Heatwave, 1999
This, and its second part, English College Co-Eds 2, are supposedly set in Cambridge and there are quite a few exteriors which could well have been filmed there. The idea of students having it away with each other and with their lecturers is a potentially erotic one for us middle-aged porn punters. However, it does require a good bit more realism than we find here for it to succeed in being erotic, and a lot better script, direction and camerawork. It is not enough just to film a few exteriors and say a coupe of lines of dialogue in order to establish context. A bit more effort is needed which I know will cost a bit more money, but not huge sums. I'm not talking about expensive sets and costumes here.
Firstly terminology. I will allow the titles, although female undergraduates and school pupils in Britain are not called co-eds, as these are films made for the American market (though they can't have been very successful - jaded video were selling them very cheaply), but British students do not refer to their accommodation as 'the dorm', especially not in Oxbridge; they call it the hall, the college, their rooms or their digs or possibly their house or flat, depending on their individual circumstances. Since the characters in the film use the word knickers which is not the usual term in America for female underpants why assume Americans understand the one term and not the other.
Secondly casting - this is not the fault of the female cast members, but all bar one are totally miscast. Only Jo Marshall is a believable Oxbridge undergraduate - at least until you get to see her tattoos she could be a Sloane Ranger, to resurrect an outdated bit of slang. I don't wish to be ageist or snobbish here, but Oxbridge admissions tutors may well be both; so the others fail either on age or in terms of background to be credible.
Thirdly the script, if I can dignify it with such a title, and the direction - but I will comment on these as I go through the scenes.
- Dick Nasty finds Nicole smoking a joint and first threatens her with detention then expulsion (from the 'school') - I think the scriptwriter thinks these terms are interchangeable. Is she a schoolgirl or a student at university? She looks like neither, dressed in miniskirt and stockings. If a student, as the whole setting seems to imply, then a lecturer wouldn't turn a hair at finding her so engaged, though I suppose the proctors might (if that is the correct Cambridge term). In any case she persuades him to relent by giving him a blowjob there and then and they go back to a room somewhere - if it's his office what is the bed doing there? - and have sex to anal and facial. A standard sex scene and nothing wrong with that in itself.
- A tubby British brunette, who must, by elimination, be the one called Suzanne ([2]) in the credits, enters the room of a male fellow student (?). They discuss another female student (Nina - see below) and how she goes to lectures wearing short skirts and no knickers. Suzanne says she isn't wearing any either. Incredibly we see no upskirt shots. Was the director asleep? If so I can't blame him as so was I, nearly. Her revelation leads to another standard b/g scene to anal and facial. It is typical of the general incompetence of this video that we hear the voice of the director instructing Suzanne to look at the camera as she takes the facial. Acceptable in gonzo but not in a film which purports to tell a story.
- Cathy [2] and her boyfriend Mark Cremona (a very mature student here) are sitting on a sofa discussing how her history 'teacher' tries to look up her skirt. This proceeds to sex as in the previous two scenes.
- In the only scene which caused any disturbance in my trousers, we see Jo Marshall wandering round town with a middle-aged guy who turns out to be one of her lecturers (realistic even down to his bad teeth). They go back to her rooms and she seduces him. There is a slow build up here, and, though the dialogue could do with some work, she conveys the right atmosphere. This is the most credible casting and the contrast between her respectable middle-class looks and voice and the things she does has an erotic impact (I wish she'd never had those tattoos though). The sex scene goes the same way, but the facial is excellent.
- Nina visits the same chap as in scene 2 and complains to him that her lecturer has been looking up her skirt. He replies that it's not surprising since she doesn't wear knickers. Again there is no upskirt shot! A bit of effort and a few extras hired with the use of something that looked like a classroom and we could have seen the events described. This would have been much more erotic. Even if they were too cheap to do this, there is no excuse for not showing an upskirt view in the room where she is. Another similar sex scene but with the cumshot over her chest (she hasn't really got any breasts, not that I mind that).
- Dick Nasty finds Maya Manson cutting class and peeping on a couple fucking; or so she says, but we don't see it. Again detention is threatened. University students cannot be punished with detention, or indeed can hardly be punished in the conventional sense at all. And no university don would be bothered by a student cutting a lecture. She says she cannot attend detention as she has to meet somebody. He says they must talk about her behaviour; so she says could he come to the 'dorm' after her meeting. There the by now standard sex scene occurs.
If the person who wrote this script or treatment got paid more then the minimum wage equivalent for the five minutes it must have taken him, then he was overpaid by about 100 times. He has all the erotic imagination of a pillar of stone - no, less than that because at least a pillar has a phallic shape. |
