Embrace the Darkness

It was Angelina High who brought this movie beyond its pedantic writing. When was the last time you saw a short haired lady with fangs? Maybe it was the director's choice but her lovely appearance (and decidedly "un-vampire" attire) made me dispose of some preconceptions and see she and the role for what they were: a better than average job - especially for the genre.

The VHS, DVD rents and sales and the cable gave a seccond life to the software films in the 90s.

From the late 80s to the late 90s former TV and even film stars had a revivan in this genre. The most succesful were Shannon Tweed (Mrs Gene Simmons) and Tanya Roberts. In the late 90s they become in their 40s and both retired in order to have a succesful career in realities and sitcom.

And a seccond generación of unknown New starlets from Penthouse, Playboy and even hardcore started.

Unfortunately the budget was usually much lower and the script was worse. So the genre died in the begining of the new millenium. This movie is from that age.

So I was pleasent surprise of the budget, the good script and the very good performance specially of the leading Lady. Unlike other starlet her career started in big budget film of respected directors (ok as a pole dancer, but in Verhoveen, Tarantino and Rodriguez films). So clearly she makes a difference. She is beautiful, charismatic, sexy, sweet, excellent dancer and can act. Making a tour the force change from a ingenue to a vamp.

Its a pitty that after this work the lead actress retired from films. The movie was so succesful that had 2 sequels unfortunately with other actresses.

Oh the irony. While Vampires can not date, movies about them can date. And if they're as bad as this (probably not been received well back then either, although it did spawn two sequels), they date even worse. While Kevin Spirtas is known for other movies and might be able to bring some gravitas to the movie (for some), the rest of the cast does stumble around (and on) their lines as if they've never seen or heard about things like scripts.

On the other hand, maybe there wasn't a coherent script to begin with. Wouldn't be surprising this being a soft-core movie (sometimes it does make sense reading the synopsis before watching a movie, solely based on the title) and all. It is produced by Playboy, so you should know what you're letting yourself into ...

Yeah I saw this movie. I'm only admitting it because I wrote a comment on Dracula 2000 about fans of the genre. Immediately after doing so, I noticed this was on, so I decided to give it a chance to be fair as well as to see it attempt to be horrific in any way. I'd like to start by saying that I will NEVER understand how this gets listed as a horror flick. It should fall under the adult or mature category because it's nothing more than soft porn. That being said, as soft porn goes, it definitely has more of a story line to it than most. As a HORROR film expect the cheapest, most over dramatized(and used) effects. I swear they used red paint in a tube for blood. One victim had blood spots on his neck that looked exactly like red versions of chocolate chips complete with the little swirly bit on top. If this were horror, it's pure cheese. As for mature, one of the best I've seen. Seriously. For horror-a 1 on a scale of 1-10. For soft porn-I'd say about an 8. Very sexy. Not the murderous bit, but the truly sexual stuff. I am a woman, so a man may not agree with the thought.

I agree with krobyn that this one was not really a horror movie, and almost entirely an erotic one. Of course, the same is true of many or most vampire type movies. It has fewer vampire and plot pretensions than most though.

What carries the movie and makes it pretty good as erotic is entirely Madison Clark. She plays a sultry yet essentially innocent brunette, who is trying to make a go as a performance artist, but becomes the object of vampire attractions, along with others of course.

Kobryn says she thinks its really pretty good erotica, though she says from her female perspective. Here's my male perspective. It sure isn't a hard core pump movie, or even really soft-core porn. But it is pretty hot erotica. What entirely carries the movie erotically is raven haired Madison Clark's intelligent and very soulful sexual submissiveness, just beneath the surface, which is the juice of the flick. The girl's got heat. She's a sort of "Betty Boop" type.

As for explicitness, it isn't much there. A good deal of partial nudity, and erotic "performance art" dancing though. The underlying soft S&M is what creates the interest. Though the thinness and slowness of the plot makes it hard to sustain unless you're seeing it as a fooling around with your sweetie sort of movie, or while surfing the net between periods on interest, or whatever.

Madison Clark has definite potential in erotica though. She seems to have mostly played bit parts as a dancer type so far, before this movie. Hey, Shannon Tweed isn't my type and is rather long in the tooth anyway. Make room.