Alyssa Milano's mother (who is also her manager) has made a crusade of tracking down nudie pics of her daughter on the Internet. She's denounced such websites' "exploitation" on national TV and has even developed a side business as a cyber cop, lending her web-busting skills to other stars. Milano's mother/manager could have saved herself the trouble had she instead steered her daughter away from doing this film.
Embrace of the Vampire is softcore horror porn and the source for many of those Milano skin pics. After TV's Who's the Boss was canceled (but before Charmed returned Milano to star status) Milano was just another unemployed former child actress, so maybe this porn film seemed like a good career move at the time.
Milano has stated in interviews that she wanted to demonstrate she was not the goody-two-shoes girl she'd played in Who's the Boss. In other words, she wanted to "grow" as an actress. So she did Embrace of the Vampire, in which she goes topless in several scenes, engages in a lesbian romp with Charlotte Lewis, and participates in orgies with characters tonguing various parts of her nude body.
Mission accomplished.
Actually, Embrace of the Vampire uses Milano's virginal image from Who's the Boss by casting her as a virgin, a virgin whose boobs are straining against her too-tight blouse and who undresses before her boyfriend (albeit asking him not to look), but still, a virgin. A virgin who dreams of orgies and fondles lesbians and doesn't know why.
Here's why: Milano is the reincarnation of Martin Kemp's true love. Some 300 years ago, a pack of scantily clad vampiresses turned Kemp into a vampire during a blood orgy. Now that he's rediscovered Milano, he has three nights to rekindle her love for him. If so, they will live forever as vampires. If not, he dies and loses her forever.
Why the sudden three-night deadline? Why not?
The plot and motivations are paper thin, as is typical of porn. Milano wanders around campus, wondering why she's having so many sexual dreams, even daydreams. Her boyfriend wanders about, wondering if she's so pure. Kemp wanders about, seen by Milano, but often not by others. Lewis wanders about for some bisexual action. Other collegiates wander about their parties and campus back alleys for some hetero action. Amid all this wandering, there's much carnal action and more carnal dreaming. Occasionally, Kemp kills someone for dissing Milano. John Stanley (in his Creature Features movie guide) correctly refers to it as a "meandering, almost formless script."
Kemp has the best lines. Like many vampires, he agonizes and suffers hyper-romantic vampire angst over a lost love. His appearance is a touch effeminate (too much eyeliner), but it lends an appropriate sinister element to his character. He is part romantic vampire, part bloodthirsty beast. Lewis's small part is pointless to the "story." All that's required is that she undress, and when she does, it was worth the wait. Rachel True (The Craft) has an even smaller role, the fate of all the characters that keep their clothes on.
All of the above three are more interesting and more charismatic than Milano or her boyfriend. At film's end, Kemp's tearful bloodthirsty angst, Milano's tearful rediscovery of her love, the "tragic" star-crossed ending, and the Christian iconography, all mirror Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). One senses that director Goursaud was trying to rise above her porn material.
Article comments
1 - TimP
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