Painful Duel 8 cast two of the most popular doms on the Mood Pictures/ElitePain roster; Amanda who has some of the best power poses in the business, and Ariel, blessed with the body of a supermodel and the face of an angel. Their victims are two of my favorite submissives; Darcia, tall and dark with full breasts meant to take a beating, and Artemis (who went by "Suzie" when she was the "student" in The Milgram Experiment 3) with a short, voluptuous body and excellent musculature. With a cast like that, I had high hopes for this film.

The movie opens with a pre-game interview between the two doms and a bit of the two subs. It helps set the stage for the show for those who may not be familiar with the drama between Amanda and Ariel that's been building for quite some time in the previous Elite Pain films. If you are a fan of these films and have seen the precursors, there's nothing to see here and you can move along, move along.

For the first challenge, the contestants are bent over the punishment table and subjected to an ass whipping. It's a good scene – good, but not great. To be honest, I enjoyed the same challenge with Zazie and Liv in Painful Duel 7 more. Darcia does a fair job of emoting in this film, but Arthemis is about as interested in what's happening to her neighbor as a woman riding a bus has in the stinky older men leering at her. There's also a slight issue with the difference in body height that ruins the potential symmetry of the position.

The second challenge is the pussywhip challenge. New to the "Painful Duel" contest, this challenge had a lot of potential. Yet, it came up short for me. Part of the problem is that the punishment table is too narrow to really accommodate both contestants at the same time. I think a better challenge would have been an AOH backwhipping similar to what we got in Painful Duel 7. It's hard to beat a scene that features two women with fantastic natural breasts strung up and having their backs beaten. Whip the back and watch the breasts sway as the body recoils from the impact. But, we don't get that. Instead, they're tied to a too-small platform with their legs spread and their pussies exposed to the leather "slapper" It's a good scene if pussywhipping is your thing, and it's interesting to note the girls' reactions as the session goes along.

What degraded the scene the most for me was that their hands weren't bound. I understand what the producers were trying to do – trying to force them to exercise enough self-discipline to not cover their pussies. But that doesn't really work for me. I would have preferred to have seen them pulling and tugging at ropes as their pussies were pulverized. The helplessness would've enhanced the power play here.

For the third challenge, the girls are bound facing each other, their hands strung up over their heads. A dom stands behind each girl and takes turns whipping the captive girl in front of her. After 10 strokes, the girls are told to rotate, so that their backs are exposed to the other dom. This way, each dom has equal access to each girl and attempts to engage in fair play, much like changing ends of a field in a sports contest.

I won't tell you how the contest ends, but one of the doms lamentingly states what I was thinking: that it's a shame that they didn't get a chance to get a crack at those lovely breasts flowing in front of them. I would have loved to have seen a breast whipping contest, particularly with these two as contestants. As it is, we at least get good long looks at Artemis' perfect ass.

This film came up short for me. I thought the lighting was too dim, the pussywhipping could have been better, tying the two girls together facing each other ruined our ability to see the expressions on their faces, and the available space was too cramped. In the final challenge, poor Ariel had to swing her whip back-handed because of the tight confines. The producers tried a few new things in order to keep the series fresh, but they just didn't work for me. The interview at the beginning was too long, the lighting was too dark, and I got the feeling that Artemis didn't really want to be in this film anyway. On the upside, ElitePain did a great job cleaning up the girls and making them look more "mainstream". Artemis, in particular, has some piercings and tattoos that were removed and concealed (respectively) for this picture, and it paid off well. She's never looked better (although I like her better with darker hair). To compare, here she is being the dom in "Wheel of Pain 13" and abusing Gigi Weiss, one of my favorite Elite Pain subs:

See what I mean? Look at that body. Absolutely gorgeous… except for the questionable choice of ink artwork. That's a body that needs to be stretched out and bullwhipped. Oh wait. It was, in Milgram Experiment 3: