Legendary director Joe Gage's talent is still as fanciful as ever and his one-of-a-kind talent works particularly well for "Closed Set: The New Crew." And one of the nice touches here is the exposé of porn-making itself, from the cheeky pseudo-performances of stars pretending to be members of the crew to the sound of the director's voice telling everyone what to do. Somehow, all of this clever exploitation-from-the-inside adds urgency to the sex itself, keeping it fully raw and enticing.

Michael Brandon teasingly walks down a street when he sees Carlos Morales in a window. They make eye contact and Michael enters the building -- the Steamworks in Chicago [ http://www.SteamworksOnline.com ], natch -- following Carlos to a room where Sean Storm is already naked and jacking himself off. And, just like that, things get going with super-hung Brandon, perfectly chiseled Morales and ever-ready Storm. Michael does the initial blowing, on Carlos, deep-throating the heck out of thick Carlos as Carlos grabs onto Sean's very hard cock. Michael lets Sean share with him for a second before it's time to reveal his own monster. Sean is soon on his knees, licking Michael like a piece of candy before opening wide and sucking as much as he can. Sean attacks Michael, undaunted when Carlos also thrusts his cock in his face. Michael then blows Sean, slurping him down with sublime ease, and then Michael and Sean tumble over each other to make sure everyone is sucked.

Suddenly, a cameraman appears, shown filming the action, just as Michael and Sean share Carlos, and then Michael rims Carlos. Sean then turns his ass toward the other boys and both take advantage of licking the white perky devil. Then you hear direction. Carlos, Sean and Michael are still engaged in their action, and the cameraman is revealed to be Damian Ford, and he, still filming, is roped into the action with Sean giving him a blowjob. The action, with Michael slapping Carlos' peerless muscular butt, is never interrupted, but rather increased by the entrance of Damian and then Diego Alvarez as the boom mike operator. Diego, a gorgeous Latin man, with body that must have been cut from Italian marble, and a sex drive every bit as impressive, is a grand addition to things.

In quick succession, we are introduced to everyone else on the set -- the gaffer ("Big" Peter Dixon, a tall blond with a very big dick, hence the name), the location manager (Zach Davenport, a balding hunk with a drool-worthy mushroom-headed cock and low-hanging balls), the line producer (Steven Richards, a sexpot with bedroom eyes and a long dick), the VP of creative affairs (Blake Harper, looking woof-worthy in a suit), the rigging grip (Rory Park, an average guy with a lot of spunk) and the best boy electric (Chad Hunt, a man with easily the biggest and hardest cock of the video), the key grip (Colton Ford, a total hottie, enough said) and pony-tailed Duke (an average guy with a nice plump dick).

Sean, Michael and Carlos seamlessly fold Duke, Diego and Damian into the action, with the director's voice calmly telling everyone what to do. Michael blows Duke, with Carlos soon joining, Sean is still going strong as ever on uncut Diego, but soon enough discovers he wants Damian, so Carlos gets to take over on Diego. When Damian cums kissing Diego, things do not end. Instead, Diego gets to fuck Sean, while standing over Damian, who has the second camera. Thus, we get to see the fuck from the standing position, but also from the grainy hand-held camera Damian uses inches from the boys. Diego fucks the stuffing out of Sean, but with his hips grinding and such a sense of ease about the whole thing. Just watching him work gets Duke to cum on Sean's body, and then Diego follows. But, Damian has some effort left in him and he sucks Diego with Sean for assist, Diego face-fucking Damian with grand style. Diego cums right above Damian's face and this part of the scene temporarily ends on a very high note.

The second scene is something a little different. Colton Ford passes a room of glory holes, and is presented with three very big cocks, one black one, one long straight one and one gigantic curved one (Beau, Nick Piston and Rick Strong, in that order). So, naturally, he blows them. Each one has a different shape, so Colton works different magic on each of them. With the noises left in, he's extremely sturdy, interesting cops Ben Archer and Adam Wolfe when they come in. They can't help but whip out their cocks watching Colton furiously darting back and forth on his knees to please all three dicks. Wonderful jazzy music by Sharon Kane creates a mood almost the opposite of the manic frivolity of the earlier scene, as if we are being told this is our time to regroup between the big scenes. Anyway, Colton is a man possessed and he never tires of these three dicks. Rick has the best of the three shots, and, needless to say, Colton is splattered by cum when all are done. However, Colton is far from finished. He ambles over to Ben and starts to play with his cock. The dicks of Ben and Adam are no less demanding than the three huge pieces with which he's just finished, but Colton wears a big smile and soon enough Ben and Adam do the same. Ben gives him a little break by joining him on Adam for a while. With no hands, they slide the cock back and forth between their mouths. Adam is the first to get a crack at Colton, up to now dressed completely. And Adam turns in an excellent blow when sucking that thick cock of Colton's. Then Ben gets Colton's muscular ass and with his thick mustache leading the way, he gives Colton a fine rim. Then Adam and Ben stand over Colton and each drop a load on one of his asscheeks.

