"Lover's Choice" (originally titled "Love or Money") belongs to the second phase of director Nicholas Steele's career, when he began emphasizing craftsmanship (and quantity) over artistry. It comes near the end of his classic period of romances for Ultimate Pictures/Adam & Eve Productions.
The simple story written with his ace cameraman Jon Noz Muka, concerns a cute young woman played by Jessie V, the first leading role I've seen the journeyman actress accorded. She gets a job working as a waitress at a posh country club/resort, reporting to mean martinet of a boss/bartender Randy Spears. Story concerns her finding romance, ultimately with heart-throb Dale DaBone.
Not much happens over the course of the DVD's hour and a half, except for six sensual sex scenes, with emphasis on a lesbian encounter the heroine has with her sympathetic roommate Natalia Wood. In the BTS short subject Wood criticizes the credibility of that sexual plot twist, doubting whether sex with a roommate would occur so easily, but otherwise director Steele makes the characters and their relationships play convincingly as if in a mainstream movie.
Lack of inspiration is the common element in these films, many of which did not get wide distribution until 5 or 6 years later when Nick hooked up with Britain's Paul Chaplin to run the briefly successful Bluebird Films, distributing a dozen or so vault items in addition to big-budget porn parodies of Batman, Bonnie & Clyde, etc. (of which a Blade Runner ripoff remains unseen to the present day).
"Lover's Choice" is technically superb in its execution, even boasting a soulful theme song that goes "What about money, what about love..." in keeping with the show's shooting title. A special treat is glamorous casting of Olivia Del Rio as a woman taking tennis lessons from big-dicked Juian - a chance to see the exotic '90s star of many a European big-budget porn film by Joe D'Amato.
The simple story written with his ace cameraman Jon Noz Muka, concerns a cute young woman played by Jessie V, the first leading role I've seen the journeyman actress accorded. She gets a job working as a waitress at a posh country club/resort, reporting to mean martinet of a boss/bartender Randy Spears. Story concerns her finding romance, ultimately with heart-throb Dale DaBone.
Not much happens over the course of the DVD's hour and a half, except for six sensual sex scenes, with emphasis on a lesbian encounter the heroine has with her sympathetic roommate Natalia Wood. In the BTS short subject Wood criticizes the credibility of that sexual plot twist, doubting whether sex with a roommate would occur so easily, but otherwise director Steele makes the characters and their relationships play convincingly as if in a mainstream movie.
Lack of inspiration is the common element in these films, many of which did not get wide distribution until 5 or 6 years later when Nick hooked up with Britain's Paul Chaplin to run the briefly successful Bluebird Films, distributing a dozen or so vault items in addition to big-budget porn parodies of Batman, Bonnie & Clyde, etc. (of which a Blade Runner ripoff remains unseen to the present day).
"Lover's Choice" is technically superb in its execution, even boasting a soulful theme song that goes "What about money, what about love..." in keeping with the show's shooting title. A special treat is glamorous casting of Olivia Del Rio as a woman taking tennis lessons from big-dicked Juian - a chance to see the exotic '90s star of many a European big-budget porn film by Joe D'Amato.