Janine and Vince Neil

Now that we are living in an age where we can take video with our cell phones, the purloined home-made sex tape is almost becoming ubiquitous. I recently was on a web site that chronicled those that have been released and those that have been rumored (including one with Ted Turner and Jane Fonda) and the list is quite long. But about fifteen years ago, when I was well-ensconced as an editor at Penthouse and an adult film critic, the concept was nascent.

The first to hit was Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee's, which I dutifully saw. It is still probably the most famous, the most talked about home movie since the Zapruder film. It's also kind of a mess, a long sludge through boring stuff with a couple of minutes of eye-popping hard-core action. I think the most salient thing about it was the revelation of the size of Lee's member. It is certainly impressive that he can steer a boat with it.

The second one to come out, and in my eyes still the best, is the video capturing some fun Janine Lindemulder and Vince Neil had on a Hawaiian vacation. This is to be expected, since Janine is a major adult film star. She obviously learned from her directors about lighting and camera angles. The awkward hand-held stuff that Pam and Tommy take part in is instead replaced by a camera set on a flat surface, with Janine very conscious of what she wants the center of attention to be.

I'll never forget the first time I saw it. The tape starts off with Janine and Vince enjoying a helicopter ride over lush Hawaiian landscape, and then spending some time on a black lava beach. There is a third member of their party, another blonde who is frequently in the distance. Then we see Vince feeding her his member, though her face is pixillated out. Who is she?

The action then cuts to their hotel room. Vince is bouncing on the bed in tighty-whities, which Janine proceeds to rip off of him. Then they get down to business. For those in the adult film world, it was a big deal, because although Janine had made dozens of titles, she only performed with women. It was heartening to see she could cater to men with equal skill.

After they've been at it about twenty minutes, the third person hops into bed. Her face is still blurred, but I knew who it was instantly--Brandy Ledford, aka Brandy Sanders, aka Jizel, Penthouse Pet of the Year. The blurring wasn't too obfuscating, and I had studied her body in pictures so much I knew it anywhere. Brandy was, and remains, my favorite Penthouse Pet ever, and now she was about to engage in a hard-core threesome right before my eyes. It was an electric moment for a porn-guy like myself.

I've owned the VHS for years but recently picked up the DVD version (will I one day have to get it on Blu-Ray?) It reminds me of certain things: that is an advertisement for boys everywhere to get into rock bands, especially heavy metal bands with umlauts in their names; that I once met Janine, at a strip club in Manhattan, where she was performing with her partner, Julia Ann, in an act they called Blondage. She was very nice and appreciated me delivering to her a magazine containing an interview I did with her. She still performs, although she is now nearly covered in tattoos, and she does perform with men.

As for Brandy, I never quite got a chance to meet her. I once had occasion to call her, and got her voicemail, and once when I was walking out of the Penthouse office she was sitting at the reception desk, waiting for someone. I was too dumbfounded to say anything, she was so beautiful. I have to give her a lot of credit, because she has managed to forge an acting career in the mainstream world, appearing in TV series like Baywatch Hawaii and Andromeda. Given that for a while in the nineties photos of her with her knees up around her ears appeared in phone-sex ads in countless porno rags, that's a pretty good climb. Today she describes herself on her web-site as a Christian. From what I understood, Janine and Neil sold their home-made tape without her permission (which is why her face is blurred) which is probably something that can end a friendship.

I've seen a few of the other celebrity sex tapes, such as Paris Hilton, Jenna Lewis, and bits of the Keely Hazell tape, but the Janine-Vince-Brandy tape remains the best.