BY DAN SCAPPEROTTI
Volume 6 Number 9

Abducted by aliens, seduced by an invisible man, afflicted with an insatiable erotic appetite wrought by a sex ray…Gabriella Hall has been busy this past year. Initially launching a career as a successful model, the California native posed among the lush locales of Taiwan, the Philippines, Southeast Asia and Europe. Making the transition to TV commercials, Hall pitched products as varied as Pepsi and Sears. Eventually, she was discontent with limiting her screen exposure to 30-second spots: the proverbial footlights called. Celebrating the ’96 New Year by enrolling in acting classes, Hall was promptly hired for a succession of films. But she hasn’t completely abandoned her former profession: Hall continues to accept choice modeling assignments.

She debuted on the steamy Cinemax series EROTIC CONFESSIONS, but was credited with a “Gabriella Sky” moniker. In the Boss’s Orders episode, a young lawyer is required to entertain Laura—played by Hall—who’s the visiting, sheltered niece of his employer. Predictably, the attorney soon discovers that Laura is a sexual libertine who isn’t adverse to throwing caution to the wind. They demolish the boss’s office in a wild sexual romp, and experience subsequent “close encounters” both in the lawyer’s office and at a party officiated by Laura’s uncle. Another episode, Madelyn’s Laundry, refers to a clothing line designed by Hall’s character. “I played a young clothing designer who has been so caught up in her career that she hasn’t had a boyfriend,” said Hall. “She meets this great guy who brings her out into the world.”

Ladd Vance, whose Ministry of Film produces the cable series, absolutely gushes when queried about Hall. “She’s supertalented,” sighed Vance. “Gabriella has such a natural presence, and she’s floating into more mainstream work. We’ve already hired her for our other cable series, INTIMATE SESSIONS. Gabriella is in the Mary episode; we add a Cyrano de Bergerac twist to a scenario about massage therapists.” Of course, that’s another story (where was I?)…

The Cinemax series prompted a plum role for Hall in CENTERFOLD, a CPV production which recently televised on Pay Per View. “I play an actress from Chicago who moves to L.A. only to face the hard reality out here,” explained Hall. “In desperation, she decides to pose for a magazine layout, but then she ends up not doing it. She gets her series and wins in the end.”

Hall found a hot spot as one among an ensemble cast in both of Alain Siritzky’s erotic fantasy series: she was assigned three episodes of THE CLICK and four episodes of BUTTERSCOTCH. Hall appears in three episodes of the latter series as Kelli Parkinson, the invisible man’s comely compatriot. Hall also cameos in episode #5, Mission Invisible, as Shyama Patel, an Indian woman living in New Delhi: the character leads the invisible dude to the lair of a fiend who’s hungry for world dominion.

“Kelli is a great role,” said an enthusiastic Hall, “because she’s a strong woman who’s an actress. She goes to a party where she meets this guy, named Norman, who’s invisible. They end up dating and going out and stuff. So the story is her adventures with this invisible guy as they travel around the world. Actually, we didn’t really travel: we did that Hollywood magic thing. It was a lot of fun and a lot of special effects.”

The actress has several sexual encounters with the transparent Norman, including a funny fellatio sequence. “I’m comfortable with nudity,” said Hall, “and everything is done with good taste.”

Picture this: a professional mime was hired to furnish the young actress with some pointers, specifically how to make mad monkey love to an invisible man. “It was great for me because I got to train with an actual mime,” recounted Hall. “I learned to deal with a leading man who wasn’t there! I did just a lot of miming as if I was going to touch his chest or whatever. I had to pretend—and make myself believe—that he was there. It turned out pretty good. And, hey, I believed I was talking to somebody there. We also did a lot of special effects with the pillow. There was a lot of wires and stuff so the pillow would move when he is supposed to lay down on it. We had a machine that blew air on me as if the invisible man was touching my arm or my thigh. It blew a concentrated stream of air which would actually show an imprint as his hand moved up and down my leg. It actually felt pretty good!”

In Power Flower, the second in the BUTTERSCOTCH canon, Kelli is the center of attention. Armchair tourists will appreciate her transport, to exotic locales, via flying carpet. And, by the way, her right breast plays host to a homeless genie (beats out that whole Cyrano de Bergerac/masseuse thing). Central to the story is the Moroccan location where Kelli lands a job on a movie set. “A genie lingers over there,” Hall smiled. “He’s this wacky genie who grants wishes. There’s one scene where he throws a pie in my face which was pretty crazy. He does it because he’s a jokester, always pulling tricks out of a bag.

