"Crave" is not a noun, but as the title of a porn film it works. It has the right connotations of need and desperation with a bit of a Stephen King feel. Planned as a trilogy, The Crave is a vehicle for Tom Bradford to flex his filmmaking muscle, and he does it brilliantly.

There is no plot or scripted dialog. The nonstop sex takes place in a fantastical space that must be a film set, because there is no sex club named in the credits. This enormous space is a Pan's Labyrinth of places to hook up and indulge in one's darkest or wildest or most psychedelic fantasies, as long as they don't require lakes or waterfalls or forests. Many of the models even speak English when they can't resist saying things like "fuck me," or "harder" or "that feels good."

In each of the four scenes in Volume 1, a twosome becomes a three-way; in the final scene a fourth man arrives. Eric Flower and Daniel Nicolaus are the first men we see, and they are joined by Roberto Giorgio. What's interesting about this scene is that everyone is versatile and there is lots of rimming. The same is true of the next scene, in which Norbert Somlay and Tamas Eszterhazy pick up Sam Ballack.

Scene #3 offers a change of pace. Ivan Cseska and Jason Carrigan are joined by Adam Gervay. Jason shoots his load during the sucking and rimming, and leaves the set. Adam and Ivan remain to fuck each other. The sight of young Adam Gervay lying on his side, every muscle in his body rippling while he gets rammed from behind by Ivan, is almost guaranteed to make viewers squirt.

Eric Flower returns with Jeremy Shelton for the last scene. They have already progressed beyond mutual sucking to Jeremy fucking Eric when Eszterhazy and Ballack clomp down the stairs to join them. With new cocks to suck, they revert to oral, then change partners, with Eric fucking Sam and Jeremy fucking Tamas.

Volume 2 has three two-man scenes followed by an eight-man orgy. If your proclivities include tea-room sex, join Lucas Rodriguez and Rob Nelson in the graffiti-covered men's room, where a wooden trunk is provided so that guys don’t have to fuck on the cum-splattered floor. DVD cover model Nelson bottoms.

Adam Gervay and Tony Magera connect in a sleazier men's room, which has an old-fashioned tile-lined trough for a urinal. I haven't seen Magera for a couple of years, and he looks as good now as he did then. He and Adam spend a lot of time proudly stroking their boners. They kiss, take their shirts off and play with each other's nipples until eventually one of them drops to his knees. This lav provides a chair instead of a trunk, and they use it for a flip-flop fuck with lots of ancillary ass eating.

Adrian Floris is wandering through a maze of rope, barbed wire and discarded metal and glass when Alexander Ramirez (Alex Fuerte) emerges from behind an iron gate. Adrian's long hair and tightly laced leather pants reminded me of Peter Berlin. A large wooden barrel of the type that's used to age wine provides the focal point for their tryst, which involves some limber athleticism, the possibility of getting tangled in the barbed wire and some serious ass play that one point looks like Ramirez is going to tear Floris' buttocks in half. Ramirez is such an aggressive top and Floris such a needy bottom that it was a complete surprise to see them switch roles so Floris could fuck Ramirez.

The final jail cell orgy begins with a single model, Kevin Cage, who over the course of the next hour is joined by seven more men, one at a time: Rick Bauer, Norbert Somlay, Marco Hansom, Glen Santoro, Junior Brasil, Scott Branch and Antonio Moreno. There's nothing lacking in this scene that an orgy should have, including the culminating D.P. of Branch (aka Gabriel Thorsten, Helmut Muller) by Cage and Bauer with everyone circled around jacking off. The orgy also has a tongue-in-cheek oral gang bang in which Santoro positions himself on a table and every takes turns sucking him.

The Crave is a magnificent piece of filmmaking. Every model convincingly craves cock and the rampant carnality takes on mythic proportions. No matter what your taste in men (not twinks), there's a guy here for you. The art direction is stupendous. I have remarked more than once in the past that Bradford has a particular talent for matching music with action and mood, and he excels himself in The Crave, whether he's adding low-key Darth Vader-like breathing effects in the background or a score that suggests human voices trying to emulate bumblebees (think of the György Ligeti requiem used on the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey).

Each volume of The Crave is approximately 2 ½ hours long, not including extras. The DVDs have exclusive trailers, photo galleries, behind the scenes, cumshots, butt shots.

posted Nov. 24, 2007