Geekscape After Dark presents: Rawhide!
Welcome to Geekscape After Dark, where the porn is always safe for work. In our effort to bring you serious critical analysis of cinema’s true underdog genre – hardcore pornography – we present this inaugural column, a review of Adam & Eve’s Rawhide, winner of the 2004 AVN award for Best Video. Directed by Nicholas Steele, who also helmed Sex Island, Sex Spell, and Sex Magician (that’s three separate films, mind you), this pornographic classic – or, “Pornassic,” if you will – takes western genre conventions and puts a new and romantic spin on them…by adding lots of nudity and sex scenes.
But before we begin the review, people need to be advised of just how many cows are in this movie. No, I’m not using an insulting euphemism for any of the members of Rawhide’s cast. Rawhide is an epic pornographic – or “Pornic” – cowboy romance that takes place on the Torres Ranch in California during the days when people wore cowboy hats. And since the Torres Ranch is, apparently, “the 2nd largest cattle ranch in California” and sells “over a hundred head of cattle every week,” it stands to reason that a film with a decent budget would want some footage of cows to round out their repertoire of exposition shots. Nothing, however, could prepare us for the veritable extravaganza of cows presented over the course of Rawhide’s two hour running time. A small sampling from throughout the film:
Certainly it’s impressive from a production standpoint, but as my girlfriend said,
“They’re really milking those cows.”
Rawhide tells the story of city girl Bianca Torres, returning to the California ranch where she grew up after the tragic death of her father. Old Man Torres left the ranch to Bianca when he died, but she feels like an outcast in her childhood home because of her fine breeding in fancy New York City. She can honor her father’s dream by keeping the highly lucrative ranch and staying loyal to the most innocent and sexually active cowboys in history, or sell it to the greedy old cattle baron and return to her fancy dinners and exciting polo matches and funktastic poetry slams (or whatever else it is city girls do). Old Man Torres’ loyal cattle ranchers try to convince her to stay, but she’s “so confused.” Will Bianca keep on moving, moving, moving, though the ranchers are disapproving? Or will she try to understand them, and perhaps even rope and throw and grab them?
Whether she heads the ranch up or moves on out is a pivotal plot point in Rawhide. In fact, it’s the only plot point. Rawhide’s fascinatingly sparse storyline cleverly focuses on only one external plot, emphasizing instead the interpersonal, even physical, relationships between its cast members. It’s a fascinating device that allows for multiple interpretations of the events in Rawhide, so basically, it’s exactly like the works of David Lynch, but with cows.
At the start of the film, Bianca, played by Carmen Luvana (Jane Bond DD7, Tailgunners) arrives at the ranch with Mei Lee, played by Kaylani Lei (Se7en Deadly Sins, White on Rice), a wise but hot “companion.” Bianca’s voice-over intones “I wonder if the ranch will look as I remember it. What will they think of me now… Now that I am a woman!” She feels out of place, now that she’s “refined.” She arrives to a cold reception from Devon, played by Steven St. Croix (The Bashful Blonde from Beautiful Bendover, The Erotic Ghost Whisperer), who appears to be running things in her father’s absence. He’s worried that Bianca is going to sell the ranch, because she is a city girl and therefore prone to do such things.
Two ranch hands watch Bianca and Mei Lee from afar. Shaun, played by Cheyne Collins (The Boobsville Sex Academy, Double D Detectives), is instantly smitten by Mei Lee, but Leigh, played by Evan Stone, doesn’t like city women. What does he have against city women? “They’re too complicated. Besides, I like to keep things simple.” Keeping things simple isn’t really “besides” the topic of complications, but hey, he’s not one of them fancy city folk. He’s the last person in the world who would fall in love with Bianca! What’s going to happen?!
Bianca confirms Devon’s suspicions that she is thinking of selling the ranch when she tells him that she’s thinking of selling the ranch. This sends Devon into a downward spiral that will carry him throughout the film. Outside, Annie, played by Brooke Ballentyne (the star of Spin the Booty, in an AVN Award-winning performance), rolls a cigarette while wearing pants and strikes a match on, if the sudden sound of maracas is any indication, a nearby rattlesnake. She then twirls her gun… so she’s pretty tough. Any one of those things by itself and audiences might still have thought she was a classy lady, but combine them and you’ve got a tough, independent woman who immediately has lots of sex with Devon when it appears that his masculinity has been threatened. “I appreciate your loyalty. We’ll try to think of something else.” What is Devon’s master plan?
