Sex Zone

CENSORSHIP NOTES

* Because of its combination of explicit sex scenes and violence (although they are not together) the film is unacceptable to the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification and thus difficult to locate in Australia where it is banned.

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THE SEX ZONE (1996)
VIVID DVD (region 0)
d. Paul Thomas; scr. Paul Thomas; cast. Dyanna, Steven St. Croix, Kobe Tai, Mark Davis
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Paul Thomas was a veteran performer during the “golden age” of pre-video pornographic features, working with some of the more prominent auteurs within the newly legitimized genre, including the Mitchell Brothers and Bob Chinn.

Known outside the adult film world for his role as a disciple of Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar, Thomas eventually segued from performing into directing adult features on video. Although his early works were reportedly anonymous and disposable “product”, in the 1990s he became one of the more accomplished directors in the field of couples entertainment: a then new approach in adult features, spearheaded by such women as Candida Royalle and aimed no longer at men exclusively but at women and couples. The emphasis was on performance, comparatively involved and even soap operatic plots, consistent characterization and with enough thematic import to emerge as a knowing discourse on sexuality. As Thomas developed a reputation for coaxing sensitive and erotic performances so too his aesthetic ambitions grew and in The Sex Zone he would assess the current state of erotic features, the legacy they drew upon and was not afraid to confront the role of aggression and violence in contemporary sexuality. But as The Sex Zone emerged an intriguingly social perspective on such sexual behaviour, its more confronting aspects proved morally disconcerting for the anti-porn and pro-censorship lobbies.

After a sexual encounter in an elevator, a woman (Dyanna) returns to her home and then goes to The Zone, an anonymous contemporary sex club.

There, she wanders through the club, taking in the varied encounters. Next day, three dopers (led by Steven St. Croix) spy a woman (Kobe Tai) on the street being assaulted. They stop their van and rush to her aid. St. Croix tells his friends to leave the van so that he can take her to safety – his place. There she soon faints. As St. Croix and his friend (Mark Davis) examine her belongings, they discover a hypodermic. They put her to bed. When she wakes up and wanders downstairs, she sees St. Croix with another woman and joins them. Afterwards, she is faced with tender words from Davis who wants to help her go cold turkey to break her habit. After deliberation, she stays with the three men, playing at domesticity for these drug users and petty criminals. St. Croix plans a heist but when it is underway turns against Davis and beats him. Left bleeding and presumably for dead, Davis is found by Dyanna on her return from The Zone She takes the stray man in, tending to his wounds. Davis, however, is now an amnesiac. Infatuated by her, he follows her to The Zone. As she leaves, Kobe Tai is there, wanting to reclaim Davis for herself. Davis’ former associates also have a renewed interest in silencing him and soon the trio’s lives are in danger, forcing them to flee.

The Sex Zone deals with the moral relativism within the contemporary sexual underworld. Mores are the point for Thomas here – sexual morality as surfacing in various behaviours.

At a character level, the film thus compares the chic, stylized, anonymous often group sex of the nightclub with the more interpersonal acts between Kobe Tai and the respective men in her life. Here, the raw, borderline violent sex of St. Croix is set against the tender lovemaking of Davis. St. Croix and Davis are thus characterized as two extremes of modern masculinity. St. Croix is the outlaw, a violent drug-fuelled criminal for whom sex is a kind of anarchic power. Within the film’s overt street level noir overtones (capitalizing nicely on St. Croix’s role in John Leslie’s bleakly noirish Dog Walker) he is the bestial, chaotic side of male sexuality. Davis on the other hand proves a tender and sensitive man and in their differing approaches to sex is evoked, perhaps, that long popular and convenient moral distinction between sex and lovemaking. This polarity of male attitudes to a sexually attractive but vulnerable woman is, however, finally used to indicate rather fatalistically that it will be the bestial side of man’s sexual nature that will end any idyllic lovemaking. Hence the final country ideal threesome between Davis and the two women is ended by the inevitable result of sexual anarchy – violent, resentful retribution in the form of the gun.

Whilst this evidently interests the capable Thomas, he further parallels these individual and interpersonal sexual encounters with the anonymous sexual tableaux found in The Zone.

