Tory Lane

As you might imagine, evaluating performers in adult films is not the same as critiquing acting in mainstream films. An adult performer is asked to expose themselves doing what most people would never allow others to see. While film actors don't really shoot guns at each other or go through plate-glass windows, adult performers actually do have sex on camera. However, they can fake the emotions involved. That is why, in my view, the exceptional performers are those who appear not to be faking anything.

One of those performers is Tory Lane. A former stripper from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Lane is twenty-five years old and already has over 270 films to her credit. She is not, on first appearance, the type that I normally go for. She has obviously phony boobs, which is usually a turn-off to me, and her face is not what I would call conventionally beautiful. She has a kind of malleable face that can take on many looks, and thus I would be hard pressed to describe her to a police sketch-artist. She also has a tough, city-girl edge to her, and her dark brown eyes and swagger suggest she comes from Italian stock. In high school she was probably the kind of girl who hung out smoking in the girls' bathroom and dated the dropouts who rode motorcycles and had tattoos.

All that being said, she is also a fantastic adult performer, and leaves everything on the screen. Of her voluminous output, I have perhaps ten of her films, and they display a pretty wide spectrum, I think. I first took notice of her in something called I Know You're Watching 5, which has the girl talking directly into the camera during their scenes, something that the habitual onanist appreciates. I was struck how the camera loves her, and she can command attention with her expression and the way she speaks. One is beyond the help of Viagra if this scene can't arouse. And though Lane frequently comes off as a tough chick, she is quite adept at showing a tender, sensual side in films like The Enchantress and University of Austyn (although in the latter film it is really pushing it to cast her as a cheerleader--teen films aren't her proper milieu. Since she has a bit of a hardened look I would expect her to slide into the MILF category shortly).

Most performers aren't called upon to do much acting these days in x-rated fare, but occasionally they are, and Lane even shows she has the basic ability found in most community theater productions. The only film of hers I have where she has to actually deliver a long scene of dialogue is in the cleverly titled The DaVinci Load, and she is quite convincing as a hooker. Well, not really much of a stretch, I guess.

But Lane's best work is in the scenes that allow her to go completely batshit, where if you just had the sound on you wouldn't know if she was having sex or going through an exorcism. In Nikki Hunter's film Ravenous she is Hunter's "bitch," led into the room on a leash. This kind of stuff is too strong for the faint-hearted, but I find it riveting the way she completely abandons herself into the role. And it doesn't get any better than her scene in Slave Dolls 2, another film in which she is a submissive, this time to Mark Davis.

In an interview in Adam Magazine (I am a contributing editor, under the name Alex Portnoy), Lane comes across as a free-wheelin' gal who also, believe it or not, is a certified medical technician. She proudly calls herself a whore, and when asked what she would be doing if she weren't in adult films, says she would be a stripper or a housewife--"barefoot and pregnant." She also doesn't come across as a dumb bunny, and talks about saving her money. She does make a few miscues, though. In one film she is in a scene that is featured in the extras as deleted. She was supposed to have anal sex, but can't go through with it. Turns out she had jalapeno pizza the night before, so a lesson to us all. Her other orifices remained open for business, though.