Deadly Embrace

It's usually a rule of thumb that when a film goes direct to video without a big screen release it's a stinker. Deadly Embrace is one law abiding movie in that regard.

This film essentially erases the line between drama and soft core porn. Lucky Ken Abraham he gets to bed two beautiful women.

Abraham gets hired by married couple Jan-Michael Vincent and Mindi Miller. Vincent is getting tired of Miller and wants to trade her in for a younger model. But his lawyer Jack Carter it's going to cost you big time, maybe cheaper to keep her.

The hunky pool boy/gardener they just hired might be the answer. Jan's not touching Mindy lately so she's good and horny. Just have pool boy gardener move in and wait for the inevitable.

Abraham is quite the looker, not much in the acting department. He does have some marathon sex scenes with Miller and his girlfriend Leanna Quigley.

20 years earlier it would have been Vincent as the hunky pool boy. Time changes all things.

Anyway soft core porn fans go for it.

This movie belongs to Ty Randolph, who pulls off an acting coup in her portrayal of the seamless fusion of dominance and dependence in the personality of a predator, Charlotte Morland, who goes after the newly hired houseman Chris (played by Ken Abraham) while her despicable husband Stuart Morland (Jan Michael Vincent), who is only home on weekends, strings along his trampy secretary until he can decide "what to do with my wife" and Chris's sweet, not-too-bright girlfriend Michelle (Linnea Quigley), who loves Chris very much, can't wait to hook up with him in his new digs.

The result is a triple triangle: the Morlands and his secretary; the same Morlands and Chris; and Charlotte, Chris, and Michelle. What could possibly go wrong?

Although one part of the ending is revealed early on, it doesn't spoil the final twists. Quigley is adorable and believable, making you want to keep Michelle from harm; Vincent's one-note performance I judge to be good because every time Morland speaks I hate him more; and Jack Carter is good as Morland's lawyer though Ruth Collins is wooden as his secretary. Just for Ty Randolph and the final surprises, I think this movie is worth seeing despite its flaws.

The main weak spot is Chris, in two areas: script and casting. The Morlands are domineering people who make things happen; but the story is centered on Chris, a guy things happen to. With every development you're thinking he should know better. And the actor, Ken Abraham, can't seem to find the character--he wanders through various character types and fails to react at critical points. There's a good deal of movie-maker artifice too, especially the intrusive fantasy clips; they work when they tell us Chris fantasizes Michelle in all situatins, but the ones with Michelle Bauer as the "goddess of sex" confuse the story.

Wow, what can i say about this movie, Jan-Michael Vincent reportedly had just come out of rehab and accepted this movie, apparently he needed some fast cash, he actually looks quite healthy, tanned, thin, fit, and looks the California surfer type with his sun bleached hair, his scenes with Jack Carter are the only parts that give this film any credibility and in fact, seemed, that many of those scenes (if not all) were filmed separately, as the film cuts to JMV then Carter but i found it to contain quite a bit of humor, though this wasn't it's intention. The actor, who plays Chris (Chris Bauer)seems to me, like this was probably his first acting job and was probably paid scale (if that) in such a low budget production, the scenes between him and Linea Quigley are embarrassing stale with a total lack of chemistry between two people very unfamiliar with each other, it's also obvious that there was no rehearsal and the scenes were taken on one shot (again keeping the budget down) the so-called mansion looks middle-class at best, this film was shot in 3 days and looks it. The premise has JMV looking for a way out of his marriage, in his words "The novelty has worn off" and wants to take up with his moronic, brain-dead secretary, while his sex-starved wife (Ty Randolph) does everything within her womanly power to seduce the young Chris (Chris Bauer) and gets her wish but Chris has regrets about it when Qugley comes to visit, because it was filmed so quickly and to give it legit running time, it has fantasy soft core scenes adding additional minutes of footage probably to get it distributed, but you'll need to FF through these to get the predictable ending, JMV at one time was considered a viable star but why in the world he didn't concentrate on interesting minor character roles, in major studio releases, instead of top billing in trash like this, is beyond me.

My review was written in February 1989 after watching the film on Prism video cassette.

"Deadly Embrace" is an off-beat film noir, going direct to video. More care and a bigger budget would have helped.

Framed by an awkward and irritating flashback structure, pic has Ken Abraham as a hapless young stud hired (rather suspiciously) to work as a houseman at rich businessman Jan-Michael Vincent's Beverly Hills estate.

Vincent only has time for weekends at home, leaving his beautiful wife (Ty Randolph) alone and lonely. Her affair with Abraham starts on cue, but is disrupted when Abraham has his cute young girlfriend (perky Linnea Quigley) visit and shack up with him.

Blackmailing and doublecrossing enuse, with a surprise ending. The flashback structure, with abstract shots of the hands of two guys, smoking, across a table while they voice-over the plot, doesn't pay off.

Despite top billing, Vincent merely walks through this assignment. This focuses attention on Randolph, who is an impressive presence as the neglected wife. She previously used the monikers Tyler Windsor Randolph and Mindi Miller for screen credits in "Amazons" and "Body Double".

Tech credits are okay but on the cheap side.

David DeCoteau directs this fairly pleasing movie that showcases the abilities and physical assets of its female cast to good effect. In fact, it often plays like an exercise in titillation *sometimes* interrupted by a story. DeCoteau does go out of his way to stylize the movie, working with whatever minimal budget he must have had. Set to a pulsating electronic music score by Del Casher, it features characters capable of earning our sympathies.

Ken Abraham ("Creepozoids") is cast as Chris Thompson, an amiable young stud hired to work as a houseboy for well-off couple Stewart (Jan-Michael Vincent) and Charlotte Moreland (Mindi Miller, billed as 'Ty Randolph'). Stewart has tired of the marriage, but is told by his lawyer Evan Weiss (Jack Carter) that because there was no pre-nup, he'd have to split everything 50-50 with Charlotte. While he tries to come up with a way to work around this, the lonely Charlotte turns on the heat and has a sexual tryst with Chris, who feels pangs of guilt because he already has a girlfriend, sweet aspiring actress Michelle Arno (Linnea Quigley).

When it comes to the DeCoteau filmography, one must expect a certain lack of slickness and negligible acting - most of the time, anyway. This one, at least, is reasonably compelling in a sordid and sad way. Not that this will matter to many viewers, who will watch it for the titillation factor and be rewarded with a regular helping of sex and nudity - both female and male. This takes up a substantial amount of the run time, which is fortunately fairly trim (just over 80 minutes) in a B movie tradition.

Quigley is adorable, and she and her co-stars Miller, Michelle Bauer, and Ruth Collins all look great. Ms. Millers' performance as the voyeuristic and ultimately disturbed Charlotte is a definite highlight.

Seven out of 10.