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Brotherhood
Rating: 4 Stars
Produce by Tom Settle. Written and directed by Jerry Douglas. Videography by Max Phillips and Colby Taylor. Edited by Max Phillips. Music by Rock Hard. Starring Danny Roddick, Jan Fischer, Dean Phoenix, Jorden Michaels, Dallas Reeves, Trey Casteel, Kevin Armstrong, Tory Mason, Sebastian Rivers, Kurt Wild, and Justin Burkshire.
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Danny Roddick died on September 13, 2007, of an apparent drug overdose. The 31-year-old star, whose real name was Matthew Freitas, owed his professional name to his resemblance to tennis star Andy Roddick. Signed by Colt Studio Group as a Buckshot exclusive in 2005, he appeared in only five Colt features, beginning with Hard Studies (2005). His final project was AMG's two-part Amazonia: Capture and Release. In The Guide's four-star review of Colt/Buckshot's Boot Black Blues (2006) this reviewer noted that among the production's high-caliber cast, "the spotlight belongs to Roddick, who holds it with ease."

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With the aid of director Jerry Douglas, Roddick also holds the spotlight in Brotherhood, his last Colt / Buckshot assignment. This slightly nutty story-driven lark is set in a college frat house, an environment Douglas describes as "rarely homosexual but always homoerotic." Roddick plays a fraternity brother being blackmailed by someone threatening to expose his extracurricular work as a gay porn model. (It's how he pays his tuition.) The fraternity, however, is called Tri-Chi, XXX in Greek letters, inspiring Roddick to make sure those letters are richly deserved.

The plot involves Roddick's efforts to disarm the blackmailer by having sex with every one of his XXX brothers. Douglas's storyline is demented, but Brotherhood works as a happily smutty, diabolically savvy send-up of hypocritical attitudes toward porn within the gay community. Here the hypocrites include a pair of frat boys (Justin Burkshire and Kurt Wild) who are literally and incestuously brothers. The sex scenes are first-rate, beginning with Roddick's seduction of four horned-up returnees from a prom -- using porn, of course, as an icebreaker -- and ending with an 11-man game of "jockstrap football." Standouts in the cast include Jorden Michaels as a prissy nerd whose inner lewdness comes popping out in a three-way with the incestuous brothers; Jan Fischer as a foreign student who is Roddick's chief confidante; and Dean Phoenix, who has expanded his sexual repertoire in startling ways. But Brotherhood is a Danny Roddick vehicle all the way, and an abundant illustration of why he will be missed.