DAILY DOWNLOAD Pleasure Palace - Ex-cop Jimmy Stone and his lawyer friend Mike Green leave New York City and move to Connecticut to start their own business running a brothel. Things go smoothly for a while until ruthless mobster Joe Goodson and his brutal goons try to muscle in on the business.

If not the best - his considerably more erotic 1977 JAIL BAIT takes the cake in that department - then at least by far the best-plotted of Carter Stevens’s not quite A-list efforts, PLEASURE PALACE benefits from a solid script by the director and “Al Hazrad” (actually Al Goldstein’s assistant editor Richard Jaccoma, going some way to explaining the odd pseudonym) and a cast more than capable of handling its requirements. Too often taken for granted, Eric Edwards proves as dependable as always portraying Jimmy Stone, a former vice cop fired from the squad for being too lenient on a lowlife pimp. Out of gratitude, the latter has sold him his Connecticut cat house for peanuts, an investment he has agreed to share with his shyster lawyer buddy Mike Green, memorably played by the equally easy to underestimate Robert “Bolla” Kerman. Both actors prove utterly believable as friends and their effortless banter not only brings their characters to life but also helps to sustain audience interest for its surprisingly long stretches between sex scenes. For some reason, Edwards doesn’t even have a sex scene here.

While any adult film fan of some longevity expects stellar turns from these two actors, superstar Serena’s the real revelation here, shaping up as Kerman’s girl Friday Carol in a performance of great warmth and sympathy. As big an industry icon as she was, it often seemed like she couldn’t be bothered to act, Gary Graver’s ECSTASY GIRLS and - of all people - the generally maligned Leonard Kirtman’s PRINCESS ranking as notable exceptions. She always delivered the goods sexually however, sufficiently accounting for throngs of devoted admirers, and this flick’s no exception. Satisfying though her encounters with Kerman definitely are, it’s her appropriately nasty trade-off as was their trademark with then boyfriend Jamie Gillis most will remember. The recently deceased Gillis further ups the ante as mobster Joe “Goodson” Buonfiglio, exuding credible menace as was his forte, eager to home in on our heroes’ cottage industry once they got business up and running and the reason why the original owner sold the place off for a pithance in the first place.