Interracial Sex Havoc #12: 1998

The Interracial Sex Havoc project is a selection of reviews of films that contain at least one interracial sex scene. I am focusing on regular flicks (both independent and major studios productions), but select adult movies are also included. The present chapter is about pictures released in 1998. I reviewed many goodies, including a Spike Lee film and a Lodge Kerrigan one. So, enjoy!

He Got Game (1998)

Jake [Denzel Washington, approximately a decade before American Gangster (2007)] accidentally killed his wife [Lonette McKee from Men of Honor (2000)] and for the past six years he’s doing time at Attica Correctional Facility. He is approached by Warden Wyatt [Ned Beatty from Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)] who has some political connections that demand the inmate to pursue his son [Ray Allen] to sign to a particular college in order to become America’s next NBA star. If he manages to do that, his sentence will be reduced.

Jake, while on this short ‘work release program’ (as he is referring to the situation) he meets an abused hooker [Milla Jovovich, a good four years before Resident Evil (2002)] and they form a relationship of sorts (it could be explored more, but it did not, assumingly because that would forbiddingly stretch the already lengthy running time) and together they provide an attempt at an interracial sex scene.

Of further interest to this column’s regular readers will be Jesus (Jake’s son) sexual adventures which include fucking his girlfriend [Rosario Dawson, some nine years before Grindhouse (2007)] in an amusement park, and participating in a threesome with two lusty college girls [adult film superstars Chasey Lain and Jill Kelly] which is actually pivotal to the plot as it is part of a long string of scenes that show how this young man with a bag full of dreams gets tempted in all sorts of ways by people who want to gain things from his future. Unfortunately, it can be said that women in this film are often portrayed as a danger. There is also a dream/fantasy sequence with a lot of sex (and a lot of it is of interracial nature).

This is essentially a coming-of-age flick about a boy who is growing up and a father who wants to make up with him or at least spend a little bit of quality time with him (he is only out for one week, complete with a leg bracelet) and leave some of the bad blood behind.

This was written and directed by Spike Lee whose work this column previously visited when Jungle Fever (1991) was reviewed. He Got Game (1998) was successful (it opened at #1 at the US box-office) and if it didn’t include all those religious references it could well have been one of my favourite films in this ongoing research. But, it is the sole film that I know of which includes a lengthy scene of a one-on-one basketball game, which manages to be exciting.

Kiss the Sky (1998)

Jeff [William Petersen from To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)] and Marty [Gary Cole from The Ring Two (2005)] are two American middle-aged buddies, both successful yuppies (with marriage problems), who go on a trip to the Philippines where they meet a 29-years-old Australian girl [Sheryl Lee from Vampires (1998)] who happens to be very hot and so the three of them form a relationship. Said relationship has such a spiritual impact to the two male leads that not only they cannot focus on the local prostitutes (that provide the brief interracial sex scenes) but they even announce to their families that they won’t be coming back.

Well, the motives in this film are pretty ridiculous, as it seems hard to believe that one would leave his wife behind, let alone his kids, to construct a ‘paradise’ (this is a recurring theme in Eric Lerner’s screenplay) in the middle of nowhere, and become so spiritual, just because he and his buddy happened to find an attractive young lady to have threesomes with. The occasional important question is raised (shades of philosophy are all over the place), but everything in director Robert Young’s film appears to be so naive and flat, that the whole thing has the feeling of a serious version of The Hangover Part II (2011) at best. Terence Stamp [a year before he was in The Limey (1999)] delivers a decent performance as a monk (in essence, the ‘mentor’ in the story).

Claire Dolan (1998)

The titular lady [Katrin Cartlidge from The Hughes Brothers’ From Hell (2001)] works as a call-girl (one of her clients is a black man and together they have a brief interracial sex scene, which is shown through what appears to be a television screen) for pimp Roland Cain [Colm Meaney from Die Hard 2 (1990)] – because she’s in debt to him – but one day, she randomly meets taxi driver Elton Garrett [Vincent D’Onofrio, who was recently in Sinister (2012)] and they fall in love.

This co-production between USA and France was written and directed by Lodge Kerrigan [now a successful TV series director] and it is able to make audiences think (especially with the use of wide shots that portray certain parts of New York lifeless and without the presence of people which is probably an aesthetic choice made in order to depict how hollow the life of a prostitute is, despite how sympathetic to her tragedy the filmmaker seem to be) but the material is such that it seems impossible for the end product to go anywhere other than the Cannes Film Festival where it was screened.

Last Night (1998)

What would you do if this was to be the last few hours of all of us on earth? This question is raised by actor/writer/director Don McKellar in the film under review, which is set in Toronto, Canada, and is about the end of the world. This is essentially a multi-character piece [David Cronenberg plays an obsessed power company owner who rings all of its customers] but the focus is really on Sandra [Sandra Oh from Hard Candy (2005)] who is trying to reach her husband in order to commit suicide together. Perhaps unintentionally the most interesting character is that of Craig Zwiller [Callum Keith Rennie from Memento (2000)] who (in these last few hours) is trying to fulfil all the sexual acts that he had not done before, including interracial sex. Other than that, everybody in the film acts very neurotically, almost in an unnatural way.

Homey in the Haystack (1998)

The events in the first scene (Tyce Bune does Delia who calls him ‘daddy’ and he gets roughed up by two cops who arrest him, but those two incidents appear to be unrelated) set the story that follows which finds Byron Long facing 20 years in prison and in order to avoid that he works with the authorities, who sent him (with a fake beard no less) to live undercover in an Amish family’s house. Of course, once Byron is there, he fucks everything that moves [first he does Regan Starr, then he does her sister Zoe (with the assistance of Jay Ashley), and finally he does Candy Vegas (with some help from Dave Hardman)].

This is a very good attempt by director Cool Breeze to make a movie that feels like an actual feature (despite that it was shot on video), and the use of things such as costumes or the outdoor orgy scene help him succeed. Another interesting aspect is the use of a fruit as lubricant that helps with an anal sex scene.