LOS ANGELES—Atop a remote hill somewhere north of the San Fernando Valley, under distinctly Bonsai-esque trees on a makeshift training campground, adult industry legend Mike Horner is spitting sensei challenge-speak at a sweaty, buffed-out Ryan Reid.
“OK, so the rules are, first person to hit the dust loses. No breaks, no time outs, no excuses,” Horner commands Reid, pointing his cane at her.
“Fine by me,” she retorts.
This is one of the early scenes of Deadly Vows, Digital Playground and writer/director Ricky Greenwood’s tentpole project for 2025, and if it calls to mind some similarity to Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill ... well, that’s not by total coincidence.
“We’re trying to be a little bit different than Kill Bill, but I will say Deadly Vows is like a mix of all my love for action movies,” Greenwood tells us. “It’s a little bit of Kill Bill, it’s a little bit of Riki-Oh. Scott Nails has a patch like Snake Plissken [of John Carpenter’s Escape From... movies]. You can see all the references, like the jacket that Scott wears is kind of like First Blood.”
All of that duly noted, there’s still no denying that the parallels with Kill Bill are ... significant. Perhaps most predominantly by virtue of the character played by Elly Clutch—in her very first major acting role—known as “The Bride” (or, alternately, Ellen).
On getting into the character, Clutch laughs, “She’s a bit bitchier, I guess, than I am as a person. She has a lot of rage, she’s very angry. And, you know, a lot of people have done her wrong, and so she’s not really afraid to kind of, you know, take revenge. She’s a bit vengeful ... hotheaded. So I feel like I just tried to kind of like think of things that pissed me off.
“And I listened to a lot of music,” she continues, “I listened to a lot of Deftones and Hole on the way in, ’cause I had to get into the mindset of, you know, sexy but pissed off. ’Cause you can’t just be pure rage. You have to have the reasoning behind it. And they have to still be attracted to me, even though I’m pissed off. So, yeah ... a lot of music.”
In terms of role preparation, though, no cast member underwent anything more strenuous than Reid, who takes on her first leading role as Sarah, a scrappy street urchin of sorts she describes as “sassy and cunty and, like, little miss know-it-all ... like, me. Literally, me.”
To get into fighting shape (also quite literally) for the role, Reid endured three months of rigorous training twice a week for two hours at a time, on top of 6 a.m. workouts.
“I was like, holy fuck, how am I going to survive this movie?” she recalls. “I was learning different types of boxing, punches, kicks ... how to take a punch, how to throw a punch. And then, something I haven’t done in years—which is crazy, that life is such a full-circle situation—I did cheerleading growing up, and I learned how to tumble for that. So I was able to learn how to tumble again. So I’m doing some flips that was supposed to be like a stunt double, but I ended up learning them just in time to do my own tricks and my own stunts.”
To be fair, Reid wasn’t the only one who went through training—both Clutch and recently back-in-action power performer Yhivi worked for five days with top male star and stunt coordinator Nathan Bronson, alongside several other trainers, to learn some complex fighting maneuvers.
“I had to learn to swordfight a bit,” Clutch shares. “Which is really cool, and I absolutely was up for the challenge.”
She goes on to compliment Yhivi on her fist-throwing, telling her, “You’re really good at the fighting ... the punching.”
“Really?” Yhivi beams. “Cool! Thank you! The whole time, I’m like, ‘Doing my best.’ I hope so. I have such high standards for myself.”
She continues, “That’s something in the movie I had to really be more realistic about, ’cause there were so many times with the stunt coordinators where they were like, ‘You don’t have to do this.’ And I was like, ‘But I want to.’ And they were like, ‘Yes, and you can try, however this takes people like 10-plus years to figure out. And I’m like, ‘OK, but let me try.’
“And I will say one of the kicks, they were like, ‘Actually, you’re good enough to do that, you should do it,” she adds with a grin.
Greenwood says that because of all this fight training and choreography, Deadly Vows is actually a more ambitious project than his last few big-budget Digital Playground efforts, Project X and the AVN Grand Reel winning Gold Diggers (2025) and Machine Gunner (2024).
“It’s a lot ... it’s guns, it’s fighting, it’s a lot of training, we have stunt doubles for almost everybody,” he explains. “It’s just a lot to manage in the amount of time we have. It’s the same amount of time to shoot this movie that we had for Machine Gunner or Project X, but it’s just way more ambitious, because fighting takes time. It takes time to shoot that properly, safely. So that’s what is challenging.”
Beyond that, he adds, “I designed all the costumes ... you know, normally the costume is like everyday type of thing, like military or cops, so I just kind of grab that. Now, I was trying to have original costumes for everybody.”
Furthermore, he divulges, “We built each set. Nothing was shot in an apartment or a house, everything is built from scratch. We rent a warehouse for two weeks, and we build the set inside—the bathroom, the master bedroom, the bar, the tearoom, everything was built from scratch.
“It was very challenging, but everybody was 100 percent onboard and giving you all the energy they can. ... I think people will be impressed. If you like action movies, for sure. It’s a martial arts, like action movie from the ’80s, basically.”
“Something porn has never seen,” Reid chimes in.
“Yeah, hopefully,” Greenwood smiles. “I think it will be surprising. I hope people like it, for sure.”
Deadly Vows is rolling out throughout September on DigitalPlayground.com.
Photos: Mad Creativity
