First off, every Pure Taboo release has one title, but two short movies that loosely share a theme. That’s confusing, but so it goes. The opening “act” of The Last House on the Right is fine, but not really noteworthy, unless you’re a huge Dillion Harper fan. But the second act is a masterpiece. It opens with Nina (Whitney Wright) and Ashley (Eliza Jane) booking it down the street in school-girl uniforms. They’ve just shoplifted some skimpy clothing and quite nearly got caught. Once they’re far enough away from the scene of the crime, they chitter chatter the way teenagers do: parties, schools, outfits, etc. The dialogue flows naturally, as if we were watching a mumblecore movie by Joe Swanberg or Greta Gerwig. Plus, the white blouses leave us yearning for a peek. They’re not translucent and they’re not low-cut, but my eyes focus and my neck strains trying to catch even just a hint of something. 

The chitter chatter continues, and as foolhardy teens are wont to do, they decide to go check out an abandoned house. One quick admonishment sets the plan in stone: “C’mon, don’t be a pussy.” And to belabor a point I’ve made elsewhere, because this is Pure Taboo, everything about it is done right. The girls are wearing the same uniform, but they have different shoes and backpacks—you know, because they’re different people, with different personal styles. When the pair reach the derelict house, there are no sideways glances and winks at the camera. The hesitant one, Ashley, is still unsure. What we’re watching is peer-pressure in a teen drama. We know this is going to end in sex because we know it’s porn—but that’s the only reason. Willing suspension of disbelief is actually possible. 

After surveying the grounds and more prodding from Nina, they go inside. The two fantasize about how they would renovate it (if they had the dough) and share a cigarette. House parties are dreamed of and Ashley chills out, at least a bit. And then, like in the 1970’s horror movies this porno takes its title from, the teens make one decisively foolish choice. Thinking nobody is home, and nobody’s coming home, the two decide to have themselves a little fashion show with all the lace and lingerie they snatched just before the camera started rolling. “You are the most paranoid person I know,” Ashley tells Nina, just as the latter relents and starts unbuttoning her blouse. 

I won’t fully give it away, but as you may have suspected, our two babe protagonists do not turn out to be the only people interested in this old abode, and the fashion show is interrupted. And again, just like teens in the horror movies this inspired, Ashley and Nina do not handle things with a lot of maturity. Things have gotten real, and the kids are out of their element—it’s just not totally clear how much they realize that. 

Porn is known for “double penetrations,” but this movie features a “double intrusion.” First, there’s the intrusion of the girls onto private property they know nothing about. Then, there’s the male—an adult stranger—who intrudes into the fantasyland the girls created for themselves. Playtime is over. Low-stakes shoplifting and flirtatious faux-runway modeling between friends have flown out the window. And this new world, suddenly thrust upon these two high school seniors, accidentally shows that the two are not so united, not so friendly, and that they want radically different things to come out of this new predicament. 

Like all female friendships, there’s a subterranean ocean of intertwining resentments, battling egos, and toxic dependency. The sex makes this explode. You’d have to re-watch the entirety of The Gilmore Girls to find comparable female-on-female verbal barbarity. And holy shit does that make the sex hot. Whitney Wright is a beauty and one of the best talents in the industry today, but Eliza Jane is not interested in forfeiting the round. A similar dynamic emerges between the characters they play. Nina is the bold one, always leading, always in charge. But Ashley, the sidekick, decides in this primal moment, this moment of danger and opportunity, to not forfeit. She doesn’t want to play second-fiddle to the Queen B, to always receive the “friend of” credit. It’s said that men in porn are just props. In this one, the male is just a tool. Perhaps more precisely, a measuring stick. Something the two girls can use to size one-another up, to evaluate with some objectivity—and if necessary, to the hit the other with. Sex is hottest when it’s heated by a boiling cauldron of emotions, and that bitch’s brew delivers. At no point is there a threesome. There’s a blowjob competition and a sex competition, both in that order and beyond it, with plenty of trash-talk throughout. I won’t give away the ending either, but be sure not to blow your wad early and miss it. 

Last House on the Right isn’t exactly a return to the Golden Age features our parents went to. And it isn’t just a more hardcore version of those features Wicked, Digital Playground, and Vivid pump out. In many ways, it’s gonzo. The sex is shot like a gonzo, and that, for the record is a good thing. Nobody wants all this panning and wide-angle shots and whatever. What Pure Taboo makes is gonzo with a brain. Gonzo with a better set-up than “My Wife Caught Me Assfucking Her Mother,” and with lengthier intros than anything Brazzers blasts off its assembly line. This movie has a solid ten or fifteen minutes of non-sex at the beginning. That’s about perfect. We’re all pretentious liars when we say we wish it was a whole half hour. And just as importantly, once the sex starts, it delivers: it’s rough and nasty, the way porn should be. Finally, once the sex starts, it doesn’t stop. All of these silly parodies insist on little timeouts so everyone can make the lamest jokes conceivable. I don’t want my porn crossbred with the American Pie franchise or some retarded sitcom. Who the fuck would?  

Last House on the Right sets everything so meticulously. We get a plausible plot, real characters, good dialogue, and some atmosphere. The immensely talented team behind this movie gives us all of that in under 20 minutes. And once all of that is as it should be, the sex begins, sex with gagging, sex with slapping, sex with dirty talk. No condoms, no hair so coiffed it doesn’t move, no stupid romantic smiles or whatever. If all you want is “1-2-3 fuck” followed by gapes and toys, there is gonzo that will satisfy you more than Pure Taboo. But until further notice, there’s only one studio making porn that can satisfy both my heads.