“Rocki Whore Picture Show” Has A Lot On The Slab

How does a porn adaptation of a campy tranny mad scientist movie turn out to be a morality tale? Strange things happen in "Rocki Whore Picture Show" that require further investigation.

Rocki Whore Picture Show

Studio: Wicked
Director: Brad Armstrong
Starring: jessica drake, Randy Spears, Mac Turner, Alektra Blue, Brad Armstrong, Nicki Hunter, Rocco Reed, Puma Swede, James Bartholet, Ron Jeremy, Kirsten Price, Annie Cruz, Brandy Aniston, Tommy Gunn, Marcus London

"Rocki Whore Picture Show" is one of the handful of porn parodies that pays its own way; it has a good shot of pleasing porn fans who like the original camp film as well as those who've never seen it.

But that doesn't mean a porn adaptation of the cult classic "Rocky Horror Picture Show" didn't have some serious obstacles to overcome.

First off, how does a straight porn movie work with a flamboyant cross-dresser in a lead role (we saw how unsuccessfully "Not M*A*S*H" did it)? Mac Turner as Frank'n'Beans does an excellent imitation of Tim Curry. This time Frank is a porn director who lures Brad and Janet into his castle of depravity, turning both of them out while perfecting his own creation: a machine-crafted super porn star named Rocki (Puma Swede).

Frank busts moves on both Janet and Brad ("We're normal!" protests Brad) and, though his second conquest goes unconsummated, I was impressed that Wicked went there.

Second, can a porn movie pull off its own takes of glam-opera ditties like "Sweet Transvestite" and "Time Warp"? In "Rocki Whore"'s case, no, but the cast and crew did the best job I've ever seen of integrating music into a porn movie. In most porn movies, the problem tends to be that the vocals don't pop and the music sounds too processed. "Rocki Whore" aimed high and almost got there, especially in Carter's numbers and in a lively duet between Brad Armstrong and Alektra Blue.

We forgive porn parodies certain things, or at least tolerate flaws for the greater good that is the promise of watching people fuck slightly differently than we've seen them fuck thousands of times before: we forgive acting, we forgive pacing, we forgive costumes, props, and staging. But "Rocki Whore"'s inspiration was such a B-movie anyway that, between Wicked upping its game and the production values of a 30-year-old indie film, the porn version came out better in some spots.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in the scenery (and vagina)-chewing scenes between Randy Spears and Nicki Hunter, who milked every second of screen time they had.

Kudos to Armstrong as a director for the spot-on performance of Turner as well as the uncharacteristically reined-in performance of James Bartholet and Ron Jeremy, in addition to nice bits of business between Kaylani Lei and Annie Cruz as Frank's assistants.

Without being too precious about it, the movie ends with a testament to marital harmony, as well as what must have been a nice inside joke on set.

"I'm Brad's whore," says Janet.

· Wicked Pictures (wickedpictures.com)
· Buy "Rocki Whore Picture Show" (tlavideo.com)