Mariner's Rating:

Starring: Aja, Cheri Taylor, Ariel Knight, Tianna, Heather, Staci Lords, Tom Byron, Peter North, Eric Price and F. J. Lincoln (non-sex role).
Byron plays Alex, a businessman with a gambling debt which attracts the attention of two leg-breakers played by Peter North and Eric Price, so Alex makes two half-hearted attempts to hasten the demise of his rich father (F. J. Lincoln) by blowjob-induced heart attack (Hey! If you gotta go. . . )
Cheri Taylor fails -if you can believe that- in the first effort, but then consoles Alex in a simple but erotic scene. Aja, Alex's secretary-cum-lover (this film should be renamed "Lucky Tom") doesn't go along with the plot, but similarly consoles the long-suffering Alex.
Other sex scenes are more or less routine: a 2 X 2 with North/Lords and Price/Heather, a girl-girl with Aja and Ariel, a 3-way among Ariel, North and Price, and finally yet another one-on-one with Tom and Tianna. Tianna, by the way, is Lincoln's Doctor who marries the old guy, induces him to change his will and then proceeds to administer the death-dealing BJ (although we don't get to see it). Alex, written out the will, is once again consoled, this time by the "grieving widow".
Tom displays his acting skills to good effect, as do Cheri and Aja. North may be a bit miscast as a heavy, and Price overplays the tough guy thing, leaving Lincoln to steal the show. His archetypal "dirty old man" brings the grins.

There are eight sets and at least two cameras (Betamax perhaps, probably 35MM), taking the film out of the "one-day-wonder" category. There's no detectable looping; the director uses the 2-cam setup to prolong the scenes instead.
The picture quality is very good, but the camera work is unimaginative, as is the lighting. Most scenes are hurt by cross-lapped shadows against bright backgrounds behind the actors. There's one good lighting effect behind Aja during a BJ on Tom, but then Aja would look gorgeous back-lighted, filtered, sun-lighted or no-lighted!

For most port afficianados, this would be a very tame film: no DP, anal, bondage, etc. , not even the trademark Tom Byron butt slap! Anyone who's watched more than a couple of XXX films could likely have directed the sex scenes and camera angles. But if your sense of eroticism is tied to realism, you've come to the right place. Cheri Taylor and Aja may be two of the most sensuous and sultry women in the genre, and both clearly enjoy what they're doing. For proof, closeups of Cheri's swollen labia and red blotches on Aja's georgeously natural breasts tell the tale.
For these two lovelies, Byron's slower-paced brand of sensuality is a perfect match.

Although a game effort is made to produce a reasonable story line with good continuity to support the sex scenes, the highlights of this film are Cheri/Tom and Aja/Tom. Both scenes are strictly straight sex, but those two women in the same film are the stuff of wet dreams. It's almost a relief that they didn't do the girl-girl scene together!

The film fails, unfortunately, to resolve the time-honored concept of hook-tale-tension-climax. In porn, tension is often achieved and resolved by delaying the pairing of the lead starlet with the featured stud until the last scene. In this case, though, the final scene pairs Byron with Tianna, a definite anticlimax. Tianne appears very late in the story and, frankly, is simply not in the same league with Aja and Cheri Taylor. How much better it would have been to have given Tianna the opening role of the hooker-turned-nurse, leaving Aja as the main course and Cheri as the delectable dessert for the last scene. Yum yum.

"The Last Temptation" is a good couples film, and with its somewhat upscale production values deserves a
There performances of Aja and Cheri Taylor, though, crank it up to a solid 7.

Posted By Mariner, www.excaliburfilms.com | 10/12/06 1:58 PM