(The main action has continued while Colton was busy. The editing throughout trots back and forth between the men and time and space so fleetingly, just as if you were in a big orgy room for the first time.)

While the first scene was happening, Peter and Zach seemed to be admiring each other, so blond Peter finally blows Zach, joined by Sean a second later. Sean opens wide for these two big cocks as Blake tells the camera "keep rolling." Steven, Rory and Chad have their pistons ready for action, and finally Diego takes on Rory as Colton rejoins the action and finds Blake.

Now, Colton and Blake have a very interesting sub-scene. Just a few feet away from everyone else, they are as slow-paced as everyone else is furious. For a long time, they merely touch each other, fully clothed, then spending lots of time stroking each other's cocks. Looking deep into each other's eyes and never breaking that trance, they have clearly found something that has nothing to do with the rest of the action, and this passion is a nice addition to the sex around it. Their heavy petting leads to real contact when Colton rims Blake's asshole, or rather fucks it with his tongue. They go zero-to-sixty in half the time as Colton pokes away orally. This leads to hardcore fucking from Colton, majorly plowing Blake but making it look as easy as pie. Colton works him over very nicely. The two of them work up oodles of sweat and their particular chemistry doesn't ebb, in fact increasing itself every time one of them looks over at the group action and gets more inspired.

Watch Diego deep-throating all over the place. He's a fantastic performer, whether presented with one dick or, as will come later, two dicks. Peter blows Chad and does a spectacular job, equal to Diego's stretching. For a while, we watch Diego on Rory, Sean on Zach, Zach on Chad and then Peter on Chad, with all so impressive, all filmed by Damian's camera. As if Chad weren't enough for Peter, he soon has both Chad and Steven to suck, making him so far the hardest worker of the gang. Sean sticks his infamous ass in the air and Zach plays with it as Sean snarls at the camera. So, Damian films Zach rimming Sean with big tongue laps and fingers inserted now and then. Far be it from Diego to be selfish, so he shares his sucking with Peter, nearly his equal here in ability, but soon after that, Diego moves on to blowing two cocks at once. There is a fantastic shot from between the bodies of the two guys he's sucking that shows Diego's eyes opened fully, as if surveying how he's going to handle both the guys at once. More and more mutations from the rest of the guys ensue, with most of the guys taking turns giving blowjobs, and since everyone in this room has a gigantic cock, it's all lusty and real.

As for those other guys, no one stays still very long. By the time you figure out which cock we're watching again, the positions change, because these guys thankfully can't keep still with so many other wonderful performers in the room.

Chad sure wants to fuck Diego, who is blowing everyone in the room, so he dry-humps him so furiously he's in danger of cumming already, with the omnipresent Damian underneath them catching it all. But, Damian is the one who gets to fuck, and he takes on the bottom of the bottoms here, Sean Storm. After a little time of this, he cums on Sean just as a bunch of the other guys have geysered all over him. Damian then has to finger Sean to get him to cum. Everyone else finds a comfortable place in the room to blast his load, with the honest best belonging to Steven Richards.

Part of the orgy spirit is a dash of anonymity -- mouths, dicks, asses -- those are the stars of an orgy, not necessarily the faces. That is one thing director Gage seems to keep in mind throughout. And in doing so, he encourages you to watch everyone, and the great thing is that everyone is worth watching. Not one performer here seems out of place or underused, with everyone adding something to the proceedings. There are some easy heroes, but no one overwhelms the video other than the director. Meticulously prone to detail here, Gage manages tight control over these guys at the same time as giving them enough leeway to go for the hottest possible action they can muster.

A Video Review by Brent Blu

Widely considered the godfather of the cinematic group scene, legendary director Joe Gage concluded three of his early classics ( Kansas City Trucking Co., El Paso Wrecking Corp . and Heatstroke ) with a freewheeling orgy - and then outdid himself with Closed Set , his landmark production devoted strictly to group action. That 1980 release was the first of its kind and one of the best-selling tapes in the history of gay adult films. Now, nearly a quarter of a century later, Gage has organized another no-holds-barred pigout and assembled a herd of snake-dicked satyrs who simultaneously attack and film each other in an equally excessive marathon of indiscriminate, non-stop sexplay. It's called Closed Set: The New Crew.

