DVD Review: “Fresh Out the Box 4”

The porn business thrives on new talent. It is the rare performer - because everyone is a "pornstar" from the first scene she shoots - who can make it into the "beloved" category. That is why there are a lot of "new girl" titles that can be watched months after their release to chart the progress of several flavors of the week.

Tina Tyler's "Fresh Out the Box 4" is a solid take on an old standby, and one of the only titles that makes one wonder what the director is wearing. Read our review after the gap. - G. Ponante

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Fresh Out the Box 4

Studio: Mercenary Pictures
Director: Tina Tyler
Cast: Page Morgan, Bailey Monroe, Arial Alexus, Nikki Grind, Belle de Leon, Ashley Brooks

Review by: - G. Ponante

Maybe because director Tina Tyler has herself performed on camera for 12 years do her interviews with newly-minted porn girls seem less predatory and elicit more interesting answers than the gonzo-girl interviews of many of her male counterparts (David Aaron Clark, to give him his due, admits that he intends to sound creepy).

Working within the tried and true formula of interview -> smidgen of a setup -> sex, Tyler moves these newbies along in engaging fashion.

Including Page Morgan.

One of the great benefits of porn movies (other than using old ones to pay one's gardeners) is the dizzying number of porn styles a performer might try on in his/her career. While many "contract" performers can afford to employ a winnowing-out process, most performers love the money and will pretty much do anything.

Hillary Scott, Eva Angelina, Kami Andrews, Tory Lane, and many of today's bankable porn actresses will appear in everything from Private and Wicked shoots to the lowliest Skank Factor fare. One of the perks of watching so many desensitizing hours of porn is seeing someone turn up with two dicks and a broomstick in her mouth in one movie, whom you just saw playing a happy-ending-bestowing nurse who keeps most of her clothes on in another.

Page Morgan, who will appear in this week's release of Vivid-Alt's "ReBelle Rousers", showed a far more human, less rehearsed side to Tyler in a series of quick interviews.

Morgan had been working as a night waitress. She was 18. She loved sex and money "and then put two and two together." Morgan has a distinctive, almost Billy Idol-esque porn sneer. Watching her employ that and her 40's pinup curves in a gonzo production is sure to be the first stop for Page Morgan completists, many of whom will be forged in the next few weeks as various releases, including this one, hit the streets.

Arial Alexus is next. Again, when Tyler says that Alexus has beautiful skin, she doesn't sound like a heavy breather on the other end of the prison bars. Alexus, in the business for three weeks at the time of this shoot, takes on two fellows and she does it with an exuberance that might just be due to a lack of practice but not of enthusiasm.

The third scene is delivered by Ashley Brooks, who was a few months in porn at the time of this shoot and now, not too long after, told me she is "looking for a good way to leave the business," is very sweet and sexy in her scene. Petite, her partner can't get enough of her.

All of Tyler's interview scenes are edited to keep things moving, but some appear to be edited more than others. Bailey Monroe, in what might have been her third scene ever, appears to be over the experience; she struggles to find something to remember about her short time in the industry. But it is in her performance with Lexington Steele that she finds her element. I guess some people just aren't talkers. They're doers.

Monroe is tall with large natural breasts. She is not porn-glamorous but is instead interesting to look at. I imagine people from her hometown picking up this movie and saying, "I should have tapped that when we worked at Waffle House. Goddamn that Lexington Steele."

Nikki Grind and Belle De Leon are next. Grind has a hairdo like a 1955 Pan Am stewardess. It makes me long for those golden days of travel. Belle De Leon, in the final scene, says she's 21 but acts a lot older. Maybe 21-year-olds just seem older these days. A black woman with a tattoo (a rarity in porn), she takes on Lexington Steele and is not a shy flower about it.

Particularly for people whom I think might be famous in a porn kinda way someday - like Page Morgan - but also for the solid scenes and engaging, non-cringeworthy questions, "Fresh Out the Box 4" is a smart purchase.

· Mercenary Pictures/Lexington Steele (lexsteele.com)

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Previously: Porn Valley Dispatch Archive