Horse: Fallen Angel 5 (Director's Cut)

By: Keeneye Reeves
In-House Review - Aug 09 2010

Horse: Fallen Angel 5 is the one we've been waiting for, and oh baby was the wait well worth it. Director Bruce Cam returns to the directing chair after nearly a two-year absence and delivers this peerless, vastly rewarding and absolutely stunning final entry in the iconic Fallen Angel series. One of the first to receive a copy, we literally spent an entire night devouring its contents (8½ hours worth) like wolverines on a bender. The moment it lands in your lap you'll understand why. Let's start with the packaging. In a nutshell... it's spectacular. This version is a five-disc set and opens up as a tiered gatefold. Each disc bears a letter of the title, and the slipcase that houses the collection features the title treatment embossed in raised gold-leaf lettering - except for the back cover in which the pentangular "O" of the title treatment is a raised version of the ass-branding that appears in the film. Gluteus maximus indeed. The look of the film is easily the best of director Cam and the Titan team's career. This production is on the level of a small Hollywood film (as the extensive behind-the-scenes footage proves). Absolutely no expense was spared, yet the film has an intensely intimate feel to it that's quite different from the series' others. However, when the titles end and the opening interior night shots of a barn filled with smoke flash across your screen, and the shadowed backlit image of a man in those iconic Fallen Angel wings emerges, shivers of excitement will run through your body's every bone. This puppy is simply massive (and massively crotch-churning). The film itself (the Director's Cut runs 4½ hours) is beyond reproach, and while not as shockingly intense as the still-talked-about Sea Men: Fallen Angel IV, it does contain some mesmerizing yet quite fierce sexcapades: the suspension and branding sequences are sure to get tongues wagging. However, it's this collection's bonus extras which we wanted to let you know about immediately, as there's really never been anything quite like this before. The assembled bonus content here rivals a Lord of the Rings Extended Version. I mean comparably mind you; this is a gay adult film after all. Hello. The film itself is spread out over the first two discs and runs four and a half hours. Disc three houses the Bonus Material, consisting of a 23-minute cumshot review and a 10-minute music image gallery (the music by the way is amazing). The Additional Scene section contains five deleted scenes (cut for running time not for content; they're incredibly hot) that run about 35 minutes in total. The Additional Content section has solo scenes by Marcos David and Lars Decker (about 10 minutes in total), an 8½ minute model fluffing segment, and 9 minutes worth of additional watersports - including two segments that feature multiple camera angles you control with your remote. (Three cameras never were so useful!) Disc four contains the "meat and potatoes" of the production extras - and is thankfully quite heavy on the meat, too! There's a 15 minute Behind the Scenes documentary that's truly worthwhile. It shows (in great detail for such a short running time) the location scouting, the absolutely fastidious and arduous construction of the sets built (the Titan crew deserves massive kudos for their efforts), the casting process, model interaction, and rare footage of press-shy director Cam, production manager/videographer Brian Mills and producer Keith Webb "making the magic." It's quite daring for a studio to go so in depth, as there's always the risk of ruining the fantasy of porn. Not here - this featurette truly enhances the experience of the film you just saw. Not to mention that the artfully shot black and white footage of Ben Jakks is cock-poppingly hot. Even better, Brian Mills supplies an optional running commentary that is a very worthwhile listen. A complete natural, his comments are professional, enlightening, and oftentimes sidesplitting funny. (His "boy mobile" comment during the jaw-dropping ceiling suspension scene and quip about barebacking are priceless.) We then are treated to 34 minutes of photoshoots with Mills and various cast members, 18½ minutes of in-depth on-set interviews with the models (who hail from just about every continent on the planet except for Antarctica), and the full teaser trailer for Horse (complete with voiceover by a famed commercial talent). We even found an Easter Egg. (Highlight the director's name at the top of the menu screen for an amusing 10-second audio clip). Hold on, there's more! Disc five contains "The Best of Fallen Angel Fetish," a 67 minute compendium of the series' most dynamic and most notorious sequences. (What we refer to as each film's "Oh my god, Becky!" moments.) Each video is represented, from those first images of Steve Cannon in Fallen Angel and Kyle Brandon's on-camera dick-piercing in Fallen Angel II: Descending, to Keith Webb's double-puppeteering of Bud and Cole Tucker in Fallen Angel III: Initiation's semi-truck, and the still hypnotically terrifying scrotal infusion and electrode scene from Sea Men: Fallen Angel IV. We finish up with each film's unedited trailer. And those are just the bonus features guys! Four hours worth. Not to mention the 4½ hour video itself. Speaking of which, while we've provided the press notes below no words can really do it justice; suffice to say the film is simply spectacular. It's very intense, but not mind-bogglingly so. Sea Men: Fallen Angel IV's well-deserved notoriety may have pushed some viewer's thresholds over the brink. Fear not here; while Horse does have its "moments" with its flogging, branding (no one was injured, relax) and fisting, the sex showcased is remarkably passionate and masculine, and is certain to enthrall you regardless of your persuasion. Basically, it's fucking brilliant gay erotica and once experienced you'll go back to it again and again. Guaranteed. Bruce Cam and his stunningly talented cast and crew members have delivered - truly delivered. This is the movie of Cam's career by which all others will be measured. It belongs on every gay man's shelf; there's no higher praise that can be given.