And what a crew it is! The project begins with donkey-dicked Michael Brandon strolling down a drab little back street, through a nondescript iron door, up a flight of ancient stairs and onto the set of a porn film, where everyone, cast and crew alike, is hell-bent on having a piece of each other before the flick is wrapped. The moment Brandon enters the place, he jumps the ever-ready Carlos Morales and the boyish Sean Storm, both of whom are up and ready for action. One is a more talented cocksucker than the next, and the proceedings are off to a sizzling start.

Soon we begin to see the members of the crew - the cameraman (veteran Damian Ford), the boom operator (newcomer Diego Alvarez), the carpenter (pony-tailed, mononamed Duke), the line producer (Steve Richards), the vice president (Blake Harper), the key grip (grizzled Colton Ford), the best boy (big-dicked Chad Hunt) and assorted other grips and gaffers (blond Peter Dixon, balding Zach Davenport and boyish Rory Park). One by one, each of the behind-the-camera workers yields to the heat generated by the oncamera performers, eases into the action and still manages to get the film made. Effortlessly, hands find crotches, hard-ons sprout like jonquils on the first warm day of spring, mouths and assholes open up, and mirrors are used to great effect. Morales again proves himself a world-class deep-throat artist, Alvarez is the first to find an ass to fuck, and Brandon fires off the first money shot of the event. Effortlessly, the sexual heat has infected everyone present, including the viewer, who cannot help but feel that he is part of the group. A dizzying delight, this first third of the film is real you-are-there stuff.

And then key grip Colton Ford strolls off the set and into an adjacent area where he finds a glory hole room and chows down on a trio of anonymous, oversized, gag-inducing cocks - one black, two white. Clearly, he knows his way around such a place. Soon he realizes he has an audience - two security guards (the striking Adam Wolfe and a Donnie Russo look-alike, Ben Archer) - and with a wicked grin, he begins to perform for them, skillfully bringing the three anonymous cocks to orgasm as if he had just invented the handjob. That done, he turns to service Wolfe and Archer, who have already hauled their hard dicks out of their uniforms to watch, stroke and diddle with each other. Before the sequence has ended, all have gobbled on one another's oversized equipment, dabbled with a bit of ass-eating, and the guards have sprayed their equally copious loads on Ford's face.

As George Orwell once said, all pigs are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others. Although an orgy film tends to be an ensemble piece, that term proves not to be completely accurate in describing the new Closed Set. In this, the second third of the film, Ford takes focus and begins to stake out his claim as the star of the production.

During the final third of the film, back on the set, the action continues to spin forward with the momentum of a whirling dervish. Dixon and Davenport in particular play out an explosive oral skirmish, but Ford never strays far from the cameras' sights. Soon he has sidled up to Blake Harper, and their slow mutual seduction of each other - not-so-casual eye contact, sneaky groping, lecherous smiles, cautious opening of each other's fly and languid stroking gradually lead into some serious fucking. Ford drops Harper onto a table and after a round of tingling titplay, Harper lifts his legs to be rimmed. Ford's subsequent ass-eating, in which he demonstrates a host of techniques, is among the best analingual action ever captured on film. In particular, watch the way he tongue-drills Harper's crater of an asshole; it is one of the highlights of the entire tape. And then they fuck!. Their interplay is supercharged - clearly the result of two perfectly attuned sex machines who are lovers in real life. The last third of the film belongs to them - and particularly to Ford, whose money shot (only one of countless others, all impressive) is made memorable by the way Harper finger-fucks him to detonation.

The seemingly artless artistry of director Gage makes this wall-to-wall orgy film look spontaneous and free-wheeling, but the choreography is so inventive and the videography (by Ron Mann, Mark Jenson, and Damian Ford) is so right-on-the-mark that what happens throughout is certainly no accident. The cameras sail from grouping to grouping with such speed and abandon that one sometimes is not sure where to look first. There is an embarrassment of sexual riches - beautiful, big dicks attached to beautiful, uninhibited bodies wherever one looks!. What's more, the soundtrack is almost as arousing as the visuals: Heavy breathing, snippets of dirty talk, and under it all, unobtrusive music, as if someone had left a radio playing. Once again, director Gage has raised phallus worship to an art and recreational sex to a religion.  

- Jerry Douglas  

  EDITOR'S NOTE: Director Joe Gage's The Closed Set: The New Crew was shot at Chicago's Steamworks following the Memorial Day Weekend and the 2002 Grabby Awards show. Also that week MSR Video produced the soon to be released Prowl 3: Genuine Leather . Both videos featured a number of Chicago based porn stars in the starstuded casts.