcoming her into the porn community (!), this documentary is nothing if not earnest, and is a welcome departure from cynical and phoned-in BTS footage one might see everywhere else.

My favorite snippet is of Royster describing 11th-hour douche purchases at a Hollywood Rite Aid. “We were giggling like junior high kids,” he said.

The two-disc set arrives in a swanky DVD box with an inner sleeve reminiscent of, yes, a record album. This practice started with VCA’s tentpole release of Eon McKai’s Neu Wave Hookers earlier this year and shows no signs of abating.

Buy “Atomic Vixens: Escape from the Valley of the Sluts!” here