Final Embrace

With this Roger Corman produced "erotic thriller", some talented personnel are on board, particularly as members of the crew, but a silly script handily jettisons any chance this work may have had to climb above the standard of its scarcely engrossing genre, with additional shortcomings being poor acting and desultory direction. The movie opens, as may be expected, with the first of several softcore love scenes, this one connecting Holly Parish, or "Candy Vale" (Nancy Valen), a pop singer, and her lover, police detective Kyle Lambton (Robert Rusler), assigned to protect her following death threats, and obviously paying specially close attention to his duty, with the pair's amourous activity a shallow substitute for development of characterization, in any event here but sketchy. After the culmination of their lovemaking, Holly informs Kyle that he has meant little to her other than for his basic masculine virtues, and the lovelorn lawman exits in a huff, whereupon his charge is promptly murdered in her home, an act that serves to emphasize probable dereliction of duty on the part of her affectionate bodyguard. An obvious suspect for the slaying is the anonymous author of the threats, a Scripture babbling stalker fan of Holly Vale, who has named himself "John/Peter", but as Kyle and his senior detective partner, played by Dick Van Patten, investigate the facts relating to the homicide, they discern that others may have benefited from the permanent sealing of the singer's lips, among them an aspiring successor to Vale, Jeri Page (Linda Doná), whose modest warbling skills are plainly quite as undernourished as those of the late vocalist. A previously unknown to the world and ostensibly shy identical twin sister of Holly, Laurel Parish (naturally also portrayed by Valen), enters the story only to discover that, whereas she is the only living relative of the deceased, a scheme is afoot by Jeri along with her and Holly's video director to defraud the twin of her due proceeds from Vale's songs, while a record company executive is also somehow engaged in the fiscal plotting, with all together forming ingredients to elicit interest from the concerned detectives. As will be surprising to only the most sluggish of viewers, Laurel then assumes the persona of her expired sibling, donning the latter's wig and so forth, causing comically reestablished warm responses from Candy's lover Kyle, her rival Jeri, and peripatetic murder suspect John/Peter, and the entire cycle of bizarre goings-on resumes, as corpses proliferate. The film is weakly directed and the playing is uninspired at best, the wooden Rusler only sporadically altering his expression of vague confusion in order to yell a bit, but one may well enjoy some interesting scoring from composer Daniel Licht, and design based production values are quite high for this budget deficient affair, but these are scant help against a hopelessly foolish screenplay that allows the greatest entertainment yield to come from the appearance of a body double for Valen in a shower sequence.

You know, if it wasn't for seeing the cherubic old Dick Van Patten playing a hardboiled detective in this B-grade suspenser, it wouldn't be worth the film it was photographed on. None of the cast really stands out, the plot doesn't offer much in the way of surprises, and the finale leaves a whole lot to be desired. Then again, what can you expect from one of these generic, cookie-cutter films? To be honest, you do have to throw the genre a bone for this one: Seems like these films always try to spice things up castwise by having someone with some name recognition play a COP! I'm still waiting to see Bob Newhart play a detective in one of these erotic throwaways.

The following capsule review was written in 1992, when this film debuted on home video, and appeared in a daily newspaper. And yes, I totally ripped off Joe Bob Briggs in my final paragraphs in those days.

FINAL EMBRACE (Rated R) - New Horizons Home Video: Score another low-budget bullseye for producer Roger Corman. This grittily little thriller offers up more inventive filmmaking and surprising twists than many recent A-list mysteries - and it's biggest marquee name is Dick Van Patten!

When a rock video superstar is iced, her twin sister (Nancy Valen) teams up with a rough L. A. cop (Robert Russell from Crisis In The Kremlin) to track down the killer (who could logically be just about anybody in the cast). Natch, we're kept guessing right up until the last three minutes when we're treated to one of the most nerve-tweaking endings ever seen in a B-flick.

The final score: eight body count; three totalled cars; four popped tops; two supremely naughty bits; gratuitous Dick Van Patten; two decent songs, "Oblivion" and "Touch Me In The Dark", sung by Nancy Valen; and a well-rounded script co-penned by Jim Wynorski, the director of the recent 976-EVIL 2.