Over the years, as a hack reviewer for Razorcake, I’ve had Todd throw a lot at me. Oftentimes it’s been wobbly balloons filled with hot diarrhea, other times it’s been glowing orbs of punk rock ambrosia. Either way, I’ve always tried to be a decent bottom-of-the-order hitter and put the bat on the ball, as they say in baseball, to see what I could muster. Every once in a while I’ve even risked cerebral damage and taken a ball to the bean, just for the sake of the team. If Razorcake had the equivalent of baseball cards, I’d be one of those odd looking guys with an ill-fitting uniform who no one remembers, but who somehow managed to shamble about in the big leagues for a surprising number of years, despite momentous mediocrity. But the important part is: I’ve pretty much seen and heard it all. Or so I thought.
Staying with the already thin baseball analogy, I’d have to say that Little Runaway 2 is something between a knuckleball and a spitball, as pitches go. Maybe even with a little emery board doctoring thrown in for good measure. This one has me standing and looking—like a hapless Brewer at home plate. Now, I’ve seen and heard plenty of things that many folks would consider “pornographic” in my day. For example: I’ve seen most of the DVDs of GG Allin doing his naked, shit-smeared version of Sweating to the Oldies and I’ve listened to things like records of the Nobodys’ joyfully juvenile smut punk. But this is the first time something has come my way review-wise that is “porno” in the big, consensus-reality sense of the word. In other words, it’s not so much one of those “I-can’t-tell-you-exactly-what-pornography-is, but-I-know-it-when-I-see-it” sort of things; this DVD is a known commodity—produced, labeled and sold worldwide as “pornography.” Or more cheerfully known as “adult entertainment.” What that means, pig simple, is that this is a collection of moving pictures of engorged domesticated primate males copulating in various rugged ways with receptive domesticated primate females. It’s the very thing that made Andrea Dworkin a blustery and outspoken androphobe and it’s the sort of stuff that has inspired, in my own hometown, at least one radical feminist to immolate herself in protest in the “adults only” section of a certain big-time magazine store. Have I made myself clear?
The reason I’m beating this to death is because I didn’t think Razorcake usually reviewed this sort of thing. This isn’t something smutty, this is flat-out smut. Whether it’s considered offensive or not is one thing, but this is the stuff that everyone, everyone without exception—from Family Circus creator Bill Keane to John “The Wadd” Holmes —would immediately classify as “porn.” But unlike the porn that your parents enjoy, the people engaged in the fucking and sucking in Little Runaway 2 are dolled up in full punk rock regalia, complete with brightly colored mohawks, red skinhead suspenders, and tattooed schlongs. And as a sort of “garnish” to the visual feast of flesh, there are plenty of punk bands playing along to the slurping and groaning and there’s even a few Neanderthal-style fist fights thrown in for good measure.
So here I am, standing at bat, as it were, and wondering if I really can make something of this chin music that Todd has thrown my way. I mean, it’s been a coon’s age since I’ve even seen a Hustler, such is my life as a hermit, that I can barely remember all the cute porn industry colloquialisms for cum and beavers. In fact, I’m not even sure anymore that they still spell it c-u-m. However you prefer to spell it though, there’s plenty of it in Little Runaway 2; one particularly goopy scene takes place aboard a bus heading to something called “Punk Fest 2007.” One rather fetching young lass finds herself naked amid the busload of grinning goons—who, incidentally, look more like frat boys than punks—and is soon hopelessly entangled in a jungle gym of boners, which ultimately results in her head and upper torso being spackled in gallons of ape paste.
And then it’s a disjointed hop off to yet another fuck fest somewhere else, set to an ever present barrage of ornery, pounding street punk. Though it’s subtitled “a punk rock love story” LR2 has less of a discernable story line than Waiting for Godot. Best I can tell, there’s some sort of on-going grudge match taking pace between the skinheads and a group of clowns dressed up like the gang of ultraviolence droogs from A Clockwork Orange. Beyond that, I can’t make out much of a story. But this is PornoLand, where story lines are about as common as introspective Republicans. And it’s widely accepted as axiomatic that, along with condoms, nothing throws a wet blanket on testosterone-driven barnyard-like fucking more than a stupid story line. So I can hardly fault them for that.
Where I do have a slight problem with Little Runaway 2 is in the brain-frozen, Og the Caveman, pull-the-woman-by-her-hair-back-to-your-cave style with which the gents in the film choose to funnel their sexual energies. Though I am fairly tired of certain punk rock factions chronically presenting themselves as cartoony cavemen covered with the wildly popular 21st century advertising known as “tattoos,” I find myself reaching the state of Absolute Disinterest when that cartooniness takes the form of full-blown, barbaric ego gratification. LR2 is crawling with pushy animalistic jerks who demonstrate their street punk machismo by choking the very woman who is kind enough to service them sexually and in one A Clockwork Orange “milk bar” inspired scene, a misguided Alex Wannabe slaps a sort of jiu-jitsu hold on the attractive girl fellating him and keeps her gagging and impaled on his rigid dong until she regurgitates moloko.
I used to wonder who would ever watch more than one Max Hardcore film and now I think I know. This is ol’ Max all over again except now he’s wearing tattoos and a Skrewdriver shirt instead of a dorky cowboy hat. Fortunately though, as pornos go, it’s not all lost to the snarling erect ape pack and their sexual thuggery, because the women on the DVD are, for the most part, hot exhibitionistic punk girls.
And the soundtrack—as well as the accompanying CD—features plenty of fast, in-your-face working class punk from bands like Bad Samaritans, Killroy, Circle One, Virus Nine, and Politikal Dekline. But at the end of it all, when the mohawks go down and all the spudge is mopped up and everyone puts their punk outfits back on, I’m still left with the somewhat hollow feeling of having just had a window seat looking into the slithering reptilian sex fantasy backwaters of Wattie “Exploited” Buchan’s brain. I know I’m coming harrowingly close to sounding like a prude here, but the simple fact is I like porno as much as the next guy; but for some reason, erect bullies bore me. I know that plenty of “perfectly well adjusted people” out there get their kicks by being on either the doling out or receiving side of rough sex, but as a voyeur, I’m just not all that interested in sex that could be mistaken for a WWE match.
And this has nothing to do with morals or ethics and any of that hooey, because I’m assuming here that all the naked people tangled up together in Little Runaway 2 are consenting adults. So it’s really just a style thing for me. But I should probably shut up before I sound even more like a frigid little old church lady. Look, if you like your pornos Wattie-style, with plenty of “sex and violence”—accompanied by some pretty good thumping punk music—then this might just be the DVD for you. Best I can figure, the key to getting your rocks off on a film like this lies more in having some kind of a sexual-violence fetish than in being into punk rock. A little closet misogyny might help too. In fact, it occurs to me that if O.J. “The Juice” Simpson were reviewing this DVD for Hustler, he’d probably end up giving it a rating of “Fully Erect.” –Aphid Peewit (JM Productions, www.mrfilth.com)