Like a 90’s Lifetime movie with Alyssa Milano and softcore

RELEASED IN 1995 and directed by Anne Goursaud, "Embrace of the Vampire” is an erotic drama/romance about a college freshman (Alyssa Milano) who is haunted and seduced by a vampire (Martin Kemp), which transforms her from virginal to darkly sultry.

I thought this was going to be a 90’s version of “Twilight” (2008), but the production quality is of the Lifetime movie level with an emphasis on erotica (softcore). Alyssa obviously wanted to shed her chaste kid-star image from Who’s the Boss and she does so as she’s shown top nude and almost naked on several occasions (I should specify that no one’s genitals are ever shown). Some dreamlike sequences are awkwardly hedonistic and mere excuses for erotic semi-nudity. The film starts weak with an inferior rip-off of the Dracula’s three brides’ seduction of Jonathan Harker in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992).

As far as the story goes, I like the coming-of-age at college element with Harold Pruett playing the likable beau and Jordan Ladd the prissy biyatch. Charlotte Lewis is on hand as a photographer who’s interested in something more than merely photographing Milano’s character. Meanwhile Jennifer Tilly has a small role as an oversexed pub patron. So there’s some good in this movie that makes it worthwhile but, for me, the good is canceled out by the semi-porn elements.

THE MOVIE RUNS 1 hour, 32 minutes and was shot at Shattuck-St. Mary's School (a college-prep boarding school) in Faribault, Minnesota.

GRADE: C-