EvolutionErotica. D. Guy Capo. Felicia Fox, Demi Marks, Vandalia, Gen Padova, Olivia O’Lovely, Cherry Poppins, Liza Harper, Vicki Vogue, Summer Nite.

I remember seeing Guy Capo’s demo reel earlier this year [and you can too in this two DVD-set package] and remarking to myself that this handsome sonofabitch had it. Had it all. Had the instincts, the rhythm, the camera eye and, particularly, the sense of timing so undervalued in porn and possessed by very few directors in the business.

And now, having said that, I curse Capo by pronouncing him a porno wunderkind. Which is pretty much the same noose Orson Welles’ young neck was put in after Citizen Kane. Welles wound up doing wine commercials and wearing very large cummerbunds. The worst capacity I can envision Capo in is making very good porn or excellent porn after the auspicious debut of American Gunk which features Ron Jeremy as a Santa Monica-style Elvis with karate moves far too enthusiastic for his waistline.

To the tune of Capo’s cleverly hip sense of the absurd, Jeremy, his fright wig and curled-lip snarl are called upon to shit stick Vicki Vogue’s ass over a toilet seat after he’s seduced her on the beach with a charisma that’s rather suspect.

For the rest of it, to borrow the worst of all cliches but the best you can summon on short notice, is to label Capo’s American Gunk an American porn classic. Technically, visually, emotionally, it grabs you by the ears, knocks the wind out of your diaphragm, sticks a finger in your ass and twangs Yankee Doodle Dandy with your nose hairs.

No cosmetically endowed face walks out of here alive- which is what you can say for the ladies of the cast all of whom must have sent the price of Max Factor soaring for copious mascara damage. In a spoof of reality TV, Ted Hunter looks like something Mel Gibson kicked out of the clan in Braveheart. As a lumbering menace on par with Big Foot, Towers ransacks the body of Gen Padova in a documentary-turned-nightmare scene that features Towers hoisting her on his shoulders upside down for a standing 69-count.

And while other porn vehicles have tried making statements about the government’s insistent meddling in bedrooms, Capo’s movie changes the sheets and does it with a uniquely styled 21 gun salute to hypocrisy and censorship. A free speech organization looking for a mission statement would do well to study Capo’s lively monologue on the state of current events, a segment which comes sandwiched between some other very brilliant, nominations-worthy material.

Besides all the obvious glad-handing Capo’s project so richly deserves, is perhaps the trite observation that of all the gonzo movies to enter the adult market since the adoption of the term [my idea, by the way,] Capo’s is what gonzo was originally supposed to have been- a free-wheeling video magazine-style exercise executed with blase whimsy. Within this style and context, Capo bobs and weaves with visual audacity and dervish editing.

He shoots pretty [the scene of Felicia Fox masturbating is one of the best solos ever committed to tape]. He shoots rugged. Cherry Poppins’ esophagus is flagellated by Rick Master’s cock- a scene which registers very high on the discomfiture index. Capo shoots retro. You’d swear the opening orgy where Summer Nite’s ass gets clobbered with cock and Vandalia strums her clitoris like a banjo-playing minstrel on The Mississippi Queen, came out of a 42nd Street porn house from the Seventies.

And on a timely note, since Howard Stern made an issue of it this week on his radio show, Capo lobbies on behalf of music’s efficacy in porn with an inspiring soundtrack that blasts your shorts into sonic outer space. In other words, proving, if nothing else, that when it comes to porn, Stern should keep his uneducated opinions to himself.