With the phallic minarets of Istanbul poking the skies, this superb Midnight Express update tells the tale of a vivacious but gullible female drug paddler trapped in the horrifying swamp of the Turkish prison system. Directed by Italy's foremost cinema eroticist, Joe D'Amato, Midnight Obsession brings Hollywood standards of quality and obsessively hot sexual couplings to the burgeoning  genre of shot-on-film adult entertainment. The results are nothing short of mesmerizing.

In a lyrical opening, which is in sharp contrast to the sleazy, desperate sex scenes that populate the majority of the film, we see an amorously enthusiastic couple make love with tenderness and almost light-headed rapture. Redheaded Erika Bella plays the heroine who reclines on the bed in her hotel room as her boyfriend tastes her bushy pink cooze. Enraptured by his attention, Erika spreads her creamy thighs and allows him to enter her sideways, and, in a refreshing twist, she masturbates her beau to a splattering orgasm which coats her smooth, porcelain-toned belly.

When a voluptuous brunette emissary from the American Embassy attempts to intervene on erica's behalf, she finds herself abducted by two thugs and carted to an abandoned roadhouse. There, the gorgeous diplomat opens her mouth and snatch to her two captors, squeezing their balls dry of conspirational juice. Clearly, the spent woman obtains everything but the captured American's freedom.

With Erica's fate so painfully sealed, she's transported to an isolated, barren women's prison. Imagine her discomfort not only at her surroundings, but at the stifling sexual hunger present in this perilous environment. The latter becomes apparent in Erika's initial prison examination, during which the "doctor" takes periodic breathers to sniff his invasively probing fingers.

The prison's sexually repressed female warden craves all sorts of bizarre diversions, and decides to open her anus to an equally horny male guard once all the inmates are asleep. Be forewarned that this stern, menacing woman is played by Shalimar, the same actress seen in the AVN award-winning "gaping anus" scene from D'Amato's recent Marquis De Sade. Here, Shalimar lets her sphincter throb obscenely as her astounded male partner drools a few rivulets of saliva into this seemingly bottomless orifice, as though more lubricant were actually needed for unimpeded penetration!

Joe D'Amato has successfully created a hardcore masterpiece worthy of mention alongside his previous shock classics, such as Emanuelle In America, Trap Them And Kill Them and Porno Holocaust. Midnight Obsession marks another stride forward in blurring those erroneously held distinctions between pornography and respectability, and this accomplishment merits the most sincere and heartfelt praise imaginable.