Raw 41

Ever get invited to a dinner party and have the hosts subject you to their vacation videos? Throw in a few cum-shots and you have Raw 41, the latest in Manuel Ferrara’s no-frills, some-thrills series, which manages to combine underachievement and overindulgence in one patience-trying package. With little to no makeup or lighting, minimal editing and negligible directorial effort, this falls somewhere on the scale of production values between ’80s cable-access TV and The Blair Witch Project. There’s something to be said for porn that presents sex in its unvarnished, gritty essence. But if there’s a price tag attached, it’s probably best to deliver something that doesn’t make the viewer feel like he’s jerking off to department store security footage. As it is, we get Ferrara plowing his way through a quartet of twats as he captures the action on a handheld camera. (That is, when he doesn’t simply prop the camera up on a piece of furniture and hump away at an angle that, frustratingly, obscures the penetration.) To be fair, the cooze that Ferrara fucks with a callous disregard for the viewer’s enjoyment would be pretty top-shelf if the production had made the effort to doll them up in the slightest—Gabbie Carter and her Olympian-grade tits are always a joy to behold, no matter how haphazardly they’re presented. Sure, times are tough and budgets are tight. But why not create a job or two by employing a camera operator and makeup artist? As things stand, Raw 41 is underdone. —P.D.R.