The following review, and the above time and ratings, are for the VHS version of this movie and may vary slightly in this DVD version. Jerry Douglas never disappoints. "Family Values" is another totally engaging blockbuster, superb in every sense. It brings together some of the biggest names from earlier porn eras and a hot crew of today's best-looking stars for some sizzling sex between studly, in-shape older men and cute, hot young guys. But that's not all. It has young studs doing each other, and tops bottoming for the first time. All of this is achieved in seven super-erotic, beautifully photographed sex scenes. Plot? Nobody does it better. And Douglas keeps outdoing himself. He ventures once again into the taboo realm of incest, which he earlier explored in "Flesh and Blood," a 1996 gem that also starred Kurt Young (as twin brothers). This time the story focuses on a gay teen's discovery of his father's real identity: Not a soldier who died in Vietnam before he was born as he's been told, but a former gay porn star, now living nearby, and very much into the gay lifestyle himself. To make it even more interesting, the son, Pip (short for Philip) is partial to older men, and the father, also named Philip, prefers younger guys. Before he learns the truth about his father, Pip finds out that his own lover of three years, who is also his doctor, is about to move overseas. Further clearing the way for the inevitable pairing, the father and his young lover are breaking up after a similar time together.
As the video opens, Pip (Young) is showing school friend and gay escort J. J. (Brent Cross) his family album, with only one picture of his dad. For gay porn aficionados the photo is recognizable as 1970s-80s super star and long-reigning cumshot champion, Derrick Stanton. We shift to a houseboat docked in a marina, and the camera focuses on the boat owner's wallet. Lo and behold, the driver's license photo is of an older incarnation of that same face we saw in the album, with the name Philip Simpson. Phil in the flesh is getting sucked by teenage boyfriend Teddy (Kristian Brooks). The years have been good to Stanton. He has no trouble staying rock-hard throughout, and if anything, his sexual prowess has only gotten better. He rims and fingers Brooks's asshole and deftly returns the blow job. They 69 with abandon. Then, after Brooks has again sucked him standing up, we see the first sign of friction between the two. Teddy starts to get a condom ready, and Phil says dismissively, "You don't want to fuck me." Teddy replies, "What do you know?" Although he bends over dutifully and takes Phil's huge cock like a man, it's obvious the young pup would like to top once in a while. He cries, "take it easy," but Phil isn't hearing any of that. Teddy pulls away and stops the action in a snit. Happily, Teddy's pouting, instead of diminishing the heat of this scene just enhances it. Phil sits down on a cushioned bench, Teddy lowers his hot butt on the legendary Stanton pole, and they both clearly enjoy the ride. Brooks unloads nine spurts all over his arms and legs while getting fucked, then reaches through his legs with his cum soaked fist and strokes Stanton's shaft to a 13-shot (I swear) gusher. Teddy's ennui resumes soon after they finish, and following a spat about how he feels taken for granted, he announces that their relationship is over. Hardly skipping a beat, Phil takes out an old video of himself, "Fountain of Youth," starring Pete Sampson, his porn name, puts it in the VCR, and falls asleep clasping the cover, imagining, no doubt, who might be the next partner to help him recapture his youth.
Pip, meanwhile, is admonishing visiting J. J. for doing his college thesis on pornography. One of the subject videos turns out to be the same classic we just saw on the boat, "Fountain of Youth." Pip's mother (Sharon Kane) arrives home, and they scramble to hide the video. Mom's life revolves around causes like animal rights. But she is no fan of gay rights. "Save the whales but not the fags, eh?" chides J. J. Pip has to get a health certificate from his doctor for a scholarship he is applying for, so he visits the doctor's office, and he and Dr. Weston or "Wes" (veteran star Erich Lange) greet each other with a lovers' kiss.
