Porn producers and directors usually shy away from any material with more depth than "Can he keep it up long enough for me to get 10 minutes of usable footage?"

James Avalon is not one of these people.

Faced with the challenge of revisiting one of the longest-running series in porn, Taboo, in its 21st year, Avalon posits a slightly-futuristic society where even thinking about sex is a crime. Naturally, there are thought police - "thoughtbusters" - able to break into people's thoughts as they involve themselves in such nefarious activities and bust them, adding a pop to the pop, as it were. Nicole Sheridan is one of the thoughtbusters, witnessing a scene between two perverts as a computerized voice details exactly what's going on in dry technical language: "The male takes his reproductive organ...."

After this prologue, a breathless narrator sets the scene, reading a flaming crawl about the heroic thought police and their responsibilities before Nicole Sheridan goes into the HQ and is briefed by top-kick Voodoo - hey, wasn't he just busted in the sex scene a minute ago? Sheridan has an answer: There's a lot of cloning going on nowadays - about bad guy Madame Fetish (Syren) and the place where these thought crimes - and body crimes too - are taking place. Sheridan puts on a pair of cyber-goggles and is transported there. Mme. Fetish is very strict, as you can tell from the two people she is leading on leashes. To emphasize the point, she says, "There is an interloper here," and flips a noose over a guy's head and zoop up he goes into the rafters.

In a clever knockoff of 2001, three space-helmeted girls approach a large cloth phallus while a synthesized version of Also Sprach Zarathustra plays in the background. They touch the phallus, then start to play with themselves and a lucky guy. After they're finished, Sheridan gets zapped back to her non-sex reality, and absently starts to caress herself. "I started to think like a perv, and that filled me with dread. And that got me thinking...." She goes back to the salon, where she is seduced with Madame Fetish's words while they watch two b.j.s going on side-by-side. She comes back, shaken.

Her conflict is made worse when she is ordered to go undercover - so to speak - to trap Madame Fetish. Even thinking about sex is a crime, and now she has to Do It. She wants to - and she doesn't want to. She only has one split-second to apprehend Madame Fetish (who might be only an electronic phantasm, you never know around here) and if they meld together and Sheridan doesn't capture her, she may get the upper hand and Sheridan could lose herself forever.

The visuals in Taboo 2001 are stunning, with electronic effects applied to the film. Pre-nom to Phil Leader for his up-front editing, including flash frames, strobing, and intercutting. Pre-nom to Avalon for his thought-provoking script. Sex scene count is inexact, because of the nature of the material: Is Nicole Sheridan looking in a mirror and masturbating while she fantasizes about having sex with Voodoo, which we see, one scene or two?

Taboo 2001 deserves to be ranked with the '70s Golden Age films. It's fun, it's hot, and it makes you think with both heads. And that's what made the '70s Golden Age.