Embrace the Darkness II (2002)

Although this doesn't say that much, coming from a really bad movie. But replacing the lead actress from the first one, was a step in the right direction. This still is soft-core don't get it wrong, but it does have a decent story to hold together the raunchy things going on every 5 minutes or so. Actually it makes you wish, there was more story and less smooching (code for simulated intercourse), but you can't have it all now, can you? Exactly.After the awful first one, I shouldn't have continued watching, but I went ahead. I did fast forward the inappropriate scenes, to get the most out of the story, which is a continuation of the first one. Not great by all means, but made with more effort than the first one and more emphasis on the "story" part.

The second in the Embrace the Darkness trilogy sees Jennifer now played by soft core stalwart Renee Rea, but unfortunately the story is very similar to the first film with a similar vampire couple - good guy but nasty girl. We do however get a proper vampire hunter called Van Helsing so that is a difference.Jennifer (Renee Rea) is slowly coming to terms with her life as one of the undead. She moves into an apartment close to a night club which is owned by Jack (Tristan Coeur D'Alene) and Lizzie (Catalina Larranaga). Jack and Lizzie recognise Jennifer as being new to the vampire existence and so take her under their wing to teach her the ways of the vampire and to hone her power and skills. As in the first film, there is an old flame, Peter (Sean Vossler) who is looking for Jennifer but when his attempts to contact her fail, he teams up with vampire hunter Van Helsing (John Maryland). Meanwhile, Jack has taken a shine to Jennifer, much to the chagrin of Lizzie, who plots her revenge.It is a pity that the writers could not have used a bit more imagination when scripting this story - it is too much like the original. On that score it is marked down but there is more sex and nudity so for that it is marked up. The acting is on a par for this type of film and the women look good with a commendation for Diana Espen for her scenes. 5 stars.

Jennifer (now actress Renee Rea as opposed to Madison Clark of the first one) is now a vampire and moves to LA to be at Gaylen place, the Vamp who turned her. Gaylen being an apropo name for how vampires have been defanged since the vastly overrated Anne Rice. She of course meets other trendy vamps and they all chill at a nightclub. Because we all know vamps and nightclubs go together like Rip Taylor and confetti. Meanwhile the horrible techno-driven theme song plays numerous times. This is a pretty lame soft-core movie, and as a vampire film it sucks, so par for the course there. The dialog seems to be made by those dreary goth clowns that you avoided like the plaque in high school.Eye Candy: Jezebelle Bond, Renee Rea, April Flowers, Catalina Larranaga, and Katie Lohmann show various amounts of skin My Grade: D-Where I saw it: Showtime Beyond

This review contains spoilers.This movie picks up right where Embrace the Darkness left off. Jennifer is now a vampire. She's also played by a different actress (Renee Rea). I liked the original Jennifer better but Renee is plenty attractive as well.The rest of the movie plays out very much like the first one did. Jennifer meets two other vampires. The girl vampire (Catalina Larranaga) is bad, but the guy vampire is good. Most of the movie follows the same formula. Vampire gets hungry. Vampire finds a mortal who looks tasty. Vampire has sex with mortal. Vampire feeds on mortal. These vampires are all wussies though. They only kill a couple of people in the entire movie. Obviously, the story wasn't too memorable, but it held my interest enough to keep my finger off the fast forward button. There's also some pretty cool special effects used throughout.There are nine sex scenes. Six are boy/girl. One is girl solo. One is girl/girl. One is guy/girl/girl. For the most part, the sex scenes were good and decently explicit. They all play out to completion and the actors and actresses are always audible over the background music.The women are all attractive and deliver good performances. There are five of them that participate in the sex scenes.There was definitely room for improvement. Katie Lohmann's masturbation scene could have been done better and Catalina Larranaga should have removed her clothes for the lesbian scene.It's no better or worse than the first movie. If you liked that one, you'll probably be happy with this one.