Trapped - Identità nascoste

...is the best part of a movie is truly scary, but there it is. She and Brian Krause roll around naked, while David Warner and Dean Stockwell do the best they can to save this turkey. However, the basic plot is mediocre at best: even a better actress (meaning...well just about anyone, except maybe Anna Nicole Smith) and Sir John Gielgud would have had their work cut out for them making anything out of this plot.

Seeing the name Pamela Anderson (or Alyssa Milano) on the back of a video box invariably means b-grade trash. The question is is it GOOD b-grade trash or not? Hard to say with this one. If mad scientists, techno shamanism, a serial killer, thought transference and plenty of naked babes (including the delectable Justina Vail) sound like your scene, then check this one out and make up your own mind. I can't say it'll end up in my top ten, but I found it suprisingly watchable, and it costars DAVID WARNER. Nuff said. Just imagine how cheesy and fun this is going to look in twenty years time!

An elderly, crippled scientist offers funding to a struggling experimenter who is working on a new thought-transferral procedure. He tricks the younger guy by transferring his soul between their bodies. What complicates matters is that the soul of a dead serial killer gets mixed in creating dangerous impulses.

This sci-fi thriller is one of an easily identifiable type of movie whose only real selling point is its nudity. I say easily identifiable because the cover imagery in these films always plays up the presence of the sexy girl who they have hired for the eye candy. In this instance it's the very beautiful Pamela Anderson who the film-makers had at their disposal. She is by a massive distance, the only thing of any merit in this film. Despite what most of us hope for, she isn't naked very often but when she is she is delectable. Actually, come to think of it, even when she is fully clothed she is pretty delectable here too. She may be eye candy but she is premier division eye candy. In this film she plays a performance artist who likes to pour paint onto the bodies of semi-naked girls. As good as this idea is it isn't unfortunately explored in quite enough detail for my liking!

The problem with the movie, however, is that the plot-line kind of gets in the way a bit too much. It's not that a soft-core film can never successfully blend a narrative in with erotic moments – another Anderson vehicle Snapdragon does this fairly well. The main problem here is that despite being top-billed, this film mainly neglects her, choosing instead to focus on the two scientists in their none-too interesting experiments. And once the soul transferral experiment happens, the whole serial killer part of the story is very badly mishandled - it never plays up even remotely closely to its thrilling possibilities. Ultimately, this is a movie that sets up an interesting enough, if unoriginal set of ideas but doesn't deliver much on its early promise. It stars David Warner in the role as the elder scientist and Dean Stockwell in a blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo. But at the end of the day, the only sane reason to watch this is to see the very lovely Ms Anderson.

Taken as a sci-fi thriller, "Naked Souls" lies somewhere between "mediocre" and "not bad". The ideas (mind-switching, memory transfer, etc) are intriguing, even if they have been used in many other films (the French thriller "La Machine", with Depardieu, is one that comes to mind), but this film goes nowhere with them. However, Pamela Anderson looks breathtakingly gorgeous here (I don't remember ever seeing her look better), and she has one particularly sensual sex scene (damn was her partner a lucky guy!). The filmmakers must have liked that scene too, because they repeat it in the last few minutes....and it's actually better the second time because it's not intercut (like it is the first time) with David Warner's reactions. No disrespect to Warner, who is a fine actor, but he kind of kills the mood in this instance, if you know what I mean....(**)

Naked Souls was described on it's cover as an explicitly erotic thriller, something it is definetly not. It's just the kind of thriller that's made to cash in on Pamela's assets and the kind of wasteful slop you expect to run really late on Monday night television. Still, it does dabble in some really interesting themes and has some surprising plot twists which lift it above the usual B-grade standard. The performances by what could be called a respectable B-grade cast aren't too bad. Krause captures his character quite well, and Dean Stockwell and Pamela Anderson aren't bad in their underused (yes Pamela is underused AGAIN!) supporting roles. Definately NOT an exceptional piece of work, but a vaguely entertaining piece of dismal thriller all the same.