When it comes to that fetish-ware-meets-hardcore thing, Brit and Euro smut-meisters have it all over their American counterparts.

The latest example of that is director Kovi's high-end, wonderfully titled The Splendor of Hell, a star vehicle for beautiful Monique Covet, whose slightly hard exotic blonde looks make her the damn-near perfect fetish fantasy figure.

All four of Hell's scenes are highly stylized (set in a flame-erupting factory and a water dungeon, among other imaginative locales), dream-like (think not quite real time motion and faint, echo-laden moans and groans) group gropes with uniformly gorgeous women (and less than gorgeous men, but who really cares?) garbed in expensive, top-flight kink couture.

Enhanced by Kovi's gorgeous, always-in-motion-camerawork, the raunch-laden sex - sucking, fucking, anals, d.p.'s and creamy facials - is frequently hot as, well, Hades, though towards tape's end, a certain mid-tempo sameness seems to set in.

Even so, for those customers of yours whose porn ideal is breathtaking rubber-clad bitches doing the explicit nasty, it doesn't get much better than this. Pre-noms for Best Foreign Release and Best Director - Foreign Release.