In this comparison, the Zone emerges as something of a decadent ideal, free of illusion and pretence, and most of all, free of the bestial and violent. Thus, also in that comparison is to be found the film’s more inter-textual agenda. Indeed, in its elaborate plot, street level scenes and violent undertones, the film evokes the rougher aspects of 1970s pornography and the sleazy lifestyle associated with it and embodied by St. Croix. The scenes in The Zone are more overtly stylized in the manner of current chic sophistication, updating the ethos of such notorious 1970s hangouts as Plato’s Retreat to the dreamlike visions that Michael Ninn would soon explore. This contrasting sexual lifestyles, subcultures and behaviours makes is found in a provocative use of the aesthetic differences in depicting sexual behaviour and hence the role of film pornography in the negotiation of sexuality and morality. It is as if director Thomas is seeking to codify contemporary attitudes to sex by using precisely what adult movies can uniquely offer as a genre – the aesthetic variation between individual sex scenes. Thomas is skilled enough a director to fully convey this intent and The Sex Zone finally emerges as an example of thoughtful, effective and purposeful adult filmmaking.

The fullscreen transfer is effective although clarity levels betray the video origins of the material. Nevertheless, it remains evidence of Thomas’s superior command of film style and grammar.

Film noir is capably evoked in shadowy images, reflections, bars across the screen and a quick, nervous editing style: nicely suggesting a kind of jittery imprisonment in desire. There is much camera movement as the entrapment motifs recur in careful compositions. There is unusual aesthetic variety between sex scenes – from the quick random tableaux of The Zone to the distinction between Kobe Tai’s respective scenes with St. Croix and Davis. The final ménage-a-trios capably emerges as an erotic idyll, a moment of sexual paradise between three equal individuals before the irrepressibly violent side of masculinity proves inescapable. Moments of unsteady slow-motion (a DVD authoring problem?) add a certain surreal perceptual instability within The Zone. There is a realistic squalor to the existence of the criminal elements and comparative elegance in The Zone and in Dyanna’s apartment. The distinction between lifestyles is carried well. Production design is vivid, pace is finely developed and there is a clever use of camera point of view to mediate gender. Hand held camerawork is efficiently when needed. The only drawback in the transfer is the repeatedly appearing and disappearing Vivid logo in a bottom corner.

The sound transfer is an efficient and crisp Dolby Digital stereo although never really rises beyond the functional.

However, it preserves the intent of an adult feature deliberate in aural design as well as visual. The score shows much forethought and is nicely matched to the film’s moods and comparisons, from the nervous electric guitar of the opening sex number to the more techno-chic club music in The Zone, progressing to hard, bluesy electric guitar solos in the outside world. Dialogue often has a hard-boiled quality and St. Croix effectively plays up the dangerous and unpredictable nature of the character. Davis is quietly restrained in comparison and the genuine feeling for Tai carries through within limits. Off-screen sounds are used nicely in the street scenes and in St. Croix’s place, suggesting the busy outside world absent from the more dreamlike Zone. Interestingly, despite the roughness of the sex, there is much more of a sense of interpersonal communication in the individual sex numbers as opposed to the stylized Zone set-pieces. The sounds of sexual congress are apt and appropriate and likewise vary according to the mood director Thomas intends to convey in each scene, progressing to the happy idyll of the rural retreat – itself a nice contrast from the busy off-screen world implied in the city. The final gunshots are used to quite disheartening and cynical effect as a noirish, sadly fatalistic inevitability.

There are numerous special features on offer although only one of them has any remote relevance to the film of The Sex Zone itself.

A “Meet the Girls” section covers some nine performers featured in the film, offering pictures and the personalized portraits typical of adult erotica magazines (measurements, favourite food, birthday and so forth). An interactive “Sex Game” merely offers a preview-like selection of sex scenes from older films apparently shot on very low grade film stock. “Award Winning Sex” contains four extracts from films that have received Adult Video Awards as well as the AVN ceremony announcements preceding those awards – they include Best Supporting Actor for The Show, Tony Tedeschi; Best Supporting Actress Shanna McCullogh in Bobbysox (in a scene with veteran Jamie Gillis); Best Sex Comedy for The Show (and a scene with Christy Canyon); and Best Actor Jamie Gillis for Bobbysox – all from Vivid releases. “Cyber Sex” is a rather silly promotional video for Vivid Interactive, available in hard and soft versions (model with clothes off and model with clothes on) but looking like a sketch from a comedy cable TV show. There are several previews – for Sex (another Paul Thomas film), the Oriental themed Lotus and Sex Player. In addition is a website promotional video for Vivid, featuring the “Vivid girls”. The DVD release also should include a mini-poster of these “Vivid girls”.

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