“The flying carpet, of course, was actually on the ground but it was on rollers. I would get on top and, as it was taking off, they would pull the carpet and we did a little love scene while flying over Morocco. They back-projected scenes of this city and landscapes. I think that was a 3-D scene. When doing those shots, you have to be aware of the camera position all the time; any movements you make, like flipping your hair, you make towards the camera.”

Hall’s pantomime skills were really stretched in a barroom brawl between Norman and Robert Bull, Kelli’s pissed-off ex-agent: “Robert Bull becomes invisible—he’s the bad invisible guy. We have a fight scene where they’re both grabbing me. So I’m doing all the special effects. I get thrown against a door and I really get pulled. Each of the invisible men—Bull, the evil one and Norman, the good one—has one of my hands and they’re pulling me from side to side. That was hard, but it worked out really well. It looks like there are two guys there, pushing me around. I worked with the mime on that. I had about two hours of lessons with him.”

Upon answering the casting call for THE CLICK, Hall was handed scripts for a trilogy of episodes. “I played a girl named Linda in the first one, The Body Beautiful,” Hall recalled. “Linda and a guy named Ben work in a health spa and they discover this clicker, which has the power to turn people on; it can also transform them into different people. We have this power, and we’re going to make this spa more entertaining. It’s pretty interesting.”

The episode was helmed by Rolfe Kanefsky, who also directed Hall in Balls of Thunder. “He’s a good director,” said Hall. “He believes in rehearsals and he communicates with his actors. He’s really sharp and quick, so you’ve got to be on your toes with him because he’ll throw something at you. He also wrote the episodes I was in.”

In the aforementioned CLICK episode, Balls of Thunder, Hall was cast as a henchman for the evil Tangerina, a woman bent on world domination through cloning. “I played a bad girl, which was a change for me,” said Hall. “I play Areola. Tangerina wants the power of the clicker and we’re all trying to get that little device. Between scenes, we would all play with the props. We’d run around pretending to click everybody.”

Playboy’s cable unit produced WOMEN: STORIES OF PASSION, a Showtime series competing for late night’s adult sweeps. Hall was cast in Motel Magic, a mystical vignette. To promote the show, Playboy designed a six-page spread that was printed in the December, ’96 issue. “They called and said they wanted me to be in their magazine,” said the actress, “so I did a pictorial for them. It came out nice. We went out to this mansion in Los Angeles, not the Playboy mansion. It was beautiful. I got to shoot with a really great photographer named Arny Freytag, and we did a whole bunch of different setups and they gave me a nice, full page. They have the cameraman, his assistant, makeup man, hair stylist. It wasn’t a lot of people, about ten of us in this house. It took all day to do it. We took about five setups. It was a high quality production.

“On my episode of WOMEN, I play a woman in this hotel room. Sally Kirkland portrays a character who’s a writer, and she comes to this fantasy hotel to get away from her life. She occupies a room and all she hears is this couple in the next room: she can hear them making love and having a good time. She thinks they’re young because they’re always making love and when she sees them come out of the room, it turns out they’re and old couple. I play the ‘young woman’ inside the room. When you go into this room, you become young again and all your fantasies come true.”

An alumnus of royal Oaks’ NIGHT SHADE—cast also included Nikki Fritz and FF cover woman Tane McClure (6:4)—Hall describes the film as “a lot of fun. I got to play a vampire and I got fitted for the teeth. They put me on the box cover of the video. My character goes to work and hangs out at this club at night, where they have exotic dancing. I get my blood by luring men into the back room. This guy comes in and I kind of trick him into going into this room with me. So I do this dance for him and, while I’m dancing, I bite him. That was a supporting role.”

The busy actress is routinely cast in erotic thrillers (LOVE ME TWICE, SEXUAL ROULETTE, MASSEUSE II, POWERPLAY) that are edited into R-rated cuts and whisked to your local Blockbuster. Her latest is Surrender Cinema’s LOLITA 2000, a vehicle for Full Moon’s direct-to-video diva, Jacqueline Lovell. Hall’s character is abducted by aliens: “My boyfriend thinks I’m going crazy when these repressed memories, about the martian kidnapping, start coming out. So they take me to a doctor. I learn that I have been impregnated, and I’m deposited into a psycho ward. It turns out that the doctor, whom I trust, is an alien himself. They look human, but I accidentally scratch one of them and you see this green alien beneath. We had some special effects people do all the alien work. I had some very intense scenes, I had to play like I was under hypnosis.”

There’s some business about martian/human bonding, but Hall wraps-up our interview with a “preview” of her pivotal scene: “I’m sitting in my apartment. Suddenly, there’s an earthquake and I see this light—and I walk towards it. In the next scene, I’m lying on an examining table where the aliens come and experiment on me. They have some instruments. And, oh, I’m wearing the little nightgown that I had on when I got abducted…

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