A strong script and some half-decent sex raise Backdoor to Hollywood above the average shot-on-video feature on the market today. A phantom-of-the-opera type character kills a famous Hollywood director, and it's up to a lonely police inspector to solve the mysterious murder. This is a novel premise, but some loose ends and a few minor editing glitches keep this from being a great sexvid.

Mike DeMarco is the cop who solves the case through diligent investigative work . . . I think. He uses unreasonable deductive reasoning to find who the killer is, and a motive is never established. The only person with a motive is the director's boss, Trinity Loren, who's being blackmailed by the director (Eric Edwards) over a porno movie she made several years before. DeMarco learns about Loren's nymphomania (her reason for making the porn movie), and he takes advantage of the information and Loren in a scene secretly watched by the killer. Loren's other sex scene in Backdoor (her "porno movie") steams the video screen and features the killer (whose identity I won't reveal). This would have made a good motive (the killer, in love with Loren, kills Edwards to protect her), but apparently scriptwriter Philip Dennis Connors didn't think so.

Although the title would have you believe otherwise, there is not a lot of backdoor action here. Tami White's opening fantasy segment with Edwards features anal, and is one of the best scenes in the video. And Keli Richards also performs an anal scene (What a surprise!). Piano-playing Peter North's scene with Crystal Lee is slinky and hot, but is totally irrelevant to the story.

Overall, director Wolfgang Gower (listed as Gerald Wayne on the box) does a nice job. His use of fuzzy outdoor shots that jump look cheap, but this problem rarely interferes with the story or the sex. A good video to rent!