Falcon Studios turn out some top porn, but their burnished, depilated WeHo models all start to look a bit the same after a while, as do their oft-rote scenes together. Bel Ami, too produce some great stuff, but their actors are even more airbush-perfect and young to the point of childlike, and the effect can be cheesy (the whole look-what-we-found-hiding-behind-the-Iron-Curtain thing is getting a bit stale too). Colt aim for a more blue-collar look but really don't do anything innovative with it: I always think Colt movies are fairly indistinguishable from early, Matt Sterling era Falcon titles. But Titan Media have plumbed the East Village/Seattle look, in all its grungy guiche-pierced, heavy-inked glory, combining heavily body-modified actors with unexpectedly framed hardcore sex scenes to set their films apart.

Cirque Noir - picking up from the carnival setting of Titan's Carny - takes place in a fantasy fuck-fest big-top, a beautifully rendered set crowned with a beautiful electric blue pleated canopy, under which guys with forked tongues give pincushioned freaks deep-throat head, anal double-penetration is part and parcel of a trapeze act, and half the cast spend the whole movie in abstract clown make up replete with red noses and candy-apple lipstick. Oh, and one of the men has a vagina. If your porn collection is starting to bore you and you're looking for something a little different, look no further.

In the first scene, Joey Russo is tied spreadeagle to a wooden cross where Rimjob the Klown, who's had his tongue split, gives him a lengthy, saliva-dripping blowjob. A flabby ringmaster makes a show of whipping Russo with a silk lash, and though the sound effects sound right, we never see whip touch skin. This superb sequence features Rimjob giving what appears to be comprehensive and vaccuum-strength head to a groaning, ever on-the-cusp Russo. Rimjob's clown make up, triple-lorum piercing and forked tongue may be a distraction for some - if so, concentrate instead on Russo's sublime cock and balls. Once all three have blown a load (shot well from a low angle) Russo is untied and arse-tortures Rimjob with a small wooden toy clown-on-a-stick and a double ended black rubber dildo, before fucking him violently.

Next,the flexible Cobalt arrives, nude, and performs expert acrobatic balancing work underneath a gigantic mirror ball. This guy clearly knows his stuff, and his balance routine is entertaining enough. It doesn't have to be, though, as Spencer Quest and the aptly-named Stretch soon appear and perform three-way oral sex with Cobalt suspended upside down on a trapeze. A quick daisy-chain fuck takes place before Quest sucks both cocks at once, then sits on both at once while holding onto the afore-mentioned trapeze swing for balance.

David Garcia performs some impressive fire-twirling before Ivan Grey hooks up with the skateboard-y Richie Rennt and, in my opinion, the main attraction, Logan Steele, a fourty-something hairy giant with a shaved head and a collection of major tatts including a serpent that starts on his back and wraps around onto his stomach. Rennt cops it big time from both and we get to see plenty of Steele's massive forearms, salt-and-pepper three-day-growth, chunky broad back and an obvious appetite for eating younger mens' butts. Like all the other scenes in Cirque Noir, this one goes on forever, but you won't complain because they are so full-on you probably won't want any of them to end. The standard porn rule of "three minutes for the oral, two for the rimming, four for the doggie shot, thirty seconds for the cum-shot etc." obviously hasn't been applied here, and, mercifully, neither have any body waxers been allowed anywhere near the set. It's really refreshing to see hairy butts and furry ball sacs, and there isn't an angry ingrown hair pimple, the bane of so many more over-groomed porn stars and their viewers, to be seen.

Cirque Noir concludes with an epic three-way between Steele, Tober Brandt and Buck Angel. Brandt is an impish muscle-man who starts off as everybody's whipping boy, wrists bound behind his back while he is playfully punched in the chest and has his cock slapped by a domineering Steele. Soon, the tables are turned and it's Steele who gives a bossy Brandt an obedient headjob. Brandt slaps Steele around the head and orders him around while the swarthy Angel, who's built like a truckie and inked from here to there stands back and strokes his own cock, givng a few directives of his own. Steele sucks Brandt's cock until he gags, and falls into a growling, spurting orgasm. Flat on his back, but not spent for long, he's soon butt-slamming Brandt into next week and Angel moves in on the action. As Angel is fucking Brandt, his cock falls away - it's a strap-on dildo, and behind it, Angel's vagina. Buck Angel is a female-to-male post-op who is a really bloody attractive man's man, but chose against a surgically-constructed penis, as such dicks are almost invariably unsatisfactory, apparently.

The effect is stunning, and the look unique. Any gay guy who has no interest in boobs and soft curves but who finds pussy quite sexy will find brick-shithouse Angel a seriously hot number. This scene also gives us the great prize of watching Steele eat and fuck pussy. The only drawback is the actors' response to the reveal. Considering the film's off-the-wall mood, the whole "shit man - he's got a pussy" followed by poorly acted close-up inspections to ensure that, indeed, there is no dick there but a God-born cherry-axe wound was quite unecessary and out of kilter to the rest of the movie, which brandishes its sexy freakdom with pride. There's also a sour note of Angel having to be punished with rough fucking and slapping around for violating a guy under the pretense of being a guy. This part just doesn't seem to resonate with the polymorphous reverie of the rest of the film.

My only other complaint is the behind-the-scnes part of the bonus materials on the DVD. Its fine to see carpenters constructing the sets, and crew buffing up latex pants to make sure the camera catches them at maximum gloss, but seeing the actors sitting around waiting for the action to start, or goofing around before they commence a scene ruins the illusion a little. Especially for a fantasia styled porn as this one where the sex looks really lusty and authentic, I don't really want to know that the guys are just going through the motions to earn a living.

A few of my friends found Cirque Noir too strange; I loved it.

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