I suspect that director Ferro has never truly forgiven me for my less-than-spirited reception of his sex sirens and cycles opus, Ready To Ride.

Well, Matt, you lose one, you win one. With the 25th Anniversary Swimsuit Video, Ferro has crafted a jaunty coloratura of flesh and fantasy. This is a shot-on-film exercise that holds up among the best glamour ensembles ever lensed, featuring, arguably, the most breath-taking line up of women yet cast in one shoot. On a scale of 10, there's no one less than a 12 in this bunch.

This show is about style, bikinis and otherwise, all of which palpably sets the stage for tantalizingly executed nude studies. Each vignette is authoritatively conceived and choreographed, and the only weak point, as I can gather, is still the quaint reluctance (as shared by just about every cinematographer and director in this genre) to get the T&A version of the "money shot" —where the bikini or whatever-type bottoms are dramatically slipped off, revealing the butt in all its supernal glory. Watch the studies contained herein closely and you'll see what I mean.

The opener features an assembly of naked and near-naked women posed against white pillars of a faux Roman bath. Gorgeous redheaded twins then exhibit their wares against a background of air balloon colors. A blonde, in strips of leopard skin passing for a swimsuit, curls in a fetal pose as she offers up her nakedness to the delight of appreciative overhead camera angles.

A bivouac setting seems fairly superfluous for what follows —a group bikini strip off, but it does replicate some of the artfully underexposed and overdeveloped color semblances of the M*A*S*H title sequence.

What begins as a slightly misleading flower child episode evolves into an intriguing concept whereby the girls' clothes literally dissolve into varied backgrounds of superimposed graphics and animation. The redheads return to lather up a muscle guy as the ubiquitous Julia Ann sneaks in through the backdoor and dominates the rest of the scenario, while two blondes add the finishing touches in a bare ass-to-ass duet.

In what follows, a sand dollar has nothing on Julia Ann. Her body is breaded almost like a shake and bake chicken as droplets of water trickle on her, while the memorable finale offers up an all-nude conclave of curves as ocean foam laps away. You might also want to take particular note of musician Ron Bloom's twangy, spirited rhythms which offer immeasurable sustenance to this production.

Thank goodness Penthouse is getting away from some of the bullshit self-indulgences of their earlier releases and concentrating more on the raw aesthetics of the female form. It's working. Now, let's concentrate on those money shots...