Director Michael Craig has the distinction of being the first director in the adult business ever to turn an AVN hat rick. Craig earns three AAAA ratings this month for Cat & Mouse (X-Citement Video); Wishful Thinking, a film for VCA Pictures and Gerein' Up,  a superb and dazzling sex video feature, that's one of the most articulately disciplined and consistent adult shows ever to come out. The feature is smoldering, orgasmic and defiantly teasing in places where most videos look for a clue.

Of course, much of the credit for this goes to the talented and awesomely sexual Ashlyn Gere who turns in a performance which may even be better than the ones she enjoyed in Pink Pussycat and Chameleons. Gere plays a certified nutcase-basic-fatal-length-attraction-babe who decides that married man Jon Dough is going to pay dearly for the wrong done to her by another guy.

Gere picks up Dough at a local bar, and in this scene, does more for a glass of coke than sharon Stone does for a cigarette in Basic Instinct. After lifting his wallet and credit cards, Gere drives him home and initiates a series of mind games with Dough. With each successive encounter, you realize this is a couple bound on a timeless collision course of carnality.

The Hollywood game plan would be to whip out the rat poison, the Ginsu carving knife or the ice pick to strike up the band and get the ball rolling, but since adult video abstains from physical violence, what ensues between Gere and Dough can best be appreciated in the context of cool restraint, torturous mental images, anxiety and the power of suggestion. She just states calmly, "I'm going to be a very specific part of your life," and follows up on her promise.

At one point in the action, Gere and Dough brazenly share an erotic session of phone sex while he's sharing the bed with his wife Alicia Rio. this interplay writes the book on extreme close-ups and female masturbation. it's classy, elegant, artistic and the first video phone sex scene ever shot that doesn't look like an ad for Screw.

Where the show falters somewhat comes in the inevitable pairing - Ashlyn is so fuckin' out of control by thiswith time, and Dough looks like he's been hit iwth a stun gun. He whips his dick out with the tentativeness of a blind driver approaching a five-street intersection in Beverly Hills - a mite laid back for all the expectations created by Ashlyn especially in an earlier scene with Cassidy in which Ashlyn practically rips her tits off and her cunt out in a lesbian sneak attack.

Gerein' Up is a live-wire sexual masterpiece and a guaranteed front runner for best video feature of the year.