If the baroque opulence of San Simeon is a monument to the excesses of unrestrained capitalism, imagine a somewhat smaller version dedicated to the excesses of one man's personal sexuality. While Hugh Hefner's taste in décor —with a painting of himself smiling benignly down at visitors in the entranceway— might be considered blithely patrician these days, his influence on world culture is undeniable, not to mention ongoing.

When a dozen of the magazine's most beautiful starlets arrive to check out the Versailles of free love, the mood is a nostalgic one. Clips of Hef's salad days (hosting the likes of Jack Nicholson, etc.) at his in-house disco are interspersed with shots of the girls roaming the halls looking at the hundreds of celebrity pictures lining the walls. (It may also be interesting to note that Hef's office, piled high with videotapes, is not unlike AVN's own Gene Ross' office —minus the Victorian bed.)

The girls decide to shake off the metaphoric dust and breathe some life into the mammary-funded museum. What follows is a tour you'll never get at Hearst Castle. The impossibly perfect females run free, playing strip poker, taking luxurious showers, steam baths, and massages... having pillow fights... watching a softcore film in the screening room.... and swimming in the famous grotto. Naked, naked, naked.

That's about all —but isn't that all you need? In an era where uninhibited sex has been replaced by a generation of habitual masturbators safely pleasuring themselves to AIDS-free hardcore porn, the Playboy mystique still manages to hold a tight romantic reign on the imagination.