CHATSWORTH, Calif. - Wicked Pictures contract exclusives Kaylani Lei, Mikayla Mendez and director Michael Raven stopped off at AVN's offices yesterday to promote The Wicked, their new big-budget horror flick. They treated the editorial staff to promo kits and conversation about the movie, which is shipping this week.
The Wicked is a follow-up of sorts to Raven's space aliens thriller The Visitors, an AVN Best Video Feature nominee in 2007. The vivacious Kaylani has the leading role as one of a group of thrill-seeking twentysomethings who head out to a Burning Man-style desert festival and stumble onto a coven of vampires.
Raven shot it over nine days, mostly on high desert locations near Palmdale. He had high praise for the Wicked execs who gave him not only a sizeable budget but the freedom to do what he wanted with the story and in post-production.
Kaylani and Raven agreed that Mikayla made the most convincing vampire they'd ever seen, her mouth dripping blood even in sex scenes. At AVN, however, she looked every inch the glamorous contract star.
The Wicked's script, by Raven and frequent collaborator Jennifer Allison, has inevitable echoes of mainstreamers like Dusk Till Dawn and The Lost Boys. Those movies, though, didn't feature babes like Sophia Santi, who plays the vampire queen, and Wicked contract superstar Stormy Daniels as a shotgun wielding demon-hunter.
The movie is loaded with special effects for which director Raven has a special gift, rare in adult, as evidenced in movies like The Visitors and The Supernatural.
Kaylani and Mikayla handed out kits containing DVDs, t-shirts, stocking caps and blood-drenched mouse pads and autographed posters before heading off with Raven for other stops on their promotional tour of Porn Valley.
