Naked Souls

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs ................Think how many reviews this film has received complaining about the bad acting and awful story.Well,I'd actually rented it expecting,and,dare I say it,actually vaguely hoping for these things.I just wanted to be titillated by the gorgeous Pamela Anderson Lee engaging in frequent sexual encounters.After all,the back sleeve did promise SEX/NUDITY to be frequent and strong.It was this or face the shame of renting a porno video.So I wanted to see Pamela basically screwing anything that moves.WHAT?This sucked.There were about two sexually explicit scenes in the whole film.And they weren't even kinky and naughty like I hoped ,they were more sensuous and intimate.Needless to say,the two things mentioned above were as bad as expected.So instead of someone knocking her door to be greeted with a forward yank and ''come here big boy'',you get some heavily pretentious ''acting'' from Pammy.Even Barb Wire was a better porno video than this.One to completely avoid,and not risk losing your credit over.*

I'm willing to bet hard money you picked this up for the same reason I did. 'Naked Souls' isn't subtle about why we should give it a go. Check out that box cover. So sit back and watch a b-movie plot about mind transfer and wait in anticipation for Pam to show up and get naked.

There's no denying she looked great sans clothes back in 1996 and ultimately that's what its all about here. Brian Krause plays the young scientist who comes up with this tech. Pam his girlfriend. While David Warner plays the rich old benefactor who supplies him with cash and has an ulterior motive to get closer to his work. Dean Stockwell puts in a quick paycheck role.

There's a half-baked serial killer angle attached which allows for the sight of more female nudity, but it never goes anywhere being barely built up. 'Naked Souls' doesn't have a story or characters worth talking about at length. It does however supply what you came for in the end allowing Pam to go topless and get felt up twice looking great.

...is the best part of a movie is truly scary, but there it is. She and Brian Krause roll around naked, while David Warner and Dean Stockwell do the best they can to save this turkey. However, the basic plot is mediocre at best: even a better actress (meaning...well just about anyone, except maybe Anna Nicole Smith) and Sir John Gielgud would have had their work cut out for them making anything out of this plot.

Taken as a sci-fi thriller, "Naked Souls" lies somewhere between "mediocre" and "not bad". The ideas (mind-switching, memory transfer, etc) are intriguing, even if they have been used in many other films (the French thriller "La Machine", with Depardieu, is one that comes to mind), but this film goes nowhere with them. However, Pamela Anderson looks breathtakingly gorgeous here (I don't remember ever seeing her look better), and she has one particularly sensual sex scene (damn was her partner a lucky guy!). The filmmakers must have liked that scene too, because they repeat it in the last few minutes....and it's actually better the second time because it's not intercut (like it is the first time) with David Warner's reactions. No disrespect to Warner, who is a fine actor, but he kind of kills the mood in this instance, if you know what I mean....(**)

An elderly, crippled scientist offers funding to a struggling experimenter who is working on a new thought-transferral procedure. He tricks the younger guy by transferring his soul between their bodies. What complicates matters is that the soul of a dead serial killer gets mixed in creating dangerous impulses.

This sci-fi thriller is one of an easily identifiable type of movie whose only real selling point is its nudity. I say easily identifiable because the cover imagery in these films always plays up the presence of the sexy girl who they have hired for the eye candy. In this instance it's the very beautiful Pamela Anderson who the film-makers had at their disposal. She is by a massive distance, the only thing of any merit in this film. Despite what most of us hope for, she isn't naked very often but when she is she is delectable. Actually, come to think of it, even when she is fully clothed she is pretty delectable here too. She may be eye candy but she is premier division eye candy. In this film she plays a performance artist who likes to pour paint onto the bodies of semi-naked girls. As good as this idea is it isn't unfortunately explored in quite enough detail for my liking!

The problem with the movie, however, is that the plot-line kind of gets in the way a bit too much. It's not that a soft-core film can never successfully blend a narrative in with erotic moments – another Anderson vehicle Snapdragon does this fairly well. The main problem here is that despite being top-billed, this film mainly neglects her, choosing instead to focus on the two scientists in their none-too interesting experiments. And once the soul transferral experiment happens, the whole serial killer part of the story is very badly mishandled - it never plays up even remotely closely to its thrilling possibilities. Ultimately, this is a movie that sets up an interesting enough, if unoriginal set of ideas but doesn't deliver much on its early promise. It stars David Warner in the role as the elder scientist and Dean Stockwell in a blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo. But at the end of the day, the only sane reason to watch this is to see the very lovely Ms Anderson.