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Ultimate Guide to Adult Videos: A Book Review
by Shayla Pandava So you want to start watching porn, but are afraid to ask? Violet Blue's Ultimate Guide to Adult Videos will start you off in the privacy of your home. If you're shy, the book will smooth out your online shopping (Blue tells you exactly where to go in her appendix). But with this book under your belt, you'll also be able to waltz boldly into a porn store and browse with confidence. First of all, Blue, who sold and reviewed porn videos for years before writing this book, divides the porn world into bite-sized views, devoting a chapter to each of several main types of porn. In one chapter Blue tells us about "film features" which are like movies you may see at the theater, but with lots of hot sex added. In another chapter she discusses "porn classics" from back in the day when porn was experimental and, by necessity, recorded on film. Successively, Blue devotes a chapter to the all-sex (no plot) and gonzo video, to S/M features, to lesbian/gay porn, to educational sex films. Each chapter has an intro that tells us what to expect from that genre, the crests and the troughs, and then goes on to list and describe, by title, several notable videos in the genre.

In spite of the fact that she's written a so-called "Ultimate Guide," Blue admits that in the end you have to do a lot of trial and error to finally get to where you can buy something and be pretty confident ahead of time that you're going to like it. This is probably due to the fact that everyone's sexual wiring is really custom-designed. And Blue's thesis is that the Southern Cali porn ideal is like no real person's out there. We like it, she seems to say, IN SPITE of its aesthetic.

One of the best things about the guide is that Blue takes you through the porn world by production house or director, so that you can get a good feel for how porn changes through the eye of the beholder. It clearly gives you the sense of different styles. And this can help narrow your search incredibly. For example Libido Films are made by a male/female team, feature all kinds of raunchy sex and fairly good production values. Here's what Blue says about Libido's Edge Play:

"The feature opens with an explosive female masturbation/female ejaculation onto the windshield of a parked, waiting limo in a dirty underground parking lot. And if that doesn't get your attention, the rest of the film will. A couple specializes in making the erotic fantasies of wealthy women come true and the fantasies are intense, outrageous, and hot as hell."

The Ultimate Guide takes into consideration the many changes in the porn market over the years, especially the fact that a lot of women are now consumers of porn and women (often former female porn stars), more than ever before, are behind the cameras and the production companies.

The Guide has a wise-ass rating system with icons that show up next to the film title. For example, an icon looking a lot like a pair of breasts means "Unsightly boob job. One (or more) of the actresses have obviously fake breasts. You may see visible scars, rippling under the skin, unrounded shapes, or 'frozen' breasts."

Eeewww.

Blue's book assures readers that in spite of this "unrealistic" look of the actors that everyone complains about, you can find hot, hot things that really turn you on, whether it be steamy plots, or wall-to-wall sex; raw, real-TV video production or slick filming. It also lets women know that there's something in porn for them; that porn can be a couple's play toy, just like any vibrator or dildo.

For the porn aficionado -- and many of you here on AFF will fall in to this range -- Blue's earlier sections on how couples can use porn or on the wonders of the DVD for replaying your favorite video bits, will be old news. But the little tidbits about specialty porn and how to find it will fill in gaps: she discusses the relatively few movies that feature men actually coming inside women and the companies that specialize in real female orgasms. And she offers stray inside facts, like "real lesbian films almost always feature real-life lovers," that should enhance any treasure trove of porn trivia.

Blue's overall view is nicely balanced -- the guide is there to help people find what they want to see -- and she scopes out the titillation value in every hidden corner of the porn world. The book also includes little insider info-boxes about porn legends (Traci Lords to Nina Hartley) or about porn phenomena (Defiant Productions (ooh yeah) to Snoop Dogg). One of the funniest boxes is simply the one listing some of Blue's favorite porn titles -- here are some prizewinners: Moulin Splooge, Honey I Blew Everybody, Saturday Night Beaver, and -- ta da -- Shaving Ryan's Privates.

The expository portion of the book ends on a "don't try this at home" note with a chapter about safety and reality versus what you see in porn flicks. Complete with STD transmission charts, this chapter is not pretty. After all that excitement, you're ready for a whole chapter on terminology, which follows, and a chapter on resources: a whole pornucopia of web sites and addresses that include sexologists, erotic writers, and porn rental purveyors. Though it's the type of guide that will need to be updated pretty regularly (this is a 2003 release), most of the resources and titles are still topical.