Embrace Of The Vampire
There are certainly very few (if any) 80s TV actresses who inspired more hormonal driven teenage boy fantasies than Alyssa Milano as the daughter of Tony Danza’s bumbling oaf of a male househeeper on Who’s The Boss? While nearly nobody cared about the reputedly gay in real life Danza’s on and off romance with his forty something female employer on the show, Milano’s mere presence if but for one or two scenes per episode inspired countless radio and TV personalities to constantly comment “oh she’s going to be really pretty when she grows up” or other nuggets of wisdom in that ilk. Milano and Christina Applegate battled it out throughout the decade for the title of most desired female teenage character on a TV sitcom, but while Applegate’s Kelly Bundy was a blonde, shameless slutty type who was redeemed by Applegate’s brilliant comic timing playing her as a brainless dim bulb, Milano’s Samantha Miceli was the buttoned down girl next door type more concerned with studying and getting good grades rather than getting with boys even as she could light up the room with her radiant smile. With the end of the show, American males paid close attention to her next career move, only to be elated when it appeared that she was willingly going down the B movie exploitation route, appearing in an action flick called Conflict Of Interest where she played a scantily clad gangland girlfriend (and where she admitted that coming from a very conservative family, her mother almost stopped talking to her for taking that role even though she merely dressed sexy and didn’t do much else). Milano though was obviously VERY well aware of the high volume of male fans she had and cunningly came up with a way of not only doing a low budget, soft core B movie that would finally give them what they wanted, but to have the entire film itself marketed around her name and image promoting the fact that this was the film where she would “reveal” herself to the world. It worked, and upon this film’s straight to video release in 1995 it managed to break worldwide video sales and rental records, becoming not only one of the very few non theatrical “event” films ever made, but also cashing straight in on the then current market for “respectable” erotic cinema as popularized on the Cinemax movie channel. Even better was the fact that the film did NOTHING to harm Milano’s mainstream acting career, proving to be a brilliant gamble on her part that she would parlay into a long, profitable career that continues to this day. And the film itself? Pretty damn awful, coming across as a drudgery about a vampire character (only referred to in both the film and end credits as “Vampire”) played by Martin Kemp (a long way from his Spandau Ballet days with his twin brother and their one hit wonder called True) who hastily explains in voiceover the particular rules for his type of vampire: A true love of his from The Middle Ages (when he was turned) has now been reincarnated in modern times as a virginal college student (Milano), which gives him three days to take her blood, her life and her soul so that she can have eternal life with him or else on the third day he will sink into an “eternal sleep” from which he will never awaken. The real trick is that he must make her be totally WILLING to accept this fate or he will be unable to close on the deal (or to put it another way get her consent which even her own boyfriend is unable to do). Now that the nonsense regarding this interpretation of vampirism is explained, we can now get down to the exploitation and debasement of one Ms. Milano, one which was done obviously with HER full consent. In order to infect her mind and soul, the vampire first invades her dreams, making things extremely sexual to say the least (the almost ritualistic unveiling of Milano’s perfect body on camera won’t put many to sleep) as Martin Kemp carries a look on his face in these scenes like he just discovered gold in the Amazon. From there it’s on to killing a couple of her friends who seem to interfere just a bit too much (including Rachel True before she joined the coven of The Craft) but her actual boyfriend (Harrison Pruett who died a few years later from a drug overdose) seems to be off limits with the vampire’s rationalization being that killing him would “break her heart” and thus strengthen her resolve to refuse to accept him as her destiny (aww). Indeed, Kemp’s vampire comes across as being one of the weakest and wimpiest in recent cinema history, one that Bela Lugosi would have a field day in slapping around and probably still could. In fact, Kemp himself would give such a ridiculously overwrought performance that several crew members would comment to him about the bulging veins in his forehead while he was acting which turned out later to be a developing brain tumor(!). But back to Milano: As we learn that she was actually raised in a nunnery and it was really the nuns who instilled her with such a strong desire to remain virgin, she blue balls her boyfriend nearly to the point of non existence until she makes a connection with the college’s amateur photographer (Charlotte Lewis also a long way removed from her salad days opposite Eddie Murphy in The Golden Child) who talks her back to her room on the pretense of “showing some of her work” and this is where the film goes completely off the sexual rails as Milano (wearing a white denim jumpsuit, knee socks, ked sneakers and nervously talked into smoking a cigarette) finds herself being photographed by the clearly excited bisexual woman, enjoying the attention even as she is coaxed into unbuttoning her jumpsuit and showing more and more skin with no points being awarded for correctly guessing that this is a textbook lesbian seduction where we get to see Alyssa getting it on with the exotic Kee Nang from Golden Child. What any of this has to do with the vampire’s master plan is up for debate, except to say that the extreme erotica of the dreams Milano has been having with him is making her more and more sexually open in her real waking life (while still coldly blowing off her boyfriend), going to parties and teasing every boy she can find before cornering Lewis and giving her a little “payback” courtesy of a very hot finger jam. In the meantime we suddenly get Jennifer Tilly in one of the most ridiculous cameos in history (filmed the same year she scored an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress) as an anonymous bar slut who picks up the now bursting at the seams boyfriend (having grown tired no doubt from constantly being made fun of by everybody for getting no action from the hottest girl in the school whom he’s been dating) which laughably turns out to be a literal “test” from Kemp’s vampire to prove that he has no loyalty to Milano and help turn her instead to his dark charms. Saying that this is in any way an actual quality vampire flick (with its wannabe Anne Rice dialogue about the torments of immortality) is an overstatement of the highest regard when the film is truly only about the onscreen sexual awakening of one 80s TV icon in Alyssa Milano (and not necessarily her character whom she’s playing either), discovering just how far she can push the envelope (and herself) onscreen with an entire legion of male fans cheering her on as they just ignore other characters like the vampire and the boyfriend since she is (knowingly) the ONLY reason that the film (shot in only 13 days) became one of the most talked about and legendary B movies of all time, garnering a following in many softcore and erotic movie circles and about which it can be said DEFINITELY lives up to its advertising (upon returning the film rental to the video store during its original release, I can still remember the male clerk looking at it and then looking up at me while smiling as he asked “was this any good?”, something that would rarely happen in those days). Even if the movie itself was awful (and it was), it just goes to show that the supercute Milano was quite incredibly self aware of her image at the time coming off of Who’s The Boss? and in essence handpicked this film at just the right time to grab the attention of her loyal fans (and the world), creating a sensation that the exploitation, low budget, independent film arena would rarely see before or since, a movie with a shoestring of a plot designed just so that arguably the hottest girl in the world at that time could show us what she’s got…
5/10