Perhaps it's best to begin by saying that Chicken Ranch has absolutely no sex or nudity. This documentary, filmed in 1982, garners the highest rating based strictly on its content and success as an information videocassette. The review appears in Adult Video News simply because the subject matter concerns a sexual subject – legal prostitution.

Chicken Ranch, unflinching in its coverage of Nevada's most famous legal brothel, objectively observes the girls who hook for a living, and their relationships with clients, their madame and the owner. Absolutely outstanding as documentary filmmaking, Chicken Ranch amazed me – as the prostitutes talk openly to each other about what they do and don't like about sex with their "johns." Incidentally, this is the house that inspired The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas.

The camera follows several of the girls are they take the paying customers into their rooms and negotiate a price. For example, one blonde tries to charge her truck-driver customers $1000 for something called the V.I.P. Room (mirrored ceilings, X-rated movies, the "Passion Chair," all the sex you could want, etc. When he proclaims that he's poor, she negotiates straight sex, for no more than 20 minutes, at a measly $60. When he pays her and she sees the amount of cash that he's carrying, the girl openly proclaims, "God, you shouldn't have shown me your wallet. You're not going to get out of here with all that."

And such is the business of a legal brothel in the desert near Las Vegas. The owner, Walter, is portrayed as a hungry businessman, talking seriously to one veteran girl who isn't making the grade and firing another right in front of the other girls. The viewer also gets a detailed view of the role of the madame; confidant to the girls and the one who really runs the business.