By John Haze

“Baby, It’s You”
Bijou Video, 1993
Director: Toby Ross
Cast: Brad Hunt, Craig Shattner, Mark Paul, Logan Porter, Kevin Rogers, Ken Holtz, Patrick Murphy, Scott Masters, Cory Cox, Anthony Kalix and Tuan

“Baby, It’s You” is a solid movie with flashes of brilliance. The production values rate a B-minus, as the sound is not as crisp nor the lighting as clear as one would find in the contemporaneous work of any number of other studios with bigger budgets. But director Toby Ross occasionally offers viewers some truly arresting images that re-earn his reputation as an A-list director.

The hung protagonist Ken Holtz is facing the prospect of a long-term relationship with Scott Masters but doesn’t know if he’s ready to let go of his playboy lifestyle. Scott tells him (in a nice way!) to fuck off. That is to say, Ken is given license to take a weekend timeout and have sex with whoever he wants wherever he wants. One of the highlights of that very busy weekend is a mesmerizing scene under a Chicago bridge, where Patrick Murphy and Ken suck each other off and blow explosive loads as cars pass overhead. Another scene, set more tamely in a hotel room, is a tryst with hairy, herculean Brad Hunt. The erotic pacing of this scene is simply outstanding.

Reading this movie historically, and despite the fact that condoms are used and that Ken’s male secretary reminds him to play safe, one has to marvel a little at the bravery required to tell this story in the AIDS era. In fact, one could read this movie two ways in that respect—alternately as a kind of jeremiad about the long, almost lost days of uninhibited sex with unlimited partners or as a backhanded way of saying that there’s nothing as rewarding as the connection two men can have when they are in love, a connection that enabled this weekend of debauchery in the first place. The philosophical dilemma with the latter reading is that the viewer spends significantly more time jacking off to the encounters with strangers than to the central couple, whose passion is at best only weakly established. Of course, there’s nothing compelling you to give the narrative this much thought, especially when there is so much to gawk at here.

“The Best of Jeremy Penn”
Falcon Studios, 2006
Director: John Rutherford
Cast: Matthew Anders, Ivan Andros, Ethan-Michael Ayers, Robert Balint, Brian Daniels, Vince Ditonno, Justin Dragon, Dean Edwards, Cameron Fox, Jacob Hall, Lindon Hawk, Andy Hunter, Carlos Morales, Jeff Palmer, Jeremy Penn, Dale Rhodes, Brent Sawyer, Eric Stone, Jason Tyler, Jordan West and Josh Weston

This is a no-brainer. You either like handsome, charismatic, muscular blue-eyed blonds or you don’t. If you do, it generally is not possible for a porn release to get any better than this. Mind you, this reviewer is a purist and believes in storytelling. But that’s the beauty of this series—while you might not get the whole original movie experience from each scene, you always get the whole set-up. Maybe it inspires you to buy the originals, or maybe you hold here and congratulate yourself on the extraordinary dollar value you’re getting: Three hours and nine complete scenes that feature Jeremy with some of the finest men in Falcon’s highly celebrated history.

One of the fun discoveries of seeing a porn star’s entire career condensed in this way is the connections the viewer can draw among disparate scenes. It can’t be a coincidence that Jeremy is depicted so often in public-sex situations. In the scene from “The Freshmen” he gets sucked off in the dormitory restroom by Sebastian Cruz, but sticks around long enough to bend Stone Michaels over the bathroom sink. In the one from “Hot Wheels” a guy answers the door for deliveryman Jeremy and their cocks are out before the street-level door is closed, thrilling heavy traffic buzzing by on the street outside. And in “California Kings” Jeremy stands naked and fully visible atop the bed of a pickup truck, parked in an open field ringed by a busy freeway. Message received: Jeremy wants to show off and he couldn’t be better equipped for it.