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Sex, Secrets, & Betrayals (2000)

Maggie (Nikki Fritz) tries to settle gambling debt to a disreputable gangster, Carl (Dan Anderson) by offering her body for a period!



Adult Content and nudity

 90s / early 2000s softcore had fans jokingly discussing how these late night [PPV]  movies were basically moving parts [adult performers] tied together with one 2 minute and thirty second sex scene after another. Whip any kind of reasoning up for two beautiful people (enhanced by surgery, dieting, and lengthy gym stays) to form a sexual union of bodies intertwined in coitus...that seemed to be how movies in the genre were defined. I like to watch a film from this era from time to time because I loved the women working in the genre at the time. Considering softcore is on the outs, clearly fading into extinction, revisiting some of the oldies reminds me that often the critique mentioned is rather accurate.


Preferably I like the psychology of what initiates the sex scene rather than just throwing together the bare minimum of characters and a skeletal outline for which they exist just so they can hook up and split up. Sex, Secrets & Betrayals (2000) is one of Nikki Fritz's perhaps most notorious skin flix. She is maybe best remembered for the show Nightcap and as a stripper in Liman's Go. Many of us erotica night owls knew her significantly from a busy schedule working softcore from about '95 - 2005. Her trademark hair whip is a signature move that drives many of us wild. In S,S & B she stars as a concerned squeeze to a lover indebted to a gangster (Dan Anderson; he was the male prop in a ton of these movies) for gambling dues owed and unpaid. Broken fingers are enough to spark Fritz into action, offering her body in exchange for her man's assured well being! Dan's Carl has an offer he can't resist. So for a period of time he has keys to Fritz' "domain" and her man is spared any more punishment.

Depraved as the plot is, what ultimately fascinated me was how Fritz plays her Maggie during the sex slave contract coordinated with Carl. She doesn't convey a tormented soul, a woman enduring a humiliating trial with her body offered up as riches to plunder. Instead her expressions seem to indicate something else entirely. Submission and acknowledgement that sex with Carl seems to be not all too bad. Oh when returning to her man, Maggie shows a bother with the situation she's put in, but that doesn't necessarily translate on screen when her and Carl are going at it. She even seems to enjoy disrobing for Carl and when he pulls off her shirt during supper before the two could finish their meal there isn't a sign of discomfort or annoyance...she seems all for it. Then there she winds up on the table with her legs in the air, feet clutched to Carl's chest as he has his way with her without any resistance. An earlier scene has Fritz on top, with her hands in Carl's, the two moaning in approval of how successful the arrangement seems to be for all parties... except the prick whose gambling debt initiated all this.

There's lots of two minute sex scenes and Fritz adheres to the expectations of what her role entails. Her body is an object of interest throughout. Too bad her mind and personality took a back seat to what her naked flesh offered to the men in her orbit.

I can just imagine if these movies actually turned a plot on its head more back in this time and didn't go in the expected direction of Carl eventually getting arrested (underrated softcore actress Angela Davies is a cop undercover "urging" Maggie to dig up dirt on him as evidence to convict him) and Maggie returning to her man with them living happily ever after...until the next gambling debt and Mr Moneybags she'll have to satisfy. What if Maggie liked the current arrangement and had decided to ditch the gambler for the gangster? A closing sequence where Carl and Maggie embrace and lose themselves in a fog of loveless fucking where what seemed temporary ends up permanent...that is the stuff of decadence indeed!

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