Joannie Pneumatic

Hall of fame actor Herschel Savage tried his hand at occasionally directing videos, with "The Maddams Family" his best effort, and this final attempt is not very good (a Cash Markman script seals that fate) but does have a warm and fuzzy ending I was glad to witness. So many comparable junkers from 20 years back hardly merit sitting through in their entirety.

Selena (Gina Everett, and misspelled here as "Selina") gives a very effective performance (mainstream grade) as the title heroine, her name lifted by Markman from the famous Keanu Reeves movie but nothing else resembling parody. She's introduced as an ultra-butch styled foreman of a construction crew, with pals Vince Vouyer and Dave Hardman. Weak story premise has them hoping to get a construction job at a research facility run by Steve Drake and Nicole London, but Selena gets appropriated by Drake as a guinea pig for his current experiment.

He's developed a microchip that can theoretically cause a normal woman to become a raging nymphomaniac when implanted in the brain, as lame an excuse for a porno plot as the prolific but untalented Markman/Marc Cushman could have thought up on the spot. Previously fellow scientist Dr. Armstrong (John Decker) experimented on himself, and he's stuck in a padded cell masturbating all day as a result.

Crux of the feature's worth comes from the sentimental yet heart-warming in XXX context (it would be way too soggy if by some bizarro world instance one of Cash's 1,000-plus scripts had been accepted for mainstream filming) twist that during the implant operation Drake suffers a crisis of conscience and doesn't cut Selena open. Instead the pretense that he's made her over with the chip works as a placebo, and she suddenly becomes an extremely feminine woman, beautiful and irresistible both to wannabe boyfriend Vouyer as well as scientist Drake too, leading to a happy ending.

Problem with this twist, which has to be laid at Markman's doorstep, is that even though the entire video depends upon it, there is no logical connection that Selena's character Joannie would get the message. She's put under anesthesia and wakes up after the "operation" but why did she suddenly become so changed? The placebo effect implied here needs some justification beyond Cash and his director Savage simply telling us that's what's happening.

Sex scenes are dynamic, including throwing in a lesbian tryst for Nicole with uber-busty nurse Davia Ardell, which shows up her amazing frontage and extreme tan lines. It's great to see Nicole London in action, too, as mostly I keep finding her listed merely as production manager or producer as I wade through these older videos. And Drake, clearly an underrated performer from Adult Cinema in the period following the Golden Age (post-1983) is endearing as the guy who cares.