The second sex scene, outdoors between Pip and Wes, heats us up like the fire they build halfway through it. Pip erotically undresses and then beckons Wes over to suck his already hard cock. After teasing and licking the bouncing boner, Lange brings new meaning to the term deep throat. He swallows Young's stiffened length down to the root, over and over. Young looks a lot like Rob Lowe in his prime, and in this scene the resemblance is especially striking. There are heart stopping shots of him leaning against a tree in all his naked glory with Lange in front of him, still half dressed, swallowing his cock all the way. Young removes the rest of Lange's clothes to reveal a body still as hot as the old days. Young sucks him like a pro. They stand up and kiss and hug and gaze into each other's eyes. As Pip remarks, the whole scene "is so fucking romantic." Then they build the fire, and the rest of the scene is shot through the flames and sparks. Lange grimace as Young enters him from behind, but seeing that young stud shove his stiff shaft into its target makes you long to be in Lange's place, pain or no pain. As the sparks fly from the fire, Young leans back on his haunches and pumps up into Lange. We see this from front and back, and then they get into missionary position. With Young licking his balls, Lange shoots a huge load onto his stomach, and his cum mixes with the descending ashes from the fire. Young sprays an even larger load onto Lange's stomach and chest. Throughout the scene we've been hearing vague hints that something's amiss. Pip keeps saying "I love you," and Wes will only reply, "I know." At the end we find out what's up. The doctor got a letter confirming his fellowship in Paris. So the lovers of three years will soon be separated, and Wes says it's time for Pip to "make a new life of your own."
Phil goes looking for solace in a video arcade, where the jaded attendant, well played by Dan Cross, instructs Pip, "When the lights come on, pecker in your pants pronto. Capish?" Pip catches a glimpse of Phil, who is just leaving the back room, and father and son encounter each other for the first time, neither aware of their relationship but each intrigued by the other. Pip takes a look into the action-packed back room but doesn't stay.
Pip arrives home and finds the Pete Sampson video, which J. J. mistakenly stuck in his backpack. He puts it in the VCR and proceeds to jerk off to it. Back on the boat, Phil is watching his copy of the tape and enjoying it the same way. We shift back and forth between the two images, Pip and Phil, with matching hard-ons, matching cock rings, both using Vaseline. Skillful editing brings their images together on the screen as their passion builds, and they erupt together with massive gushers. They fall asleep and the scene ends focused on the TV screen, where we are treated to yet another cum shot, this one of Stanton from the video 20 years ago. The action for the fictional tape is from the Jaguar classic, "Hard Hat."
Pip wakes up with a start. He has begun to put two and two together. The tape and the album photo make him realize that the man he thought died in Vietnam must have been the star of this porn video. He phones J. J. and asks when the video was made. It turns out to have been two years after he was born, meaning that if the star was his father he could not have died in Vietnam and in fact might still be alive. Still naked, he rushes to a box of mementos his mother keeps, and finds a gay magazine promoting still another video starring the same Pete Sampson, "First Time for Everything." His mother arrives home unexpectedly, and, flustered, he drops the Vaseline jar. She sees it and tells him masturbation is normal, "especially if you don't have a girl friend." Then he confronts her about the video promotion he found in her things and accuses her of lying about his father. He presses her on whether his father is really dead, and she reiterates that he is.
Next comes another hot scene pairing a porn veteran with one of today's stars. Sam (Steve York), a greenhouse operator, and his boyfriend Willie (Bryan Kidd) are the one couple in the video whose May-December romance has lasted. Phil wants to know their secret and spies on them as they make love. Kidd is a living doll and clearly the winner of this couple in the looks department. York's best feature was always his enormous cock, and that's still true, but he has kept his body in great shape. He looks all the more sexy here by keeping his boots on as he and Kidd get it on, sucking each other separately and together in a blissful 69. They portray ideal lovers, caring, solicitous, and erotic. At one high point, both pick up hoses and soak each other's writhing bodies. You can almost see the steam rise as the water washes over them. They kiss with genuine passion. When they notice they are being watched by Phil, Willie challenges Sam, "Your reputation is at stake; you'd better fuck me good!" And after that the passion meter goes off the chart. These two are definitely turned on to each other. As the action intensifies, York plugs his cock into Kidd's enticing rear socket missionary style, and they clasp hands and lock lips. Then York, always a top in his earlier years, takes Kidd's cock up his ass and clearly enjoys riding that way too. They uncouple and sit crotch to crotch, a position Douglas has a way of making intensely arousing (as in a great scene with J. T. Sloan and Chris McKensie in "Diamond Stud"). They work themselves to huge cum shots then turn to Phil and proclaim the lesson he should learn on how to stay together: "We call it Commitment 101."
