Superman XXX (4 Stars)

This is another masterpiece from the undisputed king of pornography, Axel Braun. Nobody else has done as much to raise pornography from its seedy background to the level of art. This is in spite of the relatively small budgets that he has to work with.

Judging the film as a work of pornography, it's the most erotic and arousing of his films that I've seen so far. Judging it for its story, the plot is more complex than most of his films to date. Judging it as a parody, well, it isn't a parody. As I've pointed out in the past, none of his "porn parodies" qualify as parodies. The word "parody" is only used to exploit the legal loophole that allows parodies to use characters copyrighted by other companies.

The film is based on the 1978 Superman film starring Christopher Reeve, not on the comics. This goes as far as Axel setting his film in the 1970's and dressing the actors accordingly. Eric Masterson even imitates Gene Hackman's portrayal of Lex Luthor wearing a ridiculous wig. In my opinion that was the biggest faux pas of the original film; I'm not aware that Lex ever wore a wig in the comics. My suspicion is that the director (Richard Donner) didn't think that a major role could be played by someone who was bald, so Lex was given hair, and it was only revealed in the final scene that it was a wig. Luckily Eric loses his wig earlier in this film, in the middle of his first sex scene.

It's always worth watching the DVD extras for Axel Braun's films. He gives insight into how he has to work around his small budgets. It was also interesting to see that this was the first time Axel brought his son Richard, now 18, onto the film set. Axel Braun is a second generation director of porn films, having taken over from his father Lasse Braun, and he seems to be encouraging his son to follow in his footsteps. Or at the very least he's showing him that it's an option. The Braun family could become a porn dynasty for many decades to come.

Until now I've never been able to find Axel Braun's films in England and had to order them from America. Now I've discovered an excellent company called Movietyme that specialises in selling American DVDs (Region 1 NTSC) in England. Unlike CD Universe in America they don't stock all of his films, but I'm sure they would be willing to order anything they don't have. They're more expensive than Amazon.uk for "normal" films, but I strongly recommend them to all my English readers who want to buy Mr. Braun's films.