Maybe it's because New Orleans is below sea level. Maybe it's the humidity. Or maybe it's the gumbo. But why is it that all characters in movies or plays with New Orleans as a backdrop are certified lunatics? Think of Street Car Named Desire or The Big Easy. And if you have a really good memory, the folk who populated TV's "Yancy Derringer" were a little out on the bayou.

Now if you thought Nicholas Cage should have been locked up after Vampire's Kiss and were downright convinced of it after Wild at Heart, Cage leaves no room for doubt in Zandalee, a certifiable career killer if there ever was one. Naturally, lovely Erika Anderson as fey Zandalee Martin gets points for baring her tits in just about every scene, but the adult film industry should rest easy now, because mainstream Hollywood proves beyond a shadow of a doubt it can make a sex flick duller than reminiscing.

Cage is this Edgar Allan Poe-looking artist who has Van Gogh, mad dog creative fits as he paints. He says things like "without creativity, without life, then you are truly unable to go straight up the devil's ass, look in his face, smile and survive." Well, what do you expect from a guy who calls him arm tattoo, "the black rose of fate"?

Cage covets his friend Thierry Martin's (Judge Reinhold) wife, Zandalee. Actually, you're rooting for Cage since Reinhold lulls about in an obtuse fog. In fact, everybody in this flick goes around spouting obtuse b.s. as Cage sets out to beat Mickey Rourke's record for sex in weird places. He tells Zandalee, "I want to shake you naked and eat you alive" or "take my dumb coon ass prick inside of you with you're husband in the next room."

Zandalee after about the third or fourth fuck like that starts feeling guilty and tells Cage she married her cuckold for a husband because he was a poet. Cage whips his dick out and asks her if that isn't poetry.

Wait, I take it back. The adult industry can't come up with stuff this good.