Suze.net review

If pornography has an unsung legend, someone who should be a household name alongside Ron Jeremy, Jenna Jameson, Larry Flynt, and Nina Hartley, it surely must be Suze Randall. Having once been an adult performer herself, Ms. Randall at some point decided she’d be better off behind the camera, not in front of it, and ventured into porn production. Now with a multimedia mini-empire blossoming from her touch and a great crew of performers, producers, costumers, and photographers (including her very own shutterbug daughter), Ms. Randall seems to be going from strength to strength. It’s no surprise then that her website, the appropriately titled Suze.net, seems to be doing wonders for her reputation and standing in this often unforgiving industry. With a reputation as strong as Randall’s, it must be fairly easy to get top-tier talent working for you. Just check out the model roster and you’ll find Madison Ivy, Belladonna, Alektra Blue, and some broad named Chikita; obvious indications that performers on this site range from the A-est of A-listers to fresh talent straight from Nowheresville, USA, all of them engaging in a range of softcore and hardcore (but mostly hardcore) activities, the likes of which you’ll surely find familiar. At a monthly cost of $19.93, membership to Suze’s site is fairly inexpensive, but before you go rushing into untested waters, allow your faithful vizier, Mr. Pink, to ensure no severe dangers lie ahead.

Pros:
Suze Randall’s site hosts a great collection of models in exclusive scenes and galleries and you’ll find many nice surprises here - it can be rare to see some of these hardcore models shown in such a glamorous light; Belladonna is a good example of someone who isn’t usually gussied up in high-end lingerie or given a particularly dazzling makeup job.

New content usually arrives at Suze’s homepage once or twice a day, adding an assload of new material to the already huge archive. Digging back into said archive, you’ll find about 4,000 galleries and almost 1,500 videos.

High quality images in three sizes, 800x533, 1024x682, and 1280x853 pixels, give you some good ogling options and allow for very detailed up-close views of the steamy action. Videos are also looking quite good these days, hitting a max resolution 720x400 pixels and running 2400k bitrates.

You gotta give “mad props” to Suze Randall. She started out her career by appearing in late French auteur Eric Rohmer’s film Love in the Afternoon. That’s cooler than Jenna Jameson showing up Howard Stern’s Private Parts by, like, a bazillion percent!

Cons:
Some people find porn this glamorous a little on the fake and unbelievable side. When the men are more ripped than a beach-bound Hugh Jackman and the women have impeccable hair and flawless skin, you know something’s been tweaked pretty hard in post-production.

Although certainly adequate, image quality could still be higher and more impressive, especially for a site belonging to such a notable photographer and featuring a number of other great shutterbugs who do a fantastic job. Maybe I’m just a sucker for a really high-res image, but I’d love to see photos hit the 3000px mark.

Windows Media Video (WMV) is the only available video format and it’d be great to see some more Mac-friendly options online here. MP4s seem to be all the rage these days and, since they do represent images quite well using the H.264 codec, they would be a nice addition to the video offerings.

Although the navigation system now in place seems to be thorough enough for all your searching and browsing requirements, the look of Suze’s site leaves a lot to be desired. Feeling contemporaneous to the Classic portion of the photo archive, which offers pictorials dating back to the 1980s, the site immediately feels old and kinda dorky. This could easily be changed with a sleek, modern facade.

Conclusion:
This reviewer always finds it a shame to log-in to a promising website only to be met by a decade-old site design that immediately makes you think of the worst elements of 1980s pornography - bad bleach jobs, teased hair, unfathomably large breasts, way too much makeup, and cheesy, cheesy muzak - but, when the site in question holds as many treasures as Suze dot net, even the most abominable design can be forgiven, or at least temporarily ignored. With such a huge archive of exclusive modeling, masturbation, lesbian, and straight hardcore movies and galleries available here, many of them shot by Suze Randall and her daughter Holly, you’ll be the one missing out if you can’t ignore the site’s shoddy appearances. It may be one of the oldest cliches in Bartlett’s Big Book o’ Cliches, but ‘appearances can be deceiving’ certainly applies here. Still, it’d be great if this became a non-issue and the site was revised a little with a slight image upgrade, maybe some more video options (bring on the HD, Suze) and, of course, a superslick design.