Practicing Sadomasochism

By Rich Moreland

This is the first in a series of reviews of Evil Angel’s Voracious, an awarding winning adult film divided into ten episodes. The following is the opening narrative titled, “Learn to Control Yourself.” The other installments will appear soon.  All photos in this series are courtesy of Evil Angel.

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If he were writing today, how would Bram Stoker describe Jonathan Harker’s encounter with the female vampires in Dracula’s Transylvania castle? Harker arrives to facilitate a real estate transaction for the count and finds his life turned inside out when he is assaulted by Dracula’s brides.  Stoker’s only option in his classic 1898 novel is the reader’s imagination. Sexually repressed Victorians were unable to abide the details.

But now all is revealed in John Stagliano’s Voracious, a modern version of vampires, sex, love, and conspiracy.

Manuel Batiste, played by porn icon, Manuel Ferrara, visits a hillside home facing the Pacific.  He’s a potential buyer of this for sale property that carries some external wear.

With the last vestiges of twilight vanishing into darkness, Manuel enters the home and immediately sees a statue of a satyr ravishing a young woman whose back is arched in ecstasy. Remember that image, it’s highly charged and is the ticket to get the viewer through a three-way sexual joyride that is worth every penny spent on this film.

Amira, played by the super sexy Brooklyn Lee, appears seemingly out of nowhere to apologize for being late. Stagilano dresses her in a skin-tight outfit that shapes her derriere into a desirable commodity, a trait of a John Stagliano film. As a matter of fact, the Stagliano stamp is all over this production.

Manuel is an anthropologist and Amira is a fan of his writing. He learns that Amira and a friend, Adrianna (Romania actress Lea Lexis) have been house-sitting for quite some time. The absent owner is in Europe. Amira directs Manuel to go upstairs and look around. He starts up the steps; she pulls out her cell phone.

“Yeah, he’s what we’re looking for,” she tells the other party, her eyes a conflation of lust and evil. Oh, Jonathan Harker, were Dracula’s brides as hot as these two?

Arriving in the master bedroom, Manuel discovers the owner is a collector and most of the artifacts will remain with the property, including a mounted piranha with sharp teeth. Yes, vampires do love the big bite and prianha are the pit bulls of the water.

Manuel comments on a wall hanging that displays protruding buttocks. Brazilian, he suggests. Amira mentions an academic article Manuel wrote on a nocturnal tribe in Brazil that “stayed up all night practicing sadomasochism,” she recalls with a seductive eagerness in her voice. Manuel tells her the information came from a local priest. She wants to know if the man of God exaggerated the part about the orgies.

“I don’t know,” Manuel answers, seemingly lost in the direction of the conversation.

“Someone should be practicing sadomasochism at night,” Amira suggests and looks at him with a leering wantonness.

Later, this story will have a priest of its own and he will certainly not frown on orgies.

The scholarly Manuel goes into another room that has a stretching area typical of ballet studios. A shiny wood floor and a wooden bar attached horizontally to the wall dominant one wall. Above the bar is a painting of a woman, head thrown back like the statue downstairs, hair wildly tossed in the throes of ecstasy. Her navel is prominent: the center of the world, the site of birth and rebirth, a rejection of death.  Her hips are broad in a goddess-like sexual expression found in ancient cultures.

The painting will lord over the pure rough sex that is soon to take place.

The omnipresent Adrianna suddenly appears out of nowhere, bending over in a stretch that puts hand on ankles.

She looks at Manuel through her legs, a world turned upside down. Adriana experiences the scene for what it is: a reverse reality, everlasting life in a demonic existence that will stalk Manuel.

Standing in front of an expansive mirror common to ballet studios, the anthropologist sees his reflection and the painting and bar opposite the mirror. He is the only person in the room. As if unable to see clearly, Manuel takes off his glasses and cleans them.

Amira apologizes for the out-of-order lights in the rest of the house, deflecting Manuel’s concerns by commenting that he looks older than the picture on his book’s dust jacket.

“Well, don’t we all get older?” he says. Not in the world vampires, my friend.

Amira drops her eyes and takes his left hand. Visions of the ensuing sex flash across the screen with the haste of an ethereal vampire. Their left-handed clasp becomes more sensual; her fingers knead into his hand as their grip tightens. The left hand in most cultures is related to the functions (pleasures for Freud devotees) of the human anus, a precursor in this case of what will satisfy these undead women.

Amira stares at Manuel with a stalking lust, he’s clearly bewildered. They kiss wantonly, initiating the roller coaster ride of fantasy and reality that is to swirl through a huge sexual orgy.

Adrianna swiftly jumps Manuel; vampires move with lightning speed. Amira circles them on all fours like a lioness preparing her prey.

Bram Stoker never would have imagined his brides of Dracula would be resurrected in this way.

The sex scene to follow goes full circle. At the beginning the girls use Manuel as a conduit for their sexual pleasure. They dominate him. Later, the power exchange shifts when Manuel gives the orders.  There is breath play as the throat is a continuing image in the orgy. The oral sex is sloppy with copious amounts of saliva dripping and running throughout, an interesting visual contrast to the sleek, sparkling floor of the studio and the minimalist furniture in it.

One moment in the scene is noteworthy because of a cinematic counterpoint that happens later. Manuel is sitting slightly raised above the floor; Adriana is kneeling on the seat of a chair so that her buttocks are positioned in front of his face. Amira climbs behind him on the back of the low standing chair he occupies and reaches for Adrianna’s face. The latter arches her back (remember the satyr?) thrusting her breasts upward. The two women are kissing, positioned above Manuel.  The imagery is the flower of female sexual totality. These vampires lust for Manuel and triumphant over him while enjoying each other equally.

Incidentally, on the back of Manuel’s chair are large brass balls. Amira’s particular penchant for oral play is appropriately nuanced with these images as she positions herself to reach out to Adriana.

During this encounter, Manuel glances to his left into the mirror. He sees himself alone, masturbating. This is fantasy sex with its own unreality, or is it?

Later, the women will kneel in front of and behind Manuel to simultaneously satisfy him orally. This is the reversal of the above scene and the earlier power exchange. Cinematically, Stagliano divides this frame into thirds, as he did the other image, centralizing the sex.

As the orgy of oral and anal sex continues, at one point Adirana is in a cowgirl position and Manuel grabs her breasts, squeezing them in a form of breast bondage, almost lifting her vertically. As she throws her head back, recollections of the nocturnal tribe move into play.

When the scene finishes by circling back to the beginning, the fangs come out. Amira moves to kiss Manuel who is lying on a couch, almost unconscious. He is a double puncture away from immortality, an offering to the ancient succubus of the night.

We will later discover there is a shortage of men in this crazy conspiratorial vampire world.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Adriana shouts.

Amira growls in Adriana’s face, her fangs sharpened. Manuel is languishing in his trance.

Adriana grabs Amira’s throat, taking over the scene. She throws a suddenly alert Manuel his clothes and tells him to get out. He is swift about it.

The viewer may feel the same way, but who can resist the salacious anticipation of what’s to come. The seduction of the second episode is already beginning