There were sixteen reasons I moved down one spot from Battle of the Stars to Battle of the Stars 2 when the former came up in my random movie picker. Based on the scene breakdowns, the formula looks pretty consistent: two female stars (Kristara Barrington and Heather Wayne) are pitted against one another by pairing them with the same guy (Tom Byron), with each other, and then in two separate small group scenes (Barrigton with Gail Sterling, Don Fernando, and Jonathan Younger; Wayne with Nina Hartley, Fernando, and Jessie Adams).
On paper, that's fine. "Getting to know" movies were nothing new, from the OG Inside Jennifer Welles to Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle, Inside Little Oral Annie, and Centerfold Celebrities and its sequels. And the interest in these productions didn't go away as evidenced by Evil Angel's I Am... movies. In practice, Battle of the Stars 2 is fucking exhausting. Both the sax and piano-heavy jazz background music and Kristara Barrington's incessant porn moaning is non-stop and mixed too loud.
Much of the movie - which, like Centerfold Celebrities was shot on video, so looks pretty shitty - was edited like a trailer, cutting between the two women in flagrante and Tom Byron's talking head answering questions and comparing/contrasting the women. Early on, it feels like a novel choice, when, for instance, he was discussing the differences on how the women liked their nipples treated (which was basically a microcosm of the two women's sex styles: Barrington rough and ready, Wayne demure and seductive). After a bit of that, I kept waiting for the bounce-around editing to mellow out and just focus on the sex, and that just never happened.
Initially it was a relief when director Lawrence T. Coles's voiceover came in signalling a break, saying:
You've seen both the competitors, Heather Wayne and Kristara Barrington, express their sexual personalities with the same man, Tom Byron. Now you, the audience, will see which of the two women's sexual energy is most exciting, most interesting, in an orgiastic situation.
As a director, I found both women became much more lustful, more intense, much more physical. Especially Kristara Barrington, who will I think forever destroy the myth that Oriental women [Ed. note: Ugh.] are frail, delicate, submissive sexual beings.
But then I realized there was still nearly a goddamn half hour of runtime left, and I really didn't know if I'd make it.
At the end of the day, between the two competitors, I'd cast my vote for Kristara Barrington. Her seemingly put on vocalizations were tiring, but she was a lot more charismatic when addressing the camera/director/viewer. Really, the "winners" of the movie were Tom Byron, who came across as the absolute nicest dude, and Nina Hartley, who was responsible for easily the hottest sex.
Let's see how Rimmer possibly justified this as a Collector's Choice:
Using the same sexy, talky, fucky format with many facial and genital close-ups, Cole now gives you two more ladies.... Obviously, [he] has only scrateched the surface of this kind of tape. He should make one for the ladies.
It sounds like Rimmer was so taken by the first that he included the second in hopes of this turning into a long-running series. While Cole only made one more of these, you have to wonder if Rimmer somehow got a bug in Cole's ear considering the movie was subtitled Stud Wars and featured Billy Dee against Peter North, so you could ostensibly say that one was "for the ladies."
Were it better edited, I could maybe see Battle of the Stars 2 creeping up to a CC100, on par with Centerfold Celebrities. Being what it is, I initially thought CC250. Then, I looked at the other entries with CC250 designations and realized I'd rewatch any of them before checking BotS2 again. I considered what these ratings actually mean and realized that if I was scanning a collection of 250 adult films and this was one of them, I'd seriously question the inclusion, so I'm giving this the first CC500.
RANDOM THOUGHTS
° My main thought watching this was, "Jesus Christ, how can 71 minutes seem so long?"
° In the "what's next" on my Skin Flicks review, not knowing what the format of these movies was, I said that if I ever found a version of the first Battle of the Stars with Traci Lords edited out, I might check it out, but that obviously could never work considering it's a Traci Lords vs. Christy Canyon concept.
° It's really too bad that there isn't an alternate timeline where Traci Lords wasn't underage since the rest of the cast of the first movie (Christy Canyon, Mai Lin, Mike Horner, Peter North, Steve Drake) blows the second movie out of the water. (Nina Hartley is in both and is also a national treasure.)
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