Bondage Cafe

Site: BondageCafe.com
Overall Score: 2/5 Stars

Bondage Cafe produces high quality (1280×720 HD) videos featuring the most well-known names in the business. Jim Weathers’ ability to take quality equipment, innovative rigging, excellent camera angles and cinematography, and women as beautiful as Emily Addison and Randy Moore, and create the most boring bondage videos I have ever seen, is worthy of some sort of an award.

Like everyone who produces bondage videos under the assumed title of “fetish photographer,” there is very much a pinup quality to the whole affair, a “love bondage” vibe. It reminds me of the photos in Hustler’s Taboo, undertaken by people who excel at photography but have no sensibility with regard to bondage and no understanding of why it’s appealing; like so much art today, either they don’t take it seriously, or they water it down deliberately in order to generate more mainstream appeal, aspiring to be the Walmart of bondage production instead, quantity over quality.

From the website: “This site is all about people having fun getting tied up. This site is not about the dark side – if you are looking for that, you have come to the wrong place. The girls in this site enjoy being tied up and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He is right to communicate to the audience up front what to expect, and is not cheating anyone of of their hard-earned dollars. If you want to see perfect tens who could easily be featured in Penthouse, only producers like Weathers have them, because they will only model for soft-core bondage shoots; this is one of the advantages Bondage Cafe has over “darker” sites. I do prefer more distress with my damsels, but even by the limited standard of amateur bondage he can’t get the models to struggle even a little bit, and this includes his videos where the model is actually playing an alleged damsel in distress.

Often when the model is exhibiting a modicum of appealing bondage modeling, Weathers frequently comes in and out of the shot to make adjustments or add another accessory, as if I want my viewing of the model constantly interrupted by some middle-aged guy who for some inexplicable reason feels the need to modify the bondage on screen.

Often, the “distress” is having a vibrator forced up against the girl, either involving another model or (sigh…) himself. I’ve never been much of a fan of this motif, but I don’t object to him shooting it, one expects variety and he wants to appeal to various types of fans as well. But if it is worth doing, it’s worth doing well, and Hogtied.com is the gold standard of forced orgasm bondage photography work (my complaints about them forthcumming). Bondage Cafe by comparison is half-hearted and projects a workmanlike quality, as if Weather’s is thinking “I’m not sure what else to shoot footage of, so might as well do another forced “O” video, people seem to buy those.”

Often the models wear the bondage like it’s a fashion accessory, like it’s something they don’t mind wearing and even enjoy showing it off. If that is the state of mind of the person in bondage then they might as well not be bound. The best videos are where the model deviates from this, probably to the angst of Weathers, and actually struggles a bit as if she wants out.

The supergirl storylines are not my cup of tea. As long as the bondage is good, the story is irrelevant; the producer shouldn’t waste his resources fabricating one. Go straight to the bondage, the viewer will create his own backstory, or come up with something better than super hero girls fighting each other. One good setup, for instance, is in a clip of Emily Addison curiously opening a box that shoots out smoke, knocks her out, and has her waking up later, bound and not knowing how she got there. This is an excellent setup, there is no explanation for what happened but none is needed. Novel ideas like this are appealing and despite this one being magical, is still more believable in the moment than those fake-looking kidnappings so many producers attempt to film, with the girl going limp so her kidnapper can bind her, just making the story seem idiotic in the process.

But in general, I think the video direction is lacking, featuring too much of Weathers, or some “playful” lesdom action that is as interesting as an insurance seminar. I see this a lot, for some reason it is common for producers to think their inclusion in the shot adds value to the videos, walking back and forth in front of the model while the viewer at home has his dick in his hand. It’s not a site like Futile Struggles where the tying action is on screen after which the rigger gets out of the shot; on Bondage Cafe it’s as if he goes out of his way to come on screen, when it only does more harm than good.

Even by the standards of a love bondage site, this and the half-hearted attempts to do forced orgasm videos are why Bondage Cafe fails to live up to the quality of its models, rigging, and cameras work and produces utterly boring videos that fail to arouse and are esteemed mostly for their production quality, like a well-made Hollywood blockbuster that appeases the masses but bores those with more refined taste. For what he produces, he might as well stick to hashing out vanilla cheesecake.