This cigar is just a cigar.
The next day, Leigh bids his lady love, played by Taylor Rain (World Poke Her Tour, The Doctor is In… You), goodbye in a leafy glade. She’s going to the city to be a serious actress, and wants Leigh to come with her, but he won’t leave. The ranch is where he belongs. He tells her to follow her dream, but when she tells him she’s afraid he all-too-quickly assures her, “You can do it on your own. I believe in you,” before having hardcore sex with her and then never seeing her again. Ouch. If Leigh wasn’t the only male character in Rawhide to wear a condom, you’d almost think he was a bad guy.
Meanwhile Shaun shows Mei Lee around the ranch, which consists primarily of pointing to lots of interesting things that are off-camera. Bianca rides to her father’s grave on a grassy hilltop and writes a letter to him in her head: “Dear Papa, I don’t know what to do with this ranch…” But his headstone provides no answers. On her way back she watches Leigh as he shaves the only spot on his neck with no stubble on it, and the seeds of love are born.
Devon and Annie and… some other ranchers, apparently, talk about whether Bianca is going to sell the ranch while looking at more cows. In particular, they really don’t want her to sell to J.R., played by Randy Spears (Erectnophobia, Invasion of the Samurai Sluts from Hell), because he apparently has a habit of running ranches into the ground. It’s an interesting take on the familiar “Railroad Baron” western clichés. Sure he wears a black hat but he’s not a bad person, he’s just a bad rancher. Devon tells the only other woman around for miles that she shouldn’t talk to Bianca because she doesn’t understand how women think, and leaves his crew to think of a plan to prevent Bianca from selling the ranch. While he’s gone, Annie, who appeared for all the world to be Devon’s girl while he was having various kinds of sex with her, has various kinds of sex with another ranch hand after he compliments her stew, insisting admirably and progressively that she’s “no man’s girl.” Devon’s brainstorming session appears to consist of drinking and bitching to Leigh, who says that Bianca is “everything the old man said she was,” which, given their limited contact, can only mean that Old Man Torres told everyone his daughter was bangin’.
That night, Bianca tells Mei Lee that she doesn’t know what to do. Mei Lee offers one of her many words of wisdom – “Destiny is not a matter of chance, it’s a matter of choice” – to help ease the mind of this sensitive and vulnerable young girl… before having hardcore pornographic sex with her. The next day, J.R. arrives with his wife Priscilla, played by Olivia Del Rio (Ferkel 3, Luxsury Nurse) to offer Bianca more than the ranch is worth. But now Bianca says she wants to think about it. J.R. leaves, questioning his abilities as a negotiator. His stagecoach driver suddenly decides to stop in the middle of nowhere, which is serendipitous because J.R. was just about to tell him to stop and take a walk while his wife makes him feel like a big man again, via sex. We never see the stagecoach driver again.
Sex in a carriage = The Five Foot High Club?
Like every other character in Rawhide, Leigh spends most of his conversations with Bianca telling her, “your father was a good man, and this ranch was his dream.” While he tells her that her father was a good man, and that this ranch was his dream, wise Mei Lee tells Shaun that she “can’t really describe” how she feels about him. “Then don’t,” he replies, before having lots and lots of sex with her near the horse corral (the flies are a particularly realistic touch). Mei Lee doesn’t want to leave Shaun and the Torres ranch. “I thought cowboys were supposed to be so tough, but Shaun is nothing like that.” Ouch. It’s a good thing Shaun can’t hear her voice-over, because he’s clearly in love.
Meanwhile, the romance between Bianca and Leigh heats up as he tells her that her father is a good man, and that this ranch was his dream. The Torres ranch holds a party, and the film gets to show off its epic side a bit, with crowds of as many as a dozen or more people filling the frame at the same time. Characters we don’t know fall in love by the sidelines. The sweet side of Rawhide makes an appearance as young lovers fumble over poetry (“I knew from the moment I met you, that nothing in this world could make me wanna live, except for the thought of you… giving me all you could give”) before eventually fornicating near a cow. Another couple comes together to have exuberant sex on some hay bales after discussing what a good man Old Man Torres was, and how this farm was his dream, proving this information’s value to the audience as both a pick up line and a plot point.
