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Red, Hot and Safe
Rating: 3 Stars
Video 10/No Ego Productions. Produced by Karen Dior, Mickey Skee, and Ray Stewart. Directed by Sam Abdul, Mike Donner, Karen Dior, Jamie Hendrix, and Wash West. Videography by Stephen Eustace, Ed Maxx, Mark Reed, John Simms, James C. Stark, and Wash West. Edited by Scott Coblio, Dan-O-Rama, Lee Entrada and Kevin Glover at Aries Post; and Stephen Roberts at Spectrum Digital Post. Music by The Bowling Green, Sharon Kane, and Rock Hard. Starring Drew Andrews, Rod Barry, Dino DiMarco, Peter Dixon, Doug Jeffries.
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This unlikely collection brings five distinctly different porn directors from rival studios together to promote safer sex and HIV awareness. Coaxed into being by Karen Dior with the help of Roy Stewart and journalist Mickey Skee, Red, Hot and Safe encompasses five stylistically diverse erotic sketches and a non-sexual introduction by porn god Ken Ryker. The quality varies, but the intentions behind this project are beyond criticism.

In Karen Dior's "Show Me How," Tony West, relieved to learn that his HIV test is negative, asks Dr. Peter Dixon for a condom demonstration. Happy to oblige, Dr. Dixon also shows him some of the uses of latex gloves. The segment is a little too earnestly instructive, but heats up once it begins to show rather than tell. In Sam Abdul's "Web.cum," top man Dino DeMarco meets bottom boy Grant Wood through the Internet; when their routine date includes rimming without a latex barrier, you may wonder what the scene is doing in this anthology.

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The most erotic episode may be Jamie Hendrix's "After Dinner Mint," in which Drew Andrews and Sky Thompson get creative with Andes candies. The artiest, shot to resemble faded '70s porn, is Wash West's "Rubber Is Natural," a fantasy in which condoms almost literally grow on trees. The best piece is arguably the third, "Tony's Sex Adventure" by Mike Donner.

Tony is San Diego writer and activist Tony Valenzuela, who is handsome in a down-to-earth, sweetly accessible way? and HIV-positive. He gives us a lecture on safer sex and HIV transmission while "court jester" Doug Jeffries keeps popping into the frame to offer comments or just revel in his own hamminess. After he and Jeffries finally have sex, Jeffries tells him (and us), "Now go out there and be that little fuck-pig you want to be, but r-e-s-p-e-c-t yourself and others."