Vivid presents the story of a couple having problems with their marriage, who seek the help of a counselor and become addicted to sex. What is their motivation? What transforms them? What psychiatric principle rocks their world? A bell, yes, the sound of a bell. It’s Vivid’s fresh beauty Jenteal, in a hilarious look at marriage, marriage counselors, and the special time in everyone’s life where the bedroom winds up on the couch. Lift off a Freudian slip, you never know who you’ll find underneath.
Suggestive Behavior is an anachronism, an anomaly, a throw-back to the early ’70s when adult films this good – films, mind you, not videos – came out every other week. It has a witty script based on a clever premise, it’s performed by people who can act and fuck (and are believable while they’re doing either), and it was shot by a cameraman and a director who know what they’re doing. — AVN
Bobby Vitale and Melissa Hill are lovers who are encouraged by Steven St. Croix to seek hypnotherapy to break some bad habits. When the hypnotist leaves the room, hi-jinks ensue. St. Croix tells them both that the next time they hear a bell, they will get horny as hell, and, by the way, Vitale, you’ll pay me that $20 you owe me. What follows is funny, sexy, and credible, and in the end, love conquers all (and Vitale presumably stops handing over double sawbucks to St. Croix).
There are five sex scenes, all involving Hill, Vitale, or both, and not a clunker the bunch. There are two simultaneous scenes in a restaurant (Ding! Orders up!) that are equally hot and funny as Jenteal and Vitale disport themselves in the kitchen while Hill and St. Croix heat up the dining area. These restaurant scenes are highlighted by background noises indicating nobody in the restaurant is paying attention. The sequence is peppered with witty little grace notes like Hill, in an advanced state of bell-induced arousal, pulling a silver vibrator out of her purse. A big one. Or St. Croix, tentatively, almost hitting the bell again as they leave the restaurant.
Jenteal is very funny as a dimwit who won’t shut up. After a three-way with her, Melissa Hill and Monique DeMoan, St. Croix walks up to the three nude women caressing and kissing each other in a post-orgasmic afterglow and asks with mock-innocence, “What are you doing?’
Jenteal replies: “First she ate me out, and she ate her out, and then we fingered each other a little bit, and then we switched, and then I fucked her with the dildo, uh, in the ass, while she fucked her with a dildo in the pussy, and then she ate her out, and then she turned on the vibrator thing… and then we came.” Gracie Allen couldn’t have delivered that line any better.
Cinematographer Ralph Parfait and director Judy Blue serve up well-planned, well-shot, well-edited sex scenes. Particularly noteworthy is a shot-in-a-night-club scene that starts with a tight frontal close-up of Paisley Hunter’s face bruised in Davia Ardell’s cooze, followed by a 3-inch pan to show that Ardell is similarly attached to Vitale. The camera moves ever-so-slightly to show all three, all in focus, all involved in the moment. It’s a beautiful shot, hotter than hell, and tough to execute in the bargain. With nightclub background noises, of course.
Pre-noms to director Judy Blue, cinematographer Ralph Parfait and screenwriter A.J. Barber; Best Couples Sex Scene, Film for the Vitale/Hill finisher; and Best Sex Comedy for the whole shootin’ match.
