Women on Fire

The poorly-titled "Women on Fire" is an enigma: a nondescript porn feature that has several odd elements that piqued my interest, but ends up being poor. The director credit as "Akira Honda", sort of paying homage to the high (Kurosawa) and low (Godzilla creator) of Japanese cinema, hints at its mediocrity.

It opens with a sex scene: no dialogue or set-up, just Kaitlyn Ashley being humped by Jonathan Morgan. Apres sex they start bickering and screaming at each other, with lousy music playing too loud on the soundtrack. It ends up with a break-up, two incompatible people ending a two-year relationship. The fact that subsequent scenes are similarly confrontational with screamed dialogue and non-stop annoying music signaled a very bad movie in store.

But things settled down, and a less than scintillating story emerged: Morgan as a cop along with partners on the job Steve Austin and Melissa Monet (in her first porn role according to MM, though it wasn't released till a year later). They're hunting for a mad bomber, and unfortunately the suspense is prematurely removed by a short scene that identifies the bomber putting together a dynamite bomb early in the show.

Completing the cast are Kaitlyn's girlfriends Tera Hart and Chanel plus Marc Wallice. Wallice shows up late in the show at night out of nowhere, sitting down on a park bench next to Kaitlyn. They engage in a conversation made up solely of philosophical cliches, soon sounding like a satire of such a scene as if written for a film class to be stimulate a critical discussion. For porn purposes it sets them up for a sex scene instead.

Finale has a stand-off at gunpoint between Morgan and the bomber after he finally figures out who it is. The bomber gets to scream a final rant of a monologue, after which he gives himself up with a whimper. Happy ending for reunited Morgan and Kaitlyn boringly follows, with an orchestral score right out of a Ken Russell movie suddenly crescendoing on the soundtrack.

I'll never know what the real point of this movie was, as it seems at times so clunky, at other moments aspiring toward competence, and often mocking cliches and audience expectations. The only real clue here is that posters for "The Arrangement" (Kazan) and "Kotch" (Jack Lemmon's only movie as director) are displayed on walls, obscure choices perhaps hinting at a film student stuck writing and directing a lowly porn movie.