The best porn picture in recent years? I haven’t seen too many projects that come as close to being as subversively entertaining as Corruption which has garnered 16 AVN nominations, www.corruptionmovie.com.

Its lead character, David Walker Helms, could be the name of a serial killer or a Republican senator running for president of the United States. In this spine rattling movie of rich directorial moods and textures from Sex Z Pictures, it’s a close call with the refs double-checking the monitors. Helms, played with a sleazy and sinister dry ease by Bryn Pryor, is a senator with a lofty sense of his destiny.

But Helms, who’s as unfamiliar to a grin as the presidents on Mt. Rushmore, is also equipped with the heart of a man inclined to dispose of bodies with little qualm or quandary. Helms, whose penchant for refuse removal rivals Tony Soprano’s, has placed himself on a perch high above his peers [“they’re piles of shit stuffed in overpriced suits,” says Helms]. Yeah, this guy’s a real algorithm of social engineering.

Though for all his insistence on riding the patrician high ground, Helms has a dirty little secret. Though not like most politicians who tend to be a little more discreet with their affairs.

On the contrary. Helms, with bullet-proof nonchalance, parades his indiscretions like Rudolph balloons in a Santa Claus parade. The house trollop [literally], a prime candidate for the psychosexual compost heap, is Natasha [Hillary Scott] who spreads her ass cheeks or sucks cock on command.

With the presidential nominations looming, Scott becomes a liability in the eyes of Helms’ staff and especially his wife, Carolyn. Played by Kylie Ireland, Carolyn Helms is the cold, calculating Lady Macbeth in this Shakespearean melodrama that clocks in at four hours running time with a count of 13 energy-draining sex scenes. This includes an astoundingly rendered orgy that alphabetizes a list of sexual perversions including loads of fisting [Arianna Jollee doing her own ass and Kylie Ireland taking two fists in her snatch] and co-educational butt stuffing.

In the course of human events, Scott has successfully compromised one of Helms’ money guys Paul Gennero [Herschel Savage] by getting his good side on hidden camera. In exchange for financial support, Gennero wants Helms to overturn a position on an environmental bill but that ain’t gonna happen, knowing Helms. With Scott an obviously valuable tool in the blackmail-extortion game, you can imagine why Helms is turning a deaf ear to his assistant Alana Evans when she begs Helms to distance himself from Hillary. Except Helms is as possessive of Scott as some guys are of their Topps ’57 Mickey Mantle cards.

“It’s not open for debate,” Helms tells her, then has Evans demean herself with a little striptease action and a solo d.p. since Helms is all about mind control and pushing ripe buttons.

And this is one of the intriguing and conflicting aspects of the Helms character- where you keep asking yourself what this attachment to Scott’s all about- because you sense in her a connived enthusiasm. With Helms, a control freak ready to risk his entire career, it begs a question that I don’t think is really satisfactorily answered in a script that, otherwise, cynically views politics and human nature through this mordant prism.

An investigative reporter played by James Deen has shot compromising pics which could bring Helms down. Deen shadows Scott who’s been kidnapped and taken to a thoroughly inhospitable warehouse with drippy plumbing [think Hostel or Casino Royale] where Ireland satisfies some over the top lesbo cravings at the expense of Scott’s rectum. Deen rescues Scott and becomes something of her knight in shining armor. Scott, who thinks she’s falling in love with Deen, though emotionally grafted to Helms, explains that she’s a payoff of a sort to Helms because her father was in debt to him. Yet you sense there’s much more to this scenario, and this is why the word “sequel” rears its head.

Meanwhile Deen has left his fingerprints all over the scene of Ireland’s crime, and Helms has him tortured to death with battery cables. He casually hands Scott photographic proof. And Scott realizes the monster she’s embraced. And true to his soullessness, Helms can only be a detached, Gatsby-esque observer at the orgy celebrating his political triumph.