We're a little unclear what this excellent film by Paul Thomas may have to do with the Joseph Conrad novel, but watching Randy Spears' swift descent into his own personal "heart of darkness" is a lot like being witness to a slow-motion train wreck: You hate seeing it happen, but somehow, you can't force yourself to look away.

    Spears is a sex addict. The opening credits have scarcely run out when Spears has waitress Sunrise Adams in the back room of his bar groping him and giving him a blowjob. Doggie quickly (and we do mean quickly) follows, then reverse cowgirl, more b.j. and a messy facial that soaks Adams from nose to ear - but for Spears, that's just the beginning of a sharp decline that, by feature's end, finds him divorced and under arrest - and it's all due to his voracious sexual appetite.

 
    After she cleans up, Adams demands some appreciation for having put out, but Spears is fresh out, and when the blonde makes a scene in his barroom, Spears fires her, calls the cops and has her physically removed from the premises. But why do Adams' threats cause a shiver to run up Spears' spine?

 
    Perhaps it's because although Spears claims to love wife Ava Vincent, who's in the early stages of pregnancy, he can't seem to stay away from the women. When he can't pick them up in the bar, there's a little hooker hangout he can cruise at a local warehouse, which is where he meets Crystal Carter, who's just as hot and horny as Spears and has no qualms about demonstrating it.

 
    But there's also another hooker in Randy's life: The delectable Dru Berrymore, who operates almost as a Greek chorus (sorry, no anal here) as Spears tells her his problems. She's the only one who sees him sliding into the sexual abyss, but she also seems only too willing to act as a facilitator; for instance, by letting Spears peep on one of her domination sessions with Mickey G. It starts with Mickey masked and fastened to a cross-beam, moves through his watching Dru impale herself on a dildo and climaxes with his fucking her ass doggie style.

 
    Spears' downfall accelerates once he finally gets it on with Carter, even if it's just a quick grope and b.j. by the loading dock door. But when Carter happens to drop into Spears' bar for a tall one, they wind up one-on-one after hours in a booth for doggie, reverse cowgirl, mish and anal mish before he splooges all over her face and mouth.

 
    Another interesting aspect of Spears' personality is his hypocrisy. He has no problem getting Carter to talk dirty to him as she's pleasuring herself on the bed with her dildo (and, incidentally, putting on a show for a couple of neighbor guys), but when he's fucking Vincent over the kitchen counter and she begs him to treat her like a dirty whore, he pulls away, screaming, "If I wanted a whore in my bed, I would have married one! Try being a lady, can't you?"

 
    Well, there's plenty more; even a couple of surprises we don't want to spoil. The film runs only a touch over an hour and a quarter, but there's so much sexual heat packed into every scene that it seems longer - especially since we wanted to linger over Ralph Parfait's lush videography. Score a pre-nom for him, for writer Raven Touchstone's screenplay, for director Paul Thomas, for Spears (Best Actor), for Berrymore (Best Supporting), for Spears' and Carter's first full sex scene, and of course, Best Film. This is simply Thomas' best work of late, possibly because it feels as if it might be partly autobiographical - but it shows that the old master hasn't lost his touch.

 
    Marketing: A sexual phantasmagoria that'll have couples glued to their chairs - with cum.