Taboo VII: The Wild and the Innocent (1989) Online

Contrary to mistaken assumptions (as in the IMDb reviews for Taboo V), this later entry in the series was shot on film like the originals, and well-directed by the series originator Kirdy Stevens. Its problem is that it strayed from the Prime Directive: it's not about incest.

So in that sense this is TABOO VII in name only. It's really a stand-alone sex movie about poet/author Ben Brookfield, hammily played in winning fashion by Randy West. After a bevy of beautiful fans accost him at a book signing, West actually breaks out in song, doing a low-budget production number titled "Return to Romance", in homage to his best-selling tome. Later on West plays guitar and sings a folk ballad quite skilfully.

A rather awkward structure has most of the film unfolding in flashback, limning West's adventures six years before at a retreat called the Whitestone Institute. He's the poet in residence, apparently invited to counter the bad influence of Herschel Savage, who is a foul-mouthed would-be Beat poet who annoys the other artists there. Saundra Jo is a shy, unattainable girl (whose seduction becomes Goal #1 for all the studs), while Suzannah French is an uninhibited artist whose idea of body painting is to throw water balloons filled with paint at everybody, especially her models.

This flashback material is occasioned by West bumping into lost love Lisa Thatcher at the bookstore. Six years back she's the resident sculptress at Whitestone, who dreams of getting down with West (cueing the film's trite and predictable finish).

This nonsense is well-staged by Kirdy, though the film's obscurity attests to the fact that the fans wanted more incest under the TABOO rubric. Stealing the film is my all-time favorite loops star Kitty Shayne, who portrays Miss Wiggins, wife of a money-bags benefactor of the institute. She services West in a back-lit (by sunlight) sex scene that is a marvel of porn cinematography, ending with a money shot on her famous chest that is a classic.

Elsewhere, Kirdy includes a lot of silly material, such as scoring a sex scene to Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", and an endless group-sex sequence featuring many guest stars (including Jesse Adams) staged by French for one of her weird tableaux.

Lisa Thatcher is quite alluring opposite West -the epitome of the underage porn girl, though styled a bit older here. The running gag of Jamie Gillis humping Mai Lin non-stop goes nowhere.