As men, we have our own fantasy concepts of what goes on behind closed doors in female establishments like sororities. As a company, Playboy tries to depict those fantasy concepts in Sorority Strip Party, a program that mixes a minor storyline about college girls hanging out together and getting naked a lot.

Here’s the premise: one girl’s parents go out of town, so she invites over her sorority sisters. They meet to figure out a way to come up with money to save their sorority house, so they deliberate about ways to raise funds. As they brainstorm - usually in pairs - they come up with a variety of reasons to strip for each other.

Folks who expect the production values of a traditional Playboy video won’t get that from Sorority. Another party produced the program, while Playboy just licensed and distributed it; there’s no apparent involvement from Hef’s gang. Whether that seems good or bad will be up to the viewer, but I thought I should mention that this show doesn’t feature Playmates or any of the usual Playboy models.

Not that the women involved are unattractive, but they’re definitely not up to the usual Playboy standards. They look more like strippers than college women, and some of them appear to have let many years pass since they were of college age. Actually, the show tries to account for that, as it makes a couple of them house mothers or something like that. They’re consistently attractive, though, and certainly above average for real life; they simply don’t match up to normal Playboy standards.

No one goes to a porn movie for the story, and no one will watch Sorority for a realistic take on college life. Still, they could have tried a little harder to come up with a decent tale. The usual Playboy video either offers a documentary style or it presents small vignettes; they don’t shoot for an overarching story. Sorority essentially gives us a porn movie without any true sex - just lots of nudity.

Actually, Sorority comes across as an attempt to offer a stripper video outside of the usual bar environment. The format gets somewhat tedious after a while. It finds so many contrived ways to get the women to strip that it becomes absurd. Why not just use the usual vignette motif? This one includes such a dopey plot and so much bad acting that it becomes something of a distraction.

Still, folks looking for some good nudity won’t be too disappointed. There’s a little too much talk, but the clothes fly frequently, and if you can ignore the inane plot, cheap production values and lousy performances, Sorority Strip Party offers some decent adult entertainment.

Sorority Strip Party appears in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 on this single-sided, single-layered DVD; due to those dimensions, the image has not been enhanced for 16X9 televisions. A cheaply-shot video production, Sorority never looked great, but given its origins, I thought it presented a reasonably solid image.

Sharpness remained pretty solid. Outside of a few examples of poor focus, the show stayed fairly concise and distinctive. Some wider shots seemed a bit soft, but the program featured few of those. With its logical emphasis on close-ups, the presentation appeared well delineated. A few examples of jagged edges and shimmering occurred, but nothing severe, and I saw no more than minor edge enhancement. Light instances of video artifacting popped up at times, but otherwise the picture was clean.

Not exactly a sterling example of stellar production values, it didn’t look like the program’s producers made many attempts at lighting beyond natural elements. This meant the piece often looked somewhat dark, though not badly so. This left the colors as natural but somewhat flat and lifeless. They weren’t too off, but they also didn’t stand out as particularly strong. Black levels were similarly acceptably but without distinction. Low-light shots seemed somewhat thick and dense, but they mostly came across as adequately visible. You won’t use this DVD to show off your system, but it looked surprisingly good considering its budget and goals, and it actually presented stronger visuals than many higher-budget Playboy offerings I’ve seen.

Don’t expect any fireworks from the stereo audio of Sorority Strip Party either. Actually, to refer to the track as “stereo” seemed misleading. Around the 37-minute mark, the music briefly opened up to use the side speakers. Otherwise, all elements of the track remained firmly anchored in the center speaker.

The program combined dialogue and effects recorded naturally during the shoot with music added later. Not surprisingly, the music sounded best, though it didn’t shine. The songs were low-key and without much range or life. They seemed clear and that was it. Effects and speech sounded distant and thin. Not much effort was put into their recording, so they presented the same quality you’d get from your own home videos. Granted, I doubt anyone cares if Sorority offers a great audio mix, but this track seemed cheap nonetheless.

A couple of minor supplements show up on the DVD. We get a Photo Gallery that presents 20 nude stills of the models from the program. We can watch these via the usual stillframe access or a running filmed gallery that lasts two minutes, 22 seconds.

The set also offers some trailers. This includes promos for Naughty in Nature, Sexy Housekeepers, Girls Only Club, Tour Bus Hotties and Freestylin’ Babes.

Not on a par with the best Playboy videos, Sorority Strip Party suffers from a number of weaknesses. Nonetheless, it works fairly well for what it is: an inane but usually pretty hot piece of softcore porn. The DVD presents flawed but surprisingly good visuals with flat audio and a small roster of extras. Not a lot about Sorority impressed me, but those who want to see some decent sexy fantasy might want to give it a look.