I'm a big fan of fairy tales. This may seem like an odd confession on a porn review blog but I'm not talking Disney here. I like the old stories. Before Disney filled them with talking teapots and twittering birds. The old, old, dark stories. My bookshelves bulge with titles like Grimm's Grimmest and Snow White, Blood Red. When I saw that Wicked had released The Craving, a dark, adult fairy tale, I grabbed a copy.
The Craving was released in 2007 starring Jessica Drake (last seen in 2040) and directed by Brad Armstrong (who also directed and performed in 2040). The premise is simple - an adult re-telling of a bunch of well known fairy tales. Sleeping Beauty, The Pied Piper, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and The Frog Prince. All those stories have a lot to offer to a porn writer. In fact we even have a porn short story collection based on those stories. Unfortunately, the makers of The Craving had never read it because they took the easy option - replace the words "lived happily ever after" with the word "fucked".
The handsome prince kisses Sleeping Beauty (Justin Magnum and Jessica Drake)...then they fuck. The Pied Piper doesn't lure rats away from Hamlin, instead they are whores (Randy Spears (The Masseuse, Batman XXX, 2040 and... well... just about every porn made in the last 20 years), Brooke Haven, Jessica Drake, Kayla Carrera and Kimberly Kole) and they fuck. The wolf does the whole "my what big ... you have" with Red Riding Hood (Tyler Knight and Chelsie Rae), then they fuck. Rapunzel has a prince climb her hair (Mikayla Mendez and Tommy Gunn (Flying Pink Pig, Bonny & Clide, lots of others; he's a worthy successor to Randy!)) then... you get the picture.
They could have done so much more with this film. With a good writer this could have been fantastic. Unfortunately they didn't have a good writer. Rapunzel had a nice twist to it and they tried a twist with the frog prince - get this...the last frog...wasn't a prince! Hardly stellar stuff. Had they tried as hard with the others as they did with Rapunzel this would have been a good film. But they didn't. They took the easy "and they fucked" option instead.
Being a Wicked production this looked fantastic. Costumes and sets were lovely. I have been noticing a trend recently towards a less enhanced, more natural look for porn girls. That trend hadn't reached Wicked in 2007 because all the girls were old-school silicone-enhanced flondes, which was disappointing after what we've been seeing recently. Especially our cover girl, Jessica Drake, who is a particularly bad example of the genre.
The sex was pretty good. The scenes were short, the whole film was only 1:30 which was a nice change from the three hour marathons we have been sitting through recently. Good, but not spectacular and not enough to make up for the weak writing. Well three scenes were good, the Frog Prince scene was just dull. After turning the frog back into a prince (Chris Cannon), the princess (Jessica Drake) doesn't fuck him but blows him instead. Fair enough you may think but then she goes and does the same to two more frogs (Joey Ray and Marcus London (also in 2040)). Now I like a blow job as much as the next guy and watching a pretty girl give one can be entertaining. Jessica isn't a pretty girl, she has that hard, jaded porn look, and watching three identical, unenthusiastic blow-jobs was frankly dull. Maybe her pussy was sore that day.
It's not a bad film. But it's not a great one either. Worth a look if you can pick it up cheap but not worth paying full price for.
You can buy The Craving here through Uncut DVDs in Australia.
You can buy The Craving here through Good Vibrations in the USA.
