Pardon me while I get pervy.
In my day if one wanted to see celebrity nudity one had to work at it. There was no Google, there was no TMZ, no Mr. Skin, no Celebrity Nude Database where one could look up a celebrity and find out exactly which movie she was naked in, how much skin she showed, and exactly what part of the movie to fast forward to in order to see the skin.
No, if we wanted to see naked celebrities we had to go to the theatre, or rent the video and hope for the best. Now and again naked celebrity movies like Basic Instinct or 9 1/2 Weeks would come out and enter into pop-culture consciousness, but usually there would just be whispers of rumors forcing us into watching bad movie after bad movie in hopes of a little celebrity skin.
For those of us who grew up in the late ’80s there was one rumor that seemed too good to be true: Alyssa Milano. I grew up watching Who’s the Boss and am close to Alyssa in age which means she grew up with me. She went from an awkward, but cute little stringy-haired girl into a totally righteous babe. Manys the time I fantasized we might meet and totally make-out and more. To hear that she gets all sorts of nakeg in an erotic vampire movie was just too much.
Me and the boys went right out and rented Embrace of the Vampire and watched with baited breath for her reveal. Pretty quickly, Milano starts revealing flesh, then has lots of vampire sex and lesbian make-out sessions. Oh boy, she did not disappoint.
The rest of the movie, however, is nothing but terrible. The acting, directing, writing – everything is just bad. Bad, bad, bad. The only redeemable thing about the movie is Alyssa MIlano’s boobs, and in this day and age when you can get those for free with the rest of the movie edited out, there really is no reason why one should watch.
The plot, such that there is, involves a vampire, Milano, and a few embraces. We learn at the beginning that the vampire was once a kind peasant boy in love with an aristocratic lady. They meet in the woods one day to hug and cuddle, but not have sex for she is a virgin (and virgins are very important in this movie.) She leaves and inexplicably he stays in the woods, lounging about on the rocks until three busty (and of course topless) vampires come to make him one of their own.
Flash forward a few centuries and the vampire tells us (for there are a lot of vampire voice-overs so that the writers don’t have to do a lot of, you know, real writing) that he’s got but three days to live (well, not live exactly since vampires are already dead, but exist I guess. In three days he’ll cease existing for some unexplained reason). He also believes that Alyssa Milano (she has a character name, but really, who cares what it is at this point?) has the same soul as his now several centuries dead aristocratic girlfriend. She has the power to save him by giving herself over to him, but she has to do so willingly so he hatches a plan to seduce her via dreams which will of course make her love him in real life and be willing to save him. Or something.
Mostly, it feels like the writers sat around coming up with ways for Alyssa Milano to take off her top. Which she does, several times.
The sexy dreams – which are shot with the soft jazz and softer lighting of a softcore porno – are fended off by Milano’s virgin powers. So the vampire tries to make her boyfriend jealous by giving him sexy dreams involving her and other dudes. When that doesn’t work he just tries to take her though that goes against the internal logic of the film and makes most of what preceded it completely pointless. Not that anyone is watching this movie for plot logic and sense.
There are some mean girls, some obnoxious frat boys, the aforementioned lesbian photographer who turns virginal Alyssa Milano into a chain-smoking, heavy-drinking vamp Alyssa Milano with nothing but a few nice words and nicer kisses. None of it makes any real sense, nor is it made particularly well, but it’s fun in its own late-night Cinemax kind of way. Ultimately, it is completely forgettable and no doubt wouldn’t be remembered by anybody, nor getting a Blu-ray edition were it not for naked Alyssa Milano. But since it does have her and she does get naked here I am reviewing this new Blu-ray.
It does look better than I’ve ever seen it. Alyssa Milano’s nakedness has never been more clear or crisp. There isn’t any information on the Blu-ray on how they converted it to high definition so I’m just guessing here, but I don’t imagine they spent a lot of money meticulously cleaning it up or enhancing the picture and sound. It looks good, but this isn’t a show-off disk, unless by showing off one means presenting high-definition celebrity nudity.
This is the unrated version of the film which contains about an extra minute of sex cut from the theatrically released R rated version. There are no special features or extras.
