Most of you are probably familiar with Nettles and their "Russian Slaves" series. Most of their videos cater to the hardcore discipline crowd and feature very severe canings, beltings, and paddlings. Not all of their videos are beating fests, but the majority are. In addition to the spanking action some of the videos also briefly cater to other fetishes such as enemas, anal toys, and bondage. Spanking is always the main activity though.

The site is very basic in design although it can be hard to get into at times. Just keep clicking on one of the thumbnails and the "I Agree!" button and you will eventually get in. It sometimes takes me three or four tries. I'm not sure if there is something wrong with their code or if I just don't know how to get around the internet. Once you logged in there are two sections to explore. The first is the picture section. Compared with other sites they don't have a lot of photos, only about 250. There is no organization to the photos. They are not grouped by movie so you just have to wade through the thumbnail pages till you find an image that you want to enlarge. The size and quality of the photos are good. The downside is that you cannot save any of them to your hard drive. All of the photos are protected by copyright software that prevents you from downloading them. This is not a big issue for me but for some it might be. The second section of the site is home to the videos. There are 39 of them currently posted. The quality is similar to their VHS tapes and DVDs, below average. While by no means poor or unwatchable, they just are not as crystal clear as some other sites. Making up for this though is the ability to watch the move in its entirety, not just a collection of three minute highlights.

Nettles has come up with an interesting solution for dealing with the connection speeds of both dial-up and broadband users. Those with a fast connection can stream the videos in Real Player. The streaming software that they use scales to your connection speed and the quality of the video adjusts accordingly. According to the website even dial-up users can stream. However I doubt the quality would be that good. A nice function that they have included with the videos is a chapter index. If you want to jump to a certain chapter of the movie you can without having to wait for the download to get to that point. For those with slow connections Nettles has come up with a novel solution. They will send you a DVD which is playable for 90 days. After you get the DVD in the mail, you log onto the site to unlock it. When you join the site you have the option of having every new release sent to your home if you wish. You can also select movies from the site to be mailed to you at any time. I have not tried out this option so I can't comment on how well it works.

There are two levels of membership, basic and premium. The basic membership is free and really doesn't do much other than allow you to order the DVD on Demand movies and streaming videos. The basic membership is more of a pay per view thing than an actual membership. Streaming videos start at $4.95 and you can watch them as many times as you wish in a 24 hour period. I'm not sure what the DVD on Demand videos run but I would assume about the same price. The premium membership runs $24.95 a month and gives you a pass to view one movie. You also have access to the trailers for each movie but I haven't bothered to watch any of them. With the premium membership you can purchase additional movies which you can then watch as many times as you wish as long as you remain a member. It essentially allows you to build a library of the Russian Slaves videos. The one thing I don't like about the videos is that they are in streaming format meaning that you cannot download them to your hard drive for future viewing. I guess with the way videos are pirated on the internet nowdays that we will be seeing more and more sites going to this format.

So is the site worth joining you ask? Well that depends on what you want to see. If you are really into photos, then no, there just aren't enough of them there to justify the price. Fans of really severe corporal punishment will love the videos, so if that is your thing then the site is well worth checking out for at least a month since just buying one of their videos would cost more than twice that. Of course if you only want to watch one or two videos, or if you simply enjoy watching the occasional video, the free basic membership and $4.95 24 hour rental would be your cheapest option.