Enrapture

My review was written in February 1990 after watching the movie on Atlas video cassette.

Chuck Vincnt's thriller "Enrapture" has several okay audience hooks but peters out in the final reel. Video fans may give it a tumble as a direct-to-video title.

Kevin Thomsen (who also co-wrote the story with Vincent) is bland but believable as an aspiring Gotham actor who works as a chauffeur for rich banker Harvey Siegel. Siegel's sexy wife, Ona Simms, is mean to her hireling at first, but comes on to him after he sees her behaving in the backseat like a prostitute with other men.

Midway through the film she's found murdered, setting up some effective plot twists. In short order Thomsen loses his job, gets fired from an acting assignment, and his girlfriend (Deborah Blaisdell) walks out on him.

Climax involves several duplicitous characters but Vincent piles too many switches into the finale to be believable.

Simms, who uses the moniker Ona Zee in Adult videos, is quite effective as the femme fatale, though even she has trouble keeping a straight face when called upon to beat up Thomsen with a baseball bat.

Fans may be surprised to see Blaisdel nearly 50 pounds heavier than she was in Vincent's other recent release "Wildest Dreams". Billed via her more famous alternate handle Tracey Adams, the actres allows some good-natured kidding of her tons-of-fun new look in her recent Adult video release "The Adventures of Buttman".

Tech credits for the New York and Toronto lensed feature are okay, except for the cramped look to studio-lensed interiors.

You have a struggling actor who works in the family company. The right part is hard to come by for him. He gets to drive around a client to places and goes to auditions. He has a girlfriend who is a successful actress. The relationship is rocky because of her success. He is limousine driver for the time being until he sees that the boss, his uncle is in dirty business. It seems that everyone in the family is involved in dirty business. Talk about a messed up family.

An unsuccessful relationship with the girlfriend, a crime with hidden secrets, and a secret relationship with greed in the middle. This is one act that doesn't need a rehearsal of any means. Being intrigued is more than any one can handle. This guy just got more than he bargained for.

2 out of 5 stars.

Towards the end of his career, former porn director Chuck Vincent cranked out a lot of made for cable movies, either comedies or thrillers, but always with a generous helping of T&A. ENRAPTURE certainly beats all those silly Shannon Tweed programmers with its pleasingly dark script and a few surprisingly good acting performances, especially by hardcore doyenne Ona Zee as the duplicitous Chase Webb - love that name! - who gets the ball rolling by seducing her naive young bodyguard, the latter played by a slightly wooden Kevin Thomsen, handsome hero of Vincent's side-splitting CLEO/LEO. That film's star, adult cinema legend Veronica Hart, briefly turns up in the disquieting opening sequence. Just as their affair is getting hot 'n' heavy, Chase turns up dead...or does she? The plot twists and turns all over the place. The simulated sex scenes will leave viewers gasping for air. What more could one possibly ask from this type of fare ? An unusually smart treat from a late great erotic filmmaker who actually cared about the stuff he put out. Dedication such as this is sorely missed in today's often cynically contrived cable fodder market.