Hidden Zone

Once I'd logged in, I was greeted with a sleek, albeit it a tad on the simplistic, looking members area. The fancy semi-transparent drop-down menus, FAQ, and loads of categories were all great. For instance, hovering your mouse over the "Videos" button in th mean menu displays 9 separate video types: 3D Movies, Beach Cabin, Locker, Shower, Spy Camera, Nudism, Up-Skirt, WC, Partner's Video. The latter two pertaining to bodily functions and couples getting together and putting on a little show. Interestingly categories for the galleries deviate, although you might say this only makes things more vague, just condensing them all, but it actually works out quite nicely in the grand scheme of things.

The fancy menus may have gotten my hopes up, however, because I was quickly letdown with the lackluster way in which they've presented their videos. All you get is a list of scenes with titles and a HD tag if applicable. The vids have no individual pages, so you don't get the synopsis or regular teaser shots to feel out what the scene is about. To make matters worse, there's only one download option and absolutely nothing in the way of streaming. It seems they've stuck with the DiVX format the whole way through, with a steady upward momentum with the video quality. Within the last six months, they've switched over primarily to full-on HD quality files with a massive resolution and stunning play-back quality. I guess if you're going to go with one download choice, you might as well make it the best.

I think this site's biggest advantage really is the mammoth number of videos available. And, as I mentioned earlier, they've really stretched the whole hidden/spy-cam thing to the limit, bringing in a wide range of categories. The addition of nudist colonies, "cheating" tapes, and public nudity/sex really spiced things up. With some scenes the camera is cleverly placed, sometimes even slightly obscured by an object on a shelf or whatever impromptu camouflage — I distinctly remember a kitchen quickie with the camera inside a microwave; very Tarantino — our villain devised. Then you've got the more professionally setup videos, obviously shot by exhibitionists, which, while slightly straying from the main theme, is still undeniably hot.

For some reason I found the shower videos oddly captivating. Epecially the ones with a lone girl one of those seedy public showers. The kind with the filthy tiles, the echos, the dripping that sounds a little bit too much like a goblin on the rag. There's plenty of those, with a few twists and turns here and there. Conversely, I saw another that took me back to the film Porkies, because some grotesquely fat woman blocked the view of the camera several times. But think about it, if everyone in the public bath had Hollywood physiques, the realism would fly right out the window. Things like this, and the occasions where the studs "triumph" backfires badly, add a great deal of credibility to the scenes, and up the hotness factor tremendously.

Hidden Zone went the minimalist route with their galleries, going with a simple row of thumbnails, single resolution choice, and the optional full-gallery download. Image quality is a mixed bag as a lot of this stuff looks amateur shot, but the standard resolution seems to be a minimum of 1,000 pixel width, even with the oldest of updates. Also, I've seen some great stuff, including plenty of recent updates with resolutions in the neighborhood of 2,500 x 3,000 pixels, which is actually a lot bigger than many photography/studio sites offer.

The only negative here I can see the sets don't contain many images, sometimes as few as 16. Every now and then you'll get one going over 80 or 90, but a good average would be around 30 images each. I guess, in a way, this is made up for the sheer number of galleries, and that raw, sexy awkwardness that can only be achieved by amateurs and unwitting performers.