Over the years, I've become a fan of the work of Dan Hawke. With now 40 video productions to his credit, he has tied up and given his special treatment to quite a few bondage models. When I decide on which of his videos I want to see, I'm pretty careful to pick only pick the tapes with models that ring my bell, like Bound and Busted's Brandy Dean and Bound on Blonde's Beth St. John. I enjoyed those tapes even more because I really liked seeing those girls get tied up and suffer.
Recently, I got a chance to see DH37: The Trouble With Cybil. And the trouble with this one, for me anyway, was that the woman cast as the victim did absolutely nothing for me. With her short dirty blonde hair, she resembles "Dharma and Greg's" Jenna Elfman, so if anyone has a Jenna Elfman bondage fantasy, this is your tape. Myself, I don't find her even remotely attractive at all, so this tape had little chance of succeeding with me. Couple that with the fact that Jen...er...Cybil...has a prominent tattoo over her left breast and there's another big strike against it. But I'll try to be fair and rate it on its own merits, which are considerable, especially if you like Hawke's brand of bondage punishment.
The tape opens with Dan leading a handcuffed Cybil into his warehouse and securing her to an overhead beam with a bondage collar. He removes some of her clothing and gives her a light whipping after she refuses his gag. Once she's gagged with a red ball gag, he gets to work on securing her. He ties her legs apart and her arms over her head to the beam above, and strips her down to show her red underwear. Then he tears off her bra and slaps her tits a bit. Taking a pair of scissors, he taunts her by pretending to use them on her nipples, but instead he just cuts away the rest of her clothes.
Next, Dan ties up her boobs with rope, making them stick out prominently and become engorged. Cybil gives a wildly over the top performance, screaming shrilly though her gag while Dan gives her some slight nipple tweaking with a surgical clamp and a spiked pinwheel. I like to hear some reactions, but if she makes that much noise over some nipple stimulation, how the heck did she ever deal with getting that large tattoo on her chest?
If you were to watch the tape with the picture blocked out and just listen to the sound, you would probably guess that Cybil was being burned with a red hot iron for all the noise she makes in reacting to Dan's relatively mild tortures. Dan then uses a little brush on her tits, then puts some clamps on a chain on her nipples and hangs a small weight off it.
He follows this up by cutting off her panties and adorning her pussy lips with mousetraps, tying them off with a line to her toes, so that it is stretched out. She is forced to stand in this position for almost 10 minutes while the camera records her reactions.
In the next scene, Dan ties her standing next to a wooden column, with her hands behind her and her legs tied apart with a spreader bar. A crotch rope is put between her legs, which Dan ties off to a pulley above to make her a bit more uncomfortable. She is gagged with a ring gag, buckled around her neck.
At this point, Dan opens up a dark case and produces one of those electric violet wands, which he uses all over her body and makes her scream with every touch onto her skin. It's kind of fun to watch her react to every zap. Then Dan adds a rake attachment to the wand and tortures her tits and pussy with it, getting the best noises when he uses it between her legs.
Afterward, he tightens up the rope between her legs, adds some clamps to her nipples and leaves to make her stay in this position for a while, as we get several angles of her struggling.
In the next scene, Cybil is again ballgagged, and Dan ties her on her knees, with her wrists roped in back and attached to the column behind her. He ties a rope through her crotch and tightens it to a pulley above her, so that she's sort of anchored on her knees. Then he leaves her there to deal with it for several more minutes.
The final scene has her tied standing with her legs split with a spreader bar. Dan ties her hands above her and loops them over another bar, tying them off to the rope through her crotch. Then she uses a blue whip on her body, followed by a riding crop. Whipping scenes have never been Dan's strong forte; the whipping is a bit wimpy and unconvincing, although Cybil still wails as though he's really hurting her.
He finishes it out by making her count the number of blows he gives to her ass. This smacks of B&D master/slave sessions and away from the abductor/villain scenario, which bored me and turned me off.
Dan has the right ingredients in this one, he just chose the wrong victim, IMO. I've said it before; it all comes down to proper casting to make one of these things work. Someone who finds Cybil appealing may very well enjoy this tape a lot more than I did.