Now it's mom's turn to put two and two together, and she asks Pip how he heard about Pete Sampson. He admits he's gay, and she throws him out of the house. Pip moves in with J. J. and asks for help in finding work to support himself. He says maybe J. J.'s pimp, Sunshine (Bo Summers), could take him on. Sunshine is an aging flower child, stoned much of the time. His room is authentic right down to a Janis Joplin poster. J. J. takes Pip to Sunshine for a tryout. Sunshine asks Pip to get hard and suggests that J. J. help him. After mild objections from J. J., the two boys get into the hottest scene of the video. Young and Cross look like a pair of football jocks with bodies to die for who finally give in to their forbidden yearnings. They grin and giggle with embarrassment but relish the thrill of their first mutual sex. Following Sunshine's commands, they suck each other, 69, kiss lustily, lick each other's asses, and then suck Sunshine's huge cock and gaping hole. In his premier bottoming scene, Cross takes Young's big cock up the ass and sucks Summers down the throat. Then they switch, and Cross fucks Young while Young sucks the flower child's rigid stem. Finally, Summers fucks Cross from behind, and Young makes a sandwich of them, getting behind and fucking Summers. The three pump away reaching new heights of arousal, and all cum in gigantic spurts, Cross while getting fucked, then Summers, also while getting fucked, on Cross's back, and Young on Summers' back. Sunshine says he hasn't had that good a three-way since Woodstock. He continues to reminisce about those days, including that he knew Pete Sampson. Excited that he might get some new help in his search, Pip asks what Sampson's real name was, and Sunshine finds a photo of him with the name Philip Simpson on it. So Pip is getting ever closer to the truth.
He tries to sketch out what Simpson would look like 20 years older, and then another light goes on. The guy at the video arcade looked just like Pete Sampson would look today. Pip returns there, and this time does go into the back room. Among the guys in jeans and cutoffs is the man Pip has now deduced is his real father. Their eyes lock from the moment Pip enters. They are sucked separately by two gorgeous studs, Steve O'Donnell as a jockstrapped jock, doing the father and Cole Tucker as a macho, mean talking hard-hat doing the son. But even though Pip and Phil are reveling in the sex with their partners, their eyes stay fixed on each other. Tucker is a particularly sexy turn-on in this scene, which comes closest to rough stuff in this mostly vanilla sex video. Tucker is a champ at talking dirty and portraying the tough guy. While getting poked by Young's throbbing cock, he demands, "rip me a new fuckin' asshole!" Tucker and O'Donnell kiss as they are getting plowed, but Stanton and Young don't touch. They just fuck each other with their eyes. As the cum flies, O'Donnell wins the salad toss with jolt after jolt of boy juice. Next Tucker erupts with a steady flow of spurts from his volcanic cock. Stanton keeps up his reputation, spewing a healthy series of long shots over O'Donnell's jock strap. Young's climax on Tucker's back is partially blocked when Tucker lifts his head, but we can see a humongous amount of cum spray anyway.
Phil and Pip shake hands and declare the match a draw. Pip asks if Phil ever bottoms, and Phil says he doesn't like to. Pip feigns leaving, but Phil, still not aware whom he's met, convinces his son to follow in his car to the boat. When they get there both are too worn out from the arcade action to have any sex that night, but Pip wants to know if Phil is "one of those guys who won't kiss." Phil says no, and Pip insists that they take their first kiss slow, because "I want to remember this." They end the day with a memorably passionate kiss.
The final scene is on the deck the next morning: Stroking each other, then sucking, removing their matching cock rings, fondling, kissing. Phil has learned to be less cavalier with this young lover. They rim, 69, and enjoy each other's bodies completely. But Pip, the one who knows their dark secret, is still a trifle uncomfortable with the situation. When Phil uses his favorite term of endearment, Kiddo, Pip balks. "Don't ever call me Kiddo.' You don't call me Kiddo, and I'll never call you 'the old man.'" That seems to clear the air a bit and let him feel better about both his continuing deception and the forbidden fruit he is enjoying. Phil plows Pip missionary style on a lounge chair. After a while, he pulls out and tells Pip he wants him to do the fucking. Pip can hardly believe this is happening, and he does the deed with enthusiasm. They wind up crotch to crotch and shoot long ribbons of cum together, hitting each other's chests. Before the end the scene shifts to mom burning Pip's photo. Then we see Pip toss the family album over the side of the boat and settle back into a deck chair. When does he tell his dad who he is? We don't find out, but somehow we know it won't matter. They have found each other's perfect partner.
There are some minor technical glitches such as poor sound in the opening and closing boat scenes, but those are easily overlooked in this thoroughly entertaining, daring, supremely erotic video. The acting is first rate, although Kane's portrayal of the intolerant mother comes across as overly strident at times. Kane wrote and performed the title song, which is played behind the closing credits.
DVD Extras: Behind The Scenes, Photo Gallery, Direct Scene Access, Previews, No Regional Coding, Cast Bio's, Audio Commentary, Animated Interactive Menus.