Devon ruins the frivolities by revealing the master plan he’s spent the last two days meticulously devising: Drunkenly lashing out at Bianca in public, telling her that she’s “a disgrace to her father’s name.” Bianca runs off crying and Leigh, having barely convinced her that no one would drunkenly lash out at her at this party, runs after her to remind her that her father was a good man, and that this farm was his dream. Then, for the first time, he asks what her dream is, but she doesn’t know. He tells her that he has something to show her tomorrow, that he knows “exactly what she needs.” Bianca doesn’t know what Leigh wants to show her, but Mei Lee thinks she should take a look.
It turns out that what Leigh wanted to show Bianca was a montage of the actors riding horses (near cows) while the hit power ballad “Riding Home” plays in the background. Meanwhile , Devon awakes to find Annie furious that his big plan was to humiliate himself in front of company. He finds solace in May, played by Natalia Wood (E-Love Wanted, The Smother Sisters), who comes up with the solution to all of Devon’s problems: He should tell Bianca what a good man her father was, and how this ranch was his dream! He gratefully has hardcore sex with May by the creek while keeping his shirt and long underwear on, which hardly seems necessary since she was doing the wash anyway.
Bianca asks Leigh to join her for a drink of what appears to be three enormous bottles of hard liquor, but he abstains. Leigh’s love can’t be bought with booze alone. He needs Bianca to… commit. Specifically, a lifelong commitment to fulfilling the dreams of a dead man by keeping the ranch and, therefore, protecting Leigh’s rather lucrative job. Later, Devon finally tells Bianca that her father was a good man, and that this ranch was his dream, only to discover that Bianca’s no longer interested in selling! She’s going to keep all the ranch hands, and ends the film having graphic sex with Leigh on a grassy hilltop that looks suspiciously like where her father was buried and they all live happily ever after.
To make a long story short, the movie is about a protagonist who spends most of the story debating whether or not to fulfill the wishes of their dead father, making Rawhide exactly like Hamlet, but with cows. But that’s a barebones assessment of a plot that begs for further scrutiny. The events of Rawhide are intentionally left unexamined, leaving behind a banquet for hungry film critics (like myself). The easy interpretation is that while Devon wasted time complaining and having his ego stroked, Leigh did what no one else could and emotionally blackmailed Bianca into giving up on her own dreams by seducing her. There’s also plenty of evidence to suggest that Devon’s personal journey was a dark and tormented one off-screen. He suddenly appears for no reason halfway through the film carrying a long rope, looking for all the world like he’s going to get a noose ready, only to stop when May tells him that he’s a good man. Realizing that this ranch is his dream, he decides not to commit either suicide or murder. That’s good drama.
There’s also an argument to be made that Leigh is Bianca’s half-brother. I came up with this idea when I tried to reconcile three contradictory facts: Bianca grew up on the ranch, and Leigh’s been there since the ranch was purchased, but they don’t remember each other? It only makes sense if they were intentionally kept apart, just in case they accidentally fell in love like exactly what happens during the movie. It makes sense. The Torres Ranch is practically a free-love compound. That’s probably why Old Man Torres sent Bianca away to New York in the first place. Leigh, who explicitly mentions that Old Man Torres was “like a father” to him, may not even be aware of the horrifying scandal. When Bianca and Leigh consummate their love on that suspiciously familiar hill at the end of the film, they may, quite literally, be doing so over their father’s dead body.
It’s a period piece, so this part takes a while.
Granted, there are flaws with Rawhide. An anachronistic modern corral is explained away when one of the characters mentions how expensive it is, which is probably true. The future is probably very expensive (what with the inflation and all). But Rawhide is still a handsome production from Adam & Eve Productions that comes in a classy 3-disc DVD set, including director’s commentary, behind the scenes material (including an interesting short documentary of Olivia Del Rio seducing, and then – surprisingly – fornicating with Steven St. Croix on the set), and a copy of the soundtrack for all the fans who wish to relive the romance over and over again on their I-Pods.
To sum up: Rawhide is a Pornassic Pornic Pornestern bearing striking similarities to the works of David Lynch, Francois Truffaut and William Shakespeare, but with cows. If you’ve ever wondered what Unforgiven would have been like with less clothing (and more cows), then I encourage you to move on or, if necessary, head out… to Rawhide!
GEEKSCAPE AFTER DARK ARCHIVES:
