Okay, I admit it, I have a minor Misty Mundae fetish. And I know that the fact she looks kinda like a minor (in diffuse lighting) is the reason why some like her, but I personally think she’s quality female mayhem her for a couple of reasons of my own. I think the 25-year-old is interesting and enigmatic, in an erotic, kinda disturbing way; she can play (with varying degrees of effectiveness) tramplike vampish or slightly crazy or extremely doe-eyed innocent at the drop of a hat, and it’s her latter, much-used, eager-to-be-deflowered virgin riff she plays on in this film.
“Seduction” is part-written and directed by long-term Mundae producer Michael Raso and is loosely based on/inspired by a trio of sexual awakening films from the 70s (“Inga,” “Butterflies” and “Bibi”) by director Joseph Sarno. Misty (using her own pseudonym in the film) goes to visit her older Aunt Inga (Julian Wells) for a week in the country. Wee Misty’s young and sexually innocent and naïve, but her sexuality is coming on her like a dental-dam-burst ecstatic vaginal tsunami and she’s eager to learn about sensual sensibilities and sex and seduction. She loses her cherry to a local teenage boy and then hooks up with the conspiratorial Inga, who gives her a lesson in lesbian lust or two before packing the newly-flesh-awakened 18-year-old off back home with vastly different perspectives on life and love.
Both Mundae and Wells are great in this film. The aching-for-sexperience-and-sexperimentation innocent is the role that Mundae is born to play (as the filmmakers know and exploit) and she’s perfect – and hot as hell – in it. This is actually the best performance I have ever seen her give, and the film is far more serious – and better made – than the usual kitsch Seduction Cinema kitchen sink fare. Melancholic fall-capturing cinematography, with a chiaroscuro of yellow-and-brown leaves on trees, mirror the end of the young virgin’s innocence, and it’s a nice film to look at.
This innocence-wake sexual awakening tale also contains a climactic fireside lesbian love scene that is extremely erotic (think Misty’s face blush-flushed pink and glowing with growing excitement sex-blood and an ecstatic tear spilling from the corner of her firespit orgasm-glazed eye as she comes) where it actually looks like the eponymous actress is having a real orgasm where you can almost smell the sweet sweat and pheromones and p***y. And in the mediocre celluloid climax sea she normally swims in, it’s hard-on raising (if you’re a man, that is) and a joy to watch.
This DVD also comes with a behind-the-scenes featurette featuring the fearsome comic skills of Julian Wells as she reminisces about growing up in Detroit and having Aretha Franklin (who apparently has a ’ghettolicious’ house) as a skanky neighbor. A 1965 blacknwhite strip short is included as a teaser for the Seduction Cinema ‘Taste of Retro’ vintage film series, as are trailers for other modern films of theirs. You get the 60s-sounding film soundtrack by the Pink Delicates on a CD, (sounding oddly like Scottish art-rockers Mogwai and Belle & Sebastian in places – to me, that is), which is contemporary-cum-psychedelic music to deflower virgins to. Also included on the DVD are an interview with and a commentary by director Raso where he waxes cynical about the less-than-thrilling thought of doing a sequel to the moneymaking “SpiderBabe” when he’d rather be doing hot and intimate little films like this one. And when it’s this good…who can blame him? Misty Mundae fans: miss this one at your peril. Enough said.
