Cleopatra II: The Legend of Eros

What went oh so right in Antonio Adamo's "Cleopatra" sinks with a thud in the sequel completing the storyline "Cleopatra II".

Peter Jackson recently milked "The Hobbit" for all its worth, stretching the Tolkien saga out to a bloated 3 features. Adamo has a different problem here - the story of trying to clone Cleopatra's DNA and come up with a modern-day version of her by a corrupt corporation loses its way and is deadly dull in its finishing segment.

The wonderful location work in Egypt is doled out briefly in the final reels, as if an afterthought or some pointless, leftover footage from the original shoot. Prior to that dollop of production value, the feature is just claustrophobic, with boring sex scenes heightened mainly by Laura Angel, who as head of Astrick Corp. gets some heavy-duty humping in.

Cleo, now cloned as present-day version, means that star Julia Taylor gets to wear her regular hairdo, her abilities in the sack unaltered. My favorite sex scene is mixed-combo with the exotic star Bettina bedding down with reliable Mick Blue; he went on to a still-going-strong Chatsworth career following his European successes.

DVD has one ridiculous blooper - it is fitted out with those multiple language tracks, but in a crucial scene in the final reel the English-track version has Bobbi Eden, a fluent English-speaker from Holland in real life, call Angel's villainous character Luxuria by the name "Cornelia" which is Bobbi's name in the movie, so her character doesn't appear to even know her own name in this confrontation scene. I clicked on the French track to compare, and she accurately calls Angel "Luxuria", so it was just sloppiness, proving that despite the time and money spent on these epics there is little care with the finished product for the consumer, who as always in the XXX world is presumed to be only interested in the sex footage.