Final Embrace

Young LAPD Detective Kyle Lampton (Robert Rusler), ordered to thwart a Bible-quoting fan who's been stalking pop-music sensation Holly "Candy Vale" Parish (Nancy Valen), has become her bodyguard and lover. But when she declares he's just another boy toy to her, Lampton storms out. Moments later someone shoots Candy dead. Was it the obsessed Gospel maniac "John/Peter" (Justin Lazard)? Aspiring rock diva Jeri Page (Linda Dona), who stands to inherit Candy's audience? Or her sleazy agent? Her sleazy music-video director? Her sleazy record-label manager? Or maybe even the semi-sleazy Det. Lampton himself?

Complications ensue when the victim turns out to have a twin sister, Laurel (Valen again), who shows up to demand a share of the song profits and discovers Candy's business partners conspiring to defraud her. Laurel attires herself as a Candy clone, proves she wrote all her sister's material and can perform equally well, and soon arouses the sexual attentions of Det. Lampton, the hatred of Jeri Page, and the death threats of John/Peter all over again. Bodies turn up all over; the prime suspect is either Lampton or the elusive John/Peter. The trick ending isn't entirely unexpected, but there are a few nice narrative feints before the climactic revelation that it was Laurel who blew Candy Vale away in a psychotic fit of sibling rivalry.

Specimens of the erotic thriller genre, ostensibly followers of the film noir tradition, seldom seem more than a string of softcore sex scenes, loosely connected by a perfunctory tissue of cops, corruption and killings. While FINAL EMBRACE doesn't shirk from well-exposed body doubles and gratuitous shower scenes, it makes the story and characters a tangible priority. Dialogue has a street-smart edge, and Jeri Page quotes Bogart without sounding camp. Even the dubious casting of TV dad Dick Van Patten as a hardened police lieutenant works out fine; his portrayal of the rumpled, cynical flatfoot (really responsible for cracking the case while his protege Lampton moons over Laurel/Holly) surmounts memories of his family-hour network show "Eight is Enough."

While newcomer Nancy Valen has a natural, unforced sexiness, the picture stumbles with the persona of Candy Vale, who's evidently supposed to be a Madonna-like pop phenomenon. But there's very little to this Louise Brooks-lookalike to merit all the fuss, and her much-contested music--two mediocre tunes, vocalized by Valen--is hardly to die for. Still, FINAL EMBRACE has enough going for it to stand out amid the video underachievers.

After making this, director Oley Sassone (a former maker of music videos and creator of WILD HEARTS CAN'T BE BROKEN, one of the better recent live-action Disney dramas) worked on a Corman feature that gained some notoriety in 1994, THE FANTASTIC FOUR. Promised $3 million to work with (and only getting half of it, he later complained), Sassone ground out a cheapie based on Stan Lee's classic Marvel Comics superheroes, only to learn that it was to go unseen. Apparently, to renew his rights to the characters until a truly megabucks "Fantastic Four" epic could get off the ground, producer Bernd Eichinger had to come up with a film adaptation quick. Corman obliged, then got paid to not release Sassone's completed FANTASTIC FOUR, in a notably bizarre bit of Hollywood legal legerdemain. Eichinger retained his rights and planned ahead for a $40 million theatrical version, while 1994's FANTASTIC FOUR was put on ice (though cassettes on Corman's New Horizons Home Video label bore enthusiastic coming-attractions trailers for it). Eyewitnesses to bootleg copies reported that the pic was not very good anyway. In any case, it was a shabby way to treat Sassone, who seems suited to better things. (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, profanity, substance abuse, adult situations.) leave a comment