(1986 Video)

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5/10
End of The Series, Really
cricharddavies24 November 2006
Warning: Spoilers
For all intents and purposes, this was the final entry in the Taboo series of films, as directed by Kirdy Stevens. He would direct one more entry, which did feature Jamie Gilis in what I presume was the same role he played in Taboo IV & V, Dr. Jeremy Lodge, but I'm given to understand that the subject matter had begun to shift away from incest to other "taboos". (Which is ironic, given that the whole point of the series was that incest was the last taboo. In a way, the Golden Age of porn was occasionally very naive.)

Picking up a few years after the last one, Dr. Lodge is still trying to help people who suffer from incest issues, even though his relationship with one of his daughters (played by Ginger Lynn in Taboo IV) has apparently ended, as she's nowhere to be found. Instead, he's in a highly dysfunctional relationship with another young woman, played by Amber Lynn. (Just so we're clear on this -- Ginger Lynn and Amber Lynn were not related.) Meanwhile, his other daughter, Naomi (Karen Summers) has just had a bad breakup and comes back to live with him. Since Amber's character is militantly unfaithful and since this is a Taboo movie, I think we all know what's going to happen there. Meanwhile, Naomi also has a fling with a pool cleaner (played by Buck Michaels, Amber Lynn's real life brother) and Dr. Lodge tries to help a woman with a split personality.

Which brings us to Colleen Brennan's character, or rather characters, since she plays both a frigid widower and a raging bisexual nymphomaniac (or rather a typical female porn character, which amounts to the same thing) who are two sides of the same troubled woman. She also provides the other tie to the earlier films in the series when she has a fling with Kevin James' character Junior McBride, who has apparently dumped his mother and is running around with some platinum blonde. Brennan's character also has a son who is embarrassed by her slutty side's behavior, but who eventually decides that the only way to deal with it is to give her what she wants. No points for guessing what that is.

What's interesting here is that there is, if I recall correctly, an acknowledgment in this film that Brennan's character's psychological problems are the result of child molestation, paralleling what was beginning to be discovered in the real world. And yet both incestuous relationships in this film are still portrayed as healing, despite the damage that similar relationships have wreaked in the lives of those involved. (Naomi mentions in passing that she hasn't spoken with her mother or Uncle Billy -- her biological father, with whom she coupled in the previous film -- in years; Dr. Lodge seems helplessly stuck in a relationship with a much younger woman that parallels his relationship with his daughter; and so on.)

Aside from that, there's one really annoying element -- in one scene, Brennan's character is coming on to two of her son's friends, and in a later scene we learn that she did have sex with them. Yet we aren't shown that. Why not? The film later has Amber Lynn's character in a threesome with two black men, so it can't be a reluctance to show group sex. It's just puzzling, I guess.
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8/10
Downward Spiral
Nodriesrespect15 December 2014
Warning: Spoilers
Although separated from the exceptional TABOO IV by only a year, this next and somewhat final installment - subsequent "sequels" were handled by other directors and focused on less sulfurous subjects than incest - clearly shows that the rot was already setting in. Oldtime porno palaces were closing their doors and cheapskate shot on video provided a much bigger return on investment. Adult "cinema" had nowhere left to go. Kirdy Stevens and wife Helene Terrie had built a profitable cottage industry on the foundations of family frolicking but the times were finally catching up with them. While TABOO V is far from a bad movie, production shortcuts are palpable.

The involved and complex storyline picks up where the previous episode left off with wealthy psychiatrist Jeremy Lodge (an effectively subdued Jamie Gillis) trying to fill the void left by his all too loving daughter Robin (Ginger Lynn) with nasty Satana (one of Amber Lynn's most electrifying performances) who gleefully treats him like excrement as she brazenly brings her black lovers (Jonathan Younger & Billy Dee) into the apartment he has rented for them as a pad for their private canoodling. His other daughter Naomi (the underrated Karen Summer) has married her acting teacher Dalton (Joey Silvera, eschewing his familiar goof-ball persona) who now wants to keep her out of the limelight and in the kitchen. Main reason of course is that he wants to keep on screwing aspiring young actresses on the side, something Naomi catches onto when she walks in on him "auditioning" the very accommodating Porsche Lynn. Tearful, she rushes back to dear old dad.

The Lodge lineage is inter-cut with one of the doc's latest case studies, that of prim 'n proper Mary (former soft-core starlet "Sharon Kelly" now Colleen Brennan in a characteristically terrific turn) who keeps waking up in strange men's beds, being called "Maureen" in post-coital bliss. Widowed at a young age and emotionally scarred from an abusive past, Mary's secretly attracted to her teenage son (the appropriately youthful-looking Shone Taylor), a desire she can only give into as her slutty alter ego. Although this merely boils down to typical porn pop psychology (the whore/Madonna complex at its finest) in the end, Brennan does a bang-up job creating considerable audience sympathy for her character's plight. Mary's "slumbering" nymphomania also allows Stevens to tie this episode to the McBride family storyline from TABOO II, III and IV by trotting out their son Junior (the late Kevin James) as one of her one night stands, bleached blonde squeeze Lorrie Lovett in tow, for one of the film's fornication highlights.

While both narrative strands possess potential interest, more time might have been devoted to Brennan's which now feels unnecessarily choppy. Since it's no great surprise where either plot is heading towards, blood relations taken to illogical extremes being the series' bread and butter, much of the drama feels reduced to down-market soap operatics this time around. Dialog seems rushed or at least under-rehearsed, which is particularly harmful to the less accomplished actors with Taylor floundering in a part several sizes too big for his puny prowess. At least his climactic coupling with mom and her shifting personalities comes off well.

Thuddingly unimaginative '70s TV Movie of the Week type cinematography and meat cleaver editing are both indicative of a rush job. At least the soundtrack (containing a couple of original songs, unfortunately repeated ad nauseam) by Christopher Saint Booth, who was the "Saint" scoring all those glossy Nicholas Steele movies for Adam & Eve, takes a shot at emulating the amazing Leon Felburg scores found in preceding parts of the series.
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Final entry worth yer time
chaosnbeer25 March 2004
Taboo 5 marks the close of the series in that it was the final one to be shot on film , have a storyline , and work as a real movie because after part 6 the series resorted to low budget shot on video and completly ditched storylines and ended up becoming nothing more than a freak show. However Taboo V is the worst out of the whole series because it also is lacking story and has tooo long of pauses between the sex scenes to incorporate plot it doesnt even have...making this a very tedious effort. The sex that it does have is very hot especially the ones involving Amber Lynn and the 80's soaked look of the actors and the music score is still great and never tiring...

7/10
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8/10
I didn't care for the theme that much.
RedCrank29 June 1999
Mother & son, father & daughter - neither appeals to me. But Porsche Lynn and Amber Lynn always do, no matter what the role. They both looked very good in this flick & I gave it an 8.
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