Now this is what a tape that merges hardcore action with sizzling fetish glamour should look like. Though several other directors who shall go unnamed have also attempted that synthesis, Britisher Tanya Hyde, as she has demonstrated on at least two prior occasions, is the one who keeps getting it right. Hell, Whores and High Heels, we're happy to report, keeps her streak intact. Pre-nom her for Best Director-Foreign.

Lavishly produced, highly stylized and imaginatively structured (most scenes start fairly focused with two or three players, then expand almost formlessly as more bodies are added) with very steamy, but rarely raunchy sex, HWAHH should appeal to both singles and couples turned on by the genre.

Each of its five segments are visually thrilling turn-ons. The opener, for instance, has a rubber-clad, very bedeviling couple mauling a fallen angel they find masturbating with a giant black dildo. That's followed by a broiling dungeon blowout in which three leathermen rectal-ream a trio of hot blondes. Next up is a kinky puppet master having his way with three magnificent marionettes.

Scene four, the aptly titled Medical Madness, starts off with a gorgeous, statuesque blonde in form-fitting vinyl nurse's ware dispensing some very personalized treatment, then winds up in a multiple pileup featuring a gooey - practically regurgitated - facial, the tape's filth focal point.

Hyde saves the best for last, however, an interrogation fantasy set in a Russian military prison in which a male prisoner, helpless in a suspended leather swing, is violated with a variety of hardware wielded by fetching uniformed female guards and a beautiful grand inquisitor. Rest assured, he eventually turns the tables, plowing his chief tormentor while the sentries engage in some heated strap-on action, then shooting off on all three crotches, spread and stacked.