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Loss of Innocence
Rating: 3 Stars
Cadro Films. Produced by Ginetto Di Masolo. Written, photographed, and directed by Steve Cadro. Edited by Fokusz Studio, Budapest. Starring Forro, Bige, Botond, Coleman, Tibor, Szabo Balage, Huba, Jozsef Spec, Gabor Gregor, and Attila.
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In rural Hungary, peasant lad Szabo Balage, a smoldering blond, sits ogling photo spreads in a bodybuilders' magazine. Meanwhile, in Budapest, the men of Balage's dreams are diligently working out in preparation for a bodybuilding competition. Attila, their bulked-up coach, who's like a compact, walking bank vault, announces that the group is to repair to the countryside for fresh air and a special training regimen.

The team piles into a Land Rover and heads for an isolated villa on the green Hungarian prairie. Fueled by country goulash, they exercise. Attila soon introduces an instantly popular "protein program" that requires team members to pair off for sex. When Balage shows up on a donkey, the teammates lift up his blouse and voice their approval. Attila assigns the fortunate Gabor Gregor to introduce Balage to protein training, then joins them for some hands-on supervision. Balage plunges into gay sex like an experienced urban bottom, so his role as a shy boondocks virgin isn't terribly convincing. You won't care.

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For fans of Eastern European muscle gods, Loss of Innocence is essential viewing. There are slackly paced passages in each of the five sex scenes, but at the time he directed Loss of Innocence, Steve Cadro's orchestrations of sex were approaching those of his occasional collaborator Kristen Bjorn (with whom he shared a fondness for no-hands orgasms). The final nine-man orgy is too posed and studied and split into threesies, but it's still an astonishing, celebratory display of male flesh.

The ending feels like a setup for a sequel that we now will never see unless someone else makes it. Cadro, murdered in Budapest on March 21 (The Guide, May 2000, click here), was influenced by colleagues like Bjorn, William Higgins, and George Duroy, but his personal vision accommodated riskier and more imaginative material than those of most of his peers. His death deprives us of one of the most adventurous and sophisticated minds ever to work in gay adult video. Loss of Innocence only hints at Cadro's abilities. As you watch it, the loss that registers most acutely is that of Steve Cadro.