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South Beach Heat
Rating: 2 Stars
Produced by Philip St. John and Thom Terraf. Written and directed by Philip St. John. Videography by Drew Warner and Philip St. John. Edited by Andrew Rosen. Music by Rock Hard. Starring Alec Powers, Tony Cummings, Dino DiMarco, J.T. Sloan, Tyler Gray, Tony Brandon, Michael Chads, Antonio De Marco, Dax Kelly, Paul Morgan, Michael Rivera, Hunter Ash, and Scott York.
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"Andy had a long, hard trip to South Beach," drones the off-screen narrator. "From what I hear, he really lost it in San Diego. Then he kind of blew it again in Chicago, but by the time he got to South Beach, he was looking good...." Andy, of course, is spree killer Andrew Cunanan. As portrayed by Tony Reno, he's a buffed, expressionless, round-faced, attitude-filled stud with a flawless caramel complexion. He often has his nose in a book, but he's less a person than a traveling muscle exhibit. Nevertheless, as the narrator so delicately notes, "We all grabbed onto his story like a fat long dick we shoved down our throat for weeks."

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South Beach Heat is pretty to look at, and writer/director Philip St. John deserves points for audacity. But the editing is diffuse-- it's especially incoherent in the opening sex-club orgy and the closing Santerian dream sequence. You may feel invited into the action, then shut out of it a moment later. Editor Andrew Rosen, a skilled technician, probably did the best he could with what he had. Given its creepy implications, the story line could have been stronger. The narrator, blandly represented onscreen by Dax Kelly, is something of an airhead.

St. John goes for outrageousness here and there, with some cast members wallowing in paint at a White Party-related art opening. (If you find the sight of yellow paint squirting out of a man's asshole unappetizing, you're not alone.) But the one truly startling sequence, skirting the edges of pure tastelessness, is based on Andrew Cunanan's suicide. As police sirens wail in the distance, Andy kisses his mirrored reflection, jerks off into the muzzle of his gun, then sucks his semen out of the gun barrel as he pulls the trigger.

With minimal fanfare, South Beach Heat also includes a condomless fuck. A prefatory disclaimer stresses that the performers, Tony Brandon and Michael Chads, asked to dispense with condoms, that they're partners in a "committed mongamous relationship," and that the scene is not to be construed as an endorsement of unsafe sex. Reputable porn directors like Paul Barresi and Chi Chi LaRue have condemned the inclusion of such sequences under any circumstances; porn critic Mickey Skee has described the return of bareback sex to porn as his nightmare. (Given the wide availability of pre-condom videos, the issue is somewhat academic.) Ethical questions aside, Brandon and Chads provide South Beach Heat with its best sequence. There is, for once, something really going on between the actors, and between the actors and the viewer.