Miles from Needles

Studio: Vivid
Director: B. Skow
Cast: Savanna Samson, April Blossom, Kimberly Kane, Maria Bellucci, James Deen, Brian Surewood, Evan Stone, Steven St. Croix

Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot

Smoky backwoods Marianne (Savanna Samson) has a girlfriend, Lucy (April Blossom), that no one knows about. Not even her husband, benighted hick Darrell (Steven St. Croix). When Darrell comes home unexpectedly, he catches his wife in the brunette’s Sapphic embrace and goes, as you’d expect, apeshit. To his credit, though, Darrell works through his rage by fucking his wife. We get the idea this is something they do to keep their marriage exciting.

This is news to Lucy, however. After watching for a while she takes action. And in the aftermath, Marianne and Lucy must flee the scene of a murder.

They don’t make it far. They are pulled over by an unnecessarily harsh police officer (Evan Stone) whose wife (Kimberly Kane) works at the police station. As it happens, Kane likes having sex in front of prisoners, as does her husband. We get the idea this is something they do to keep their marriage exciting.

We see a pattern here. Marriages are the same the world over. What also remains unchanged is the time at the police station; it remains ten seconds to midnight throughout the scene.

Things get bad. It’s starting to look like Stone isn’t a police officer at all. Why is there a mattress in the detention room? Why does Kimberly Kane get to smoke? Things become clear the next morning at breakfast with the dysfunctional family, as the culprits are chained to a dining room table and served eggs by Constance (James Deen), a halfwit in flowered underpants.

Marianne laments her life. “First I was living in sin,” she says. “Now I’m living in Hell!”

But Lucy is clever. She knows that one thing that halfwits like (other than french fries) is big hugs. She tells him that the girls will give him a big hug if he unshackles them.

But after he has his way with them, a way that is similar to the way all porn threeways are conducted (leading this observer to wonder if this movie is saying that halfwits are just like porn stars), Constance has the last laugh: he locks the girls away, too.

But they manage to escape to the safety of a rural porn studio where Brian Surewood is fiddling with Maria Bellucci. Marianne and Lucy hide just in time for Stone to arrive. It appears that Stone is like a maniacal feudal lord, inspiring fear in all who walk his grounds. There really is a lot going on in this movie.

But I won’t give away the end, save for the fact that comeuppance isn’t equally distributed.

Miles from Needles is a great porn movie. Like Rob Rotten’s Texas Vibrator Massacre (also released this year), the movie takes place in a rural setting and lets the cast engage is some redneckery.

Kimberly Kane is especially good in white trash roles, because she is not traditionally porn star sexy, but sexy in a way that says “I would like to see her unhinged.”

Newcomer April Blossom is a smoky-voiced vixen who does a great job with her first leading role. Paired with Samson, Blossom (whose name doesn’t fit her – she should be called Smoky Sassypants or something) describes her partner in the excellent Behind the Scenes featurette as someone she just wants to grab and bite into. This is true of herself.

But Samson is the star, and rightfully so. A lot of higher-budget movies featuring contract girls reveal limitations, because some might be great to look at but aren’t equal to the small demands of the script. Samson looks wonderful and she even uses a slight accent, and not as a distracting caricature.

“We shot the movie over two days (in July 2007), and we had the best time,” said director B. Skow. “I’ve worked with most of those performers before, and they really made it look good.”