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Jeff Stryker Does Hard Time
Rating: 2 Stars
Directed by Jeff Stryker, Ronny Mann, and Ross Cannon. Videography by Ross Cannon and Tom Carl. Edited by Stryker Productions and Delta Productions. Music by A. Dodge. Starring Jeff Stryker, Jackson Price, Randy Savino, Brad McGuire, Dante Foxx, Daniel Reed, Kurt Wagner, and Sarabia.
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Since slender blond power bottom Jackson Price is the most accomplished porn pro in Jeff Stryker Does Hard Time, you'll wish he had a more fully developed scene. At least we see him deep-throat Jeff Stryker before a live audience. Preparing to wrap his lips around Stryker's legendary cock, Price glances toward the camera with a look that is funnier, sharper, and more alive than anything in the 90-plus minutes that have preceded it.

Price portrays the star's prison cellmate in Hard Time, a prison-porn stage-performance whatnot patched together by Stryker and his mentor, Powertool director John Travis. (Playwright Sean Michaels, who foolishly thought he'd been hired to write a play, was dismissed.) Hard Time was a hit in West Hollywood; Stryker toured in it for years. Its video stepchild is a quasi-behind-the-scenes exercise in Stryker-worship.

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But Stryker is becoming harder to adore. His waistline has expanded, his voice has thickened, and his face has aged. The stance that used to pass for attitude now looks like torpor. Yet Stryker clings to the shtick that worked for him 15 years ago. When he's serviced by auditionee Randy Savino, about ten minutes pass before he stands and takes off his shirt. Savino gets cast as an inmate Stryker passionlessly rapes in the shower; the scene, which we're shown in performance, is played for comedy. (Viewers who have been raped in prison may not find this a hoot.)

In a later segment, Stryker condescends to let Dante Foxx, who is fucking Kurt Wagner, suck his cock. The one episode where Stryker stays out of the action was shot at Chicago's Man's Country II, where bathhouse patron Brad McGuire tops two dancers. The first of these, Sarabia, has a shaven head, a cute, lewd Ewan McGregor smile, and little discernible talent. Mincing and wiggling in yellow satin hot pants and matching leg warmers, he's like a deranged refugee from Alla Nazimova's Salome. But at least he's alive.