Hard Up a review by Onan the Vulgarian Best of Phoenix Alternative Video Reviewer

	Cast: Jean Val Jean, Jason Crew, John Marcus, Josh Carter, Justin Wells, Mark Hansford, Park Wiley. Directed by Jim Steele for HIS Video.
	Wholesale inquiries, 800-421-2386. Mail-order, 877-325-6464.
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Jim Steele's Hard Up gets high marks for visual style, and especially for the sex that accompanies the opening credits, in which characters who appear to be extraterrestrials from Close Encounters of the Third Kind materialize out of a blue haze and coalesce into Jason Crew and Mark Hansford, complete with virtual reality glasses. It's not a complete sex scene, but it'll sure get your attention for what follows.
    That would be Jason force-feeding Mark his cock. Jason's chrome yellow jock strap and the red sofa they're on complete the primary color theme that stared with the blue haze. Jason returns the blow job briefly — so briefly that you wonder if the disc skipped a track when suddenly cum begins spewing out of Hansford. No matter, Jason still fucks him, missionary and doggie, working up a dripping sweat and abetted by good camera shots from beneath.
    Deliberately jittery camera movements and the shadow of an enormous industrial fan add mood to the next scene, which also uses primary colors sparingly to add accents to a set that's mostly gray and black. Park Wiley rolls a pair of dice, and I guess he wins because he gets Justin Wells. Park starts by giving Justin a tongue bath and neither of them seems in any particular hurry to get naked. Mutual blow jobs follow, and Justin sits on Park's face for a while before fucking him in a position halfway between spoons and missionary. Park's high velocity, maximum dispersion ejaculation leaves the set looking much as if it were sprayed by bullets.
    The next scene, which is oral only, starts with more visual effects involving shadows, silhouettes and tricks of the light. Park and Jason are sitting butt-to-butt in a steam room, jerking each other off in the haze. Stroking leads to kissing leads to sucking, with Park effortlessly swallowing everything Jason has to feed him, then letting Jason take a turn sucking him to climax while shooting his own load onto the tile floor.
    Cover model Jean Val Jean pouts and smolders and blows smoke at the camera from behind his mirrored sunglasses. His tryst with Josh Carter is much like the scene he had with Brad Benton in Steele's previous film, The Devil Inside. Which is to say, he looks pretty, he lets his costar suck him, then he fucks him while remaining aloof and emotionally remote. Val Jean leaves his tux shirt and jacket on for the first half of the fuck, but the editor gets sloppy when Jean undresses completely because for the rest of the scenes he is alternately naked and half-dressed.
    Wells returns for a game of pool with John Marcus in the final scene, where pastel pink and blue lighting effects provide the color for a set that's essentially white. They use the pool table for a fucking platform. Marcus has been making porn for two decades and he still keeps himself in terrific shape. The foreplay has a Greco-Roman feeling — not wrestling so much as lots of body contact on top of the kissing, sucking and rimming. Their appetites are voracious and the camera wisely keeps its distance so that you can see the interplay of limbs and muscles as well as the contrast of smooth (Wells) and furry (Marcus). Marcus ejaculates before they fuck, then they fuck each other.
    Steele and his cameraman excel at showing off their models; there's hardly an unflattering shot. Jason Crew practically glows, the ever-dependable Park Wiley is larger than life and Justin Wells is as sensuous as I've ever seen him.
    The DVD has a "Star Index" (fetish menus), production diary, slide show, trailers and a Web link.

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