# Embrace of the Vampire (1994)

### reviewed by
John Beachem

    EMBRACE OF THE VAMPIRE

    Review by John Beachem

    * *

Directed by: Anne Goursaud Written by: Rick Bitzelberger, Nicole Coady, Halle Eaton

Charlotte (Alyssa Milano) is a first year college student. She has a boyfriend, Chris (Harrison Pruett), who she's been seeing for some considerable amount of time yet won't have sex with. This is apparently because her mother placed her in a catholic school and she was raised with the belief that sex is bad (she sure talks about it a lot though). Lately, she's been having strange dreams about a man she believes is a vampire (Martin Kemp). Apparently this vampire was in love with her in a past life and has no tracked her down. He must seduce her away from Chris in three days or he'll die. So, he begins working his charms on her by giving her an ankh which makes her become more and more sexually promiscuous. Soon Charlotte is descending into a world of carnal pleasures and begins to forget about Chris entirely.

As a movie critic, I don't have the luxury of giving a movie a good rating based entirely on the amount of nudity (which, let's face it, is the one reason people are seeing this film) it contains. So let's get this out in the open right now. Yes, Alyssa Milano loses all her clothes, and yes she looks fantastic. That out of the way, "Embrace of the Vampire" is a terrible movie. I'd like to be able to classify it as a guilty pleasure, but it's not even good enough to earn that title. This is the sort of movie so poorly written, directed, and acted, you'd normally be left wondering how in the world it got made. I say normally because it should be perfectly obvious how it got made, and how it managed to sell so many copies on video. Sadly enough, as a skin flick it's sub-par at best. There aren't many nude scenes, and the ones that are there are so poorly filmed and written (it took THREE writers to create this piece of garbage?) they're fairly painful to watch. As a horror movie, "Embrace of the Vampire" is, well, words cannot describe it.

Believe it or not, there was acting in this movie. Granted, it was of fairly poor quality, but while the actors may have been talentless, they sure gave it their best shot. First off we have Alyssa Milano, looking like she'd rather be just about anywhere else in the world. I mean this poor girl looks so embarrassed I half expected her to break down and start crying right in front of the camera. Harrison Pruett, meanwhile, takes his part very seriously. I guess this makes sense considering the fact that it's his one and only appearance in a "major" motion picture. Why didn't his career go anywhere? Well, because despite the fact that he tries very hard, the man doesn't have anything even remotely resembling acting talent. The less said about Martin Kemp's ("Waxwork II") turn as the vampire the better. I'll make this brief. There's overacting in that fun, zany, John Lithgow sort of way; and then there's overacting in that painful, horrendous, Martin Kemp sort of way. Last up we have Jennifer Tilly ("Bound") in what thankfully amounts to little more than a cameo. The less time I have to watch Tilly pretend she can act the better.

Not all the film's faults can be blamed on the actors, a good chunk of them can land in the laps of the director and writers (three writers; sorry, I just can't get over that). Anne Goursaud seems to fancy herself something of a skin flick master. Yet let's take a look at her directorial credits, shall we? To start with, she directs this with about as much skill as your average first year film student. The pacing is horrendous, with an already boring story moving along about as quickly as your average PBS special on tree slugs. You want to know just how slowly this film moves? Warning, this is a minor spoiler (not that you should care). The movie ends with a chase scene that involves the hero walking up stairs after the villain. They walk, and walk, and look around, and walk some more. It's far more dull than I can adequately describe here. So, after making this stupid movie, she goes on to make "Poison Ivy 2" (starring a very embarrassed looking Alyssa Milano. Are we noticing a trend here?), and the less said about that movie the better. Finally she (hopefully) ends her career as a director by helping to create "Love in Paris". If you've seen that "movie", I'll that sink in for a second. If you haven't seen it, be thankful. It's one of the most ineptly acted, directed, and written movies ever made.

As for the writing, if it can really be called that, it's so gloriously stupid you'd think the writers were drunk (I guess that's a possibility actually). Nothing in this movie is every explained. We never find out why the vampire is going to die if he doesn't have Charlotte, or why he can't just take her by force and be done with it, or even what happens to half the characters who simply vanish midway through the film. The dialogue is remarkably bad, often painfully so; the characters have no personalities other than he likes sex, she doesn't like sex; and some of the characters are so obviously present for one specific purpose or another (mainly involving sex, imagine that) you'll probably catch yourself laughing out loud when they appear on screen. As for the score, it isn't exactly good, but it's not half as terrible as the film's other elements. "Embrace of the Vampire" runs 93 minutes, but it feels considerably longer (like several days longer). I'd recommend the film only to those who are simply dying to see Alyssa Milano in the buff, but to no one else under any circumstances. I give it a slightly generous two out of five stars, and a curse upon you Anne Goursaud, may you never direct again.

Comments? Send to: johnbeachem@dependentfilms.net

Past reviews can be found at: http://www.epinions.com/user-elerad or http://us.imdb.com/ReviewsBy?John+Beachem

* * * * * - One of the best movies of the year. * * * * - Great flick, try and catch this one. * * * - Okay movie, hits and misses. * * - Pretty bad, see it at your own risk. * - See this one only if you enjoy pain.

Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews