Fresh Meat 01

If the new frontier of adult film/video vision were likened to nouvelle cuisine, John Leslie's Fresh Meat 1: A Ghost Story from 1995 isn't so much a revolutionary exercise in the kitchen, as it is a bien cuit of Leslie themes wedded to the unlikeliest of trendy designer sauces. Kind of like putting remoulade on a rump roast and discovering a whole new rhythm of culinary appreciation. Fresh Meat: A Ghost Story is an extension of Leslie's own Laying The Ghost with its malapropos laugh track; Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers from which Leslie usurps its patchwork black & white/colour video/neo-film visual artisanship and, again, an absurdist laugh score; Mad Love for supernatural mood and a great house for spirits to swell; the ever-reliable Chameleons for the ol' girl-into-boy transmogrification trick; Ron Jeremy's hairy butcher-in-an-apron persona from John T. Bone's Depraved Fantasies 3 and Joey Silvera's patented shrapnel-style blank stare. With semiotics thrown entirely out the window, this makes for one cockeyed viewing experience. The cross-gender opening sequence has Tom Byron fluffing his hair and applying lipstick, culminating with his verbal assailants (G.I.'s Steve Austin and Damien Michaels) jerking off, then compliantly killing themselves. Laugh track. At some point during Michaels-Austin's fusillade, Byron's masculine side takes root and he plants it squarely in Eva Flower's lovely, peek-a-boo leather-bedecked ass, practically making it bloom in spring. Laugh track. What part Byron and Flowers play in the subsequent act is anybody's guess, but they're always lurking about. Flowers has a nonsequitor-driven conversation with Silvera while he's pissing in a parking lot. Laugh track. Flowers, later transforms into Byron and gets a streaming wad in the kisser from Jeremy. Laugh track. Silvera, wife Kristi Lynn and anal slave-on-a-leash, Annabelle Dayne, come to live in a house formerly occupied by a butcher reputed to have killed his wife then hung himself in a meat-locker. The question of who's the butcher passes back and forth between Jeremy and Silvera. Laugh track. We do know that Joey's character also likes to jerk off, by way of a bizarre scenario in which a stuttering delivery guy hands him a package of skin mags out-of-the-blue, and a threesome of Jen Teal-Felecia-Kevin Patrick fuck ferociously in front of him without so much a question or a comment. Laugh track. John Dough may or may not be a bad guy in this can of mixed nuts, but we do know that he, Silvera and Jeremy get arrested by Jamie Gillis for blowing their lines (Jeremy protests that he knows his) in a goofy taproom scene that has Dough and Silvera being fed dialogue from a reverse camera angle showing, the film crew much in the same way as the pants falling down gag. No criminal charges filed, however, for Dough's earlier bent over the barstool doggie encounter with lovely brunette Kirsty Waay. Kristy Lynn's early presence in the feature is a kickshaw of bra and panty preening, her copious ass like a wine barrel, begging, pleading and supplicating for the steward to tap its contents. She subsequently gets cork screwed in the butt (spoon position) by Dough's hit men, Mr. Marcos and Julian St. Jox; and gang banged (Marc Wallice doing the anal honors) in a convertible outside said taproom, all to a helicopter sound track. With crickets chirping where there shouldn't be crickets and Joey winding up sticking his head in an oven, Fresh Meat means nothing in the linear or philosophical sense, but strikes home as the epitome of guilty pleasure. Fresh and exuberantly weird, it's an experience of anarchic sexual and cognitive value that will remain like the lingering sensation of a good, succulent prime rib well digested, long after the restaurant's closed. Cast: Joey Silvera, Kristi Lynn, Eva Flowers, Kirsty Waay, Jen Teal, Felecia, Ron Jeremy, Jon Dough, Tom Byron, Annabelle Dayne, Julian St. Jox, Mr. Marcus, Steve Austin, Tony Tedeschi, Marc Wallice, Tom Chapman, Rick Masters, Cosmo, Damiel Michaels, Kevin Patrick, Jamie Gillis (non-sex role)