Music Video Distributors presents

Cooking with Porn Stars for the Holidays (2002)

- Colin Malone, Tabitha Stevens

Stars: Ruby, Tabitha Stevens, Nakita Kash, Calli Cox, Colin Malone
Director: Fred Sherman

MPAA Rating: Not Rated for nudity, language
Run Time: 00h:48m:14s
Release Date: 2002-11-26
Genre: late night

Style Grade	Substance Grade	Image Transfer Grade	Audio Transfer Grade	Extras Grade
C+	C	B-	B-	C+

 

DVD Review

Colin Malone: Are your nipples always lactating? Do you ever use your milk in recipes?
Tabitha Stevens: Sometimes I do!

Colin Malone, one-time standup comic, is the grubby host and creator of an L.A.-based cable access show called Colin's Sleazy Friends, where he carefully melds his guest list to include basically just rock stars and adult film actresses. The result, as they say, was low-budget, R-rated lightning in a bottle, and Malone further mined his predilection for female porn stars with the release of the smirky Cooking With Porn Stars Volume I. With the release of this latest installment, a supposedly festive holiday edition, Malone continues the tradition of filming nude porn stars preparing food, in their very own kitchen.

It's odd, voyeuristic, with a dash of a Howard Stern-esque misogynistic tone that would likely make a feminist's head literally explode. As base and morally pointless as something like this is, I have to admit that it is such a truly strange concept that it almost works on some shallow, utterly weird level. Malone is leering and obnoxious much of the time, but his sometime annoying presence is balanced by the alarmingly casual disposition of the women, who parade about nude in the presence of hot ovens and sharp knives.

The three cooking segments on this release feature Nakita Kash and Calli Cox preparing a greenbean casserole and ham (15m:05s), Tabitha Stevens baking Christmas cookies (15m:05s), and Ruby dishing up Cajun jambalaya and "talk dirty to me" rice (12m:47s), in between visits to a shower and a hot tub, that is. Strangely, it seems that the women are sincerely interested in showing how to prepare a meal, despite being nude while being groped and prodded at by Malone.

The Village Voice called the first Cooking with Porn Stars "f***ing brilliant", and while I won't quite go that far, I will fess up to finding the whole premise both inanely clever and oafishly prurient.

If nothing else, the title of this one alone will liven up your DVD shelf.

Rating for Style: C+
Rating for Substance: C

 

Image Transfer

	One
Aspect Ratio	1.33:1 - Full Frame
Original Aspect Ratio	yes
Anamorphic	no

Image Transfer Review: Presented in 1.33:1 full-frame, the quality of this release is marginal and similar to what you might expect from a low-budget production using inexpensive equipment. Sure, there's a lot of flesh paraded about here, though the fleshtone levels aren't especially deep.

More than adequate for the material presented.

Image Transfer Grade: B-
 

Audio Transfer

	Language	Remote Access
PCM	English	no

Audio Transfer Review: The PCM audio transfer is relatively clean, sounding not much better than what you might expect from what is essentially a show shot on hand held video equipment. Sound quality is in line with anybody's own home movies, and though just about all of the dialogue is clear, the acoustics of a given room result in an occasional hollowness.

With all the skin on display here, sound quality should be the least of your concerns.

Audio Transfer Grade: B- 

Disc Extras

Static menu with music
Scene Access with 5 cues and remote access
2 Other Trailer(s) featuring Cooking With Porn Stars Volume I, Colin's Sleazy Friends: Raw and Extreme
Packaging: Amaray
Picture Disc
1 Disc
1-Sided disc(s)
Layers: single

Extras Review: It's hard to tell where the extras start and the regular programming ends on this one, but from what I can gather a photo gallery of 9 images and a couple of trailers are about it. Nakita Kash does a striptease in her kitchen (03m:27s), and the trailer for Cooking With Porn Stars Volume I is notable for an appearance by former Playboy playmate turned adult film star Teri Weigel. Weigel covers her breasts with fudge brownie batter and allows host Colin Malone to remove it with his tongue. That's classy stuff, eh?

Extras Grade: C+
 

Final Comments

I don't know what it says about me as a person, but there is something really funny about Cooking with Porn Stars for the Holidays. Maybe it's simply the laughable title, maybe it's the brazenly flaunted nudity, or quite possibly it's just the leering juvenile approach taken by host Colin Malone.

Substance-wise, we all know there isn't a whole lot here, but there is something divinely surreal about watching nude adult film stars preparing meals, all the while being prodded by inane innuendos from Malone, a host with the testosterone-fueled subtlety of a drunken frat boy.

It's worth a rental for cheap, tawdry laughs.

Rich Rosell 2002-11-26