Review: Mila a la Croix In case we had any doubts that Jac needs money, this cynical piece of garbage should allay them in 1 minute. We read in the latest update on Red Feline's sales figures (in points, not dollars) that Mila a la Croix is a top seller (since it's the second newest title, that's no big surprise), but if the feline is red, folks, it's from pure embarrassment. I doubt that BakerBoy could watch 15 minutes of this crap and exhort us to support the studio that made it. Dr. Yuya would have to go out and buy a Wheel of Misfortune video just to get the taste out of his eyes. I love Mila--or I did in Marquis de la Croix and Maleficarum, where she stole the show. I had already decided Monxa Mala was beyond the pale, so I decided a film dedicated to Mila would be worth $24.90 and would support the artiste. This film runs an hour, and apparently, that's about how long it took to make it--and I include editing in that estimate...and makeup...and set and costumes. Mila spends a good 45 minutes of it standing against a pole. Yes, of course, she is whipped on the back then on the front (Jac never fails to demonstrate his creative chops). The pole, the dark background and the same little strip of votive candles I think Amy bought with some of Ralphus' money for Maleficarum (always a nice touch in a dungeon) in the background make up the set. When I say standing, I mean just standing there. She barely even emotes while the "whipping" takes place. Jac starts off (brilliantly disguised as the "Mad Monk" with a few strokes on Mila's back, then he gestures off camera and the Mean Nun trots onscreen to take the whip. I was pretty sure this was an outtake, but that assumes there WERE any outtakes because the nun carried on with the whipping while someone jerked the camera around a bit. I'm not talking about pans here. Literally jerked, as if he had never used a tripod or someone had forgotten to lubricate the head for a decade or so. There were also some zooms in and out, just small ones that obviously should have been edited out, but there wasn't time for that, obviously. The "whipping" was worse than usual, even for RF. Lightly laying the tails in contact with her body, but someone bought some sound effects, so it sounds as if a concrete wall is being beaten with a bullwhip--every stroke the same. Hard to imagine Mila could stand such brutal strokes, but she doesn't seem to notice them. Turned around, she is whipped by both the monk and the nun, he with a single-tail and she with a flogger for some time, changing sides once for some reason, and eventually Mila whimpers a bit but her wonderful expressive body didn't show up for work that day. Aside from that 6-7 minutes of thrilling stuff, Mila stands as the camera makes jerky pans to show us the damage done to her (fake blood, big surprise). Then after everyone gets tired of that (got to run it out to an hour total, I guess) they bring some odd thing to act as a pony, which seems to cause her way more pain than it looks like it should. Then she stands around on that for quite a while. Then she is attached to a crossbar and nailed (ho hum) and that's the cross. Almost as soon as the hour of film is finished, we fade out. There is no story. There is no acting. Apparently, they didn't even bother to use makeup to cover Mila's rather prominent and colorful tattoos--but for a guy who has tires and Ace Hardware pliers in his inquisition flicks, what's a big tattoo? The music sounds like a turtle walking across the bass keys of a synthesizer...over and over for an hour. My favorite bit showing the commitment of Jac to his kraft (cheesy macaroni) is in the super-basic discipline of continuity. The only images I'm going to show with this "review" are pics of Mila's whipped body, both with the cross bar attached to her hands. She hasn't been touched in a long (looonnngg) time, but notice that the marks are completely different in a matter of minutes! When Amy was with Vermeerworks, or Pachamama or Red Feline or whatever it is, the professionalism was a big issue. The quality of cameras and sound and the attention to detail. This snoozefest shows us the level of commitment Jac has to the work.