Mrs. Christie gets away with all sorts of things in “Descent” because she is crazy. It is as if the elevator tried to break her down, and this was what happened.
Studio: Evil Angel
Director: Dana Vespoli
Starring: Dana Vespoli, Danny Wylde, Alec Knight, Sovereign Syre, James Deen, John Christie, Mark Davis, Karlie Montana
With nods to “Sunset Boulevard” and “The Shining,” and none at all to Robert Hazard’s 1984 Philadelphia club standard “Escalator of Life,” Dana Vespoli again shows that a low-budget porn movie can be highly effective without skimping on story or sex.
Mrs. Christie (Vespoli) regularly passes into fugues after a home invasion leaves her terribly shaken. Luckily, they are sexy fugues.
When a video of her sleeping is left on her doorstep, Mrs. Christie calls the police (Danny Wylde and Alec Knight), who gamely try to help the troubled citizen. While they take notes, she fantasizes about them raping her.
This was the type of scene that pushes transgressive buttons in porn. We don’t know at the outset that the 3-way is an hallucination, so we wonder why Vespoli isn’t protesting. There are written and unwritten guidelines in porn that prohibit depictions of rape since they are such litigation magnets.
But it’s a hot scene—the (male) fantasy of a woman enjoying rape. Vespoli carefully and consciously frames this scene, doing the responsible thing by giving the audience credit for knowing the difference between a heinous act and a fantasy about it.
Always an expressive performer with delightfully sordid guttural vocalizations, Vespoli left porn for a few years and has returned as a board-certified MILF, with MILF skills. To wit: She manages to see a psychiatrist (Mark Davis) in just one day.
Prior to the invasion, Dana’s marriage has not been going well. We see this in a series of quick vignettes, effectively shot. A Room 237-style tryst with Karlie Montana (minus the aging) contributes to the creepiness we feel edging Sane Dana out of the picture—a picture crowded with sadness-relieving sex.
She mentions to her shrink that she got in a car accident the year before. Leaving a message for her husband, who was out of the country at the time, she realized “there was nothing he could do about it.”
Vespoli is the star of her own movie and there’s no one better (though, as in “Forsaken,” we see a brief glimpse of the lovely Sovereign Syre and wonder Why the Tease?). During another fantasy sequence with Asshole Artist James Deen, Vespoli pinches her own arm during sex. That’s so much more real than biting her finger.
That the ending doesn’t involve Dana getting a load of come in her face but instead features the resolution of the story (not that a load of come in the face hasn’t been a useful narrative denouement in the past—think of “Sense And Sensibility”) is another reason “Descent” is a great porn movie, one not easily forgotten (even with a bump on the head).
Buy “Descent” here
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: On the Couch with James Deen: How “Crippling Shyness” might be the key to success ; Tribulation-free Tribbing: It was a good day
See also: Evil Angel
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