Miles' Rating:

Starring: We've been in "Ginger's Sex Asylum", and watched Jerry Butler prance in high heels in "Mad About You" but those sex asylum were little more than background for gonzo wall-to-wall boning. Robert McCallum's "Crazy with the Heat," though slim on plot, is one of the best of its kind thanks to solid performances, especially Joanna Storm, and some smashing sex scenes.

This intimate film, shot in and around a mansion doubling for the "Del Mar Sexual Asylum" actually benefits from its limitations. Well shot on film, it enables us to get close to patient Storm, a computer expert crippled by searing sexual compulsions.

Raw and pounding. Though the "illness" on display may sound silly on paper, Storm and fellow patients Renee Summers (seen briefly), Steve Drake, and Shanna McCullough play their psychoses without hamminess or buffoonery. Joanna is especially genuine. She masturbates with intensity, devours her prey during oral scenes, and humps like an animal.

While storm is the star, her fulstered hubby, Eric Edwards, has a surprisingly simple, but steamy poolside scene with stelly Tamara Longley, which reveals Edward's own sexual problems. But the film belongs to Joanna, whether joining Drake and Shanna for a ripping threesome, or satisfying a grotesque but believably psychotic Ron Jeremy (with spikey hair).

Tantala, never an attractive performer, plays the gatekeeper with a silly phone device that keeps her patients' libidos in check. They did not need such goofiness.

A 9. It's among the best of its kind.

Posted By Miles, www.excaliburfilms.com | 10/12/06 1:58 PM