By:
In-House Review - Aug 09 2010

"After a two year hiatus, renowned director Bruce Cam is back in the saddle with the biggest, and unarguably the most hard-hitting film of his award winning career: Horse: Fallen Angel 5. In this final chapter of the infamous Fallen Angel series, fire, fetish and fantasy combust in an inferno of the hottest hardcore action ever seen. Set in a post-apocalyptic, subterranean world, Horse boldly imagines a time and place that explodes with sex-crazed Pony Boys and the ferocious Masters who own them, where traditional roles are usurped and the hardest cock rules. Four brilliant, start-to-finish hours of huge, rock-hard dicks and sweaty, hungry assholes, wild fetish, bondage, suspension, flogging, fisting, branding, and an especially intense scene with a stainless steel dildo, make Horse the most talked-about and highly anticipated feature of the year! Ultra-masculine Hunt Parker makes his TitanMen debut, along with Ben Jakks, Spencer Quest, Joey Dino and Marcos David. A crew of thick, handsome, solidly muscled and heavy hung TitanMen are featured in Horse, many of them erotically inked, pierced, and frequently foreskinned. The limited edition five-disc Hardcore Collector's Edition - beautifully packaged in a stunning, full color photo slip case - delivers 8+ hours of heavy duty hardcore action, including many not-to-be-missed bonus features: additional scenes, "The Making of Horse" documentary, photo shoots, model interviews, music image gallery, and a collection of the most memorable fetish scenes from the first four Fallen Angels."

By: buddhawannabe

SHORT VERSION, and a (somewhat) dissenting opinion: "Horse" is definitely the "Gone-With-the-Wind"-type entry for a certain type of gay porn. I have, elsewhere on this site, reviewed other examples of that type: "Skuff I" and (sort of) "II", "Fallen Angel III," "Nexus," "Screw: Right to the Point." Hot bodies having vigorous sex in vaguely fetish-y fantasy-type surroundings. In "Horse," those surroundings couldn't be classier, as far as set design and art direction go. In terms of sheer visual imagery, this movie's hard to beat (and easy to beat off to). After having waded through thirty years and more of gay porn that had bargain-basement production values and looked as if it had been (and often indeed was) filmed in a cheap motel room, I can tell you that this is by far the most visually striking and luxurious-looking gay porn film ever made, that I know of. I can understand why Keeneye Reeves, in the other review on this page, was doing back-flips. It must have seemed as if gay porn had finally 'arrived,' and now had a status comparable to that of high art. And I don't disagree. But whether you will find this kind of movie satisfying depends on what you want from porn. There are images from "Horse" that have stuck in my memory and will stick there forever, perhaps. But that's what they are: "images," moving 'pictures,' and you can't imagine yourself as one of the people in the movie, because there's no plot, no characters, no 'situation.' These are basically pin-ups that move. And gorgeous pin-ups they are, but one thing I have learned from many years in the gay scene (and even in the leather-fetish scene, towards the occupants of which this movie seems to be specifically directed) is that a hot body and a hot leather outfit are interesting for about five minutes, if there's nothing going on between the ears and within the soul of the leather-man in question. The only scene in this movie that I really thought was hot begins with Matthieu Costa with a horse-bit in his mouth, and it's exciting to me because his big brown eyes are so emotionally expressive, as practically nothing and nobody else in this movie is, at least not to me. "People beat scenery," as a wise Hollywood mogul once observed. I'd rather see a movie of a daddy fucking a boy in a cheap motel room, and generating some real sexual heat and tension in the process, than the most beautiful bodies in the world, on the most beautiful movie sets that have ever been built for porn, having sex that seems like only beautiful bodies performing on a movie set. I bought it and I'm not sorry I did. Just don't let Keeneye's review build your expectations too high. You might end up a bit disappointed.