Naked Souls

"Edward" (Brian Krause) is a scientist who is experimenting with capturing memories from dead people. His girlfriend, "Britt" (Pamela Anderson) is an artist. Lately, Edward hasn't spent much time with Britt and this is putting a huge strain on their relationship. Likewise, the fact that Edward has just been denied a grant to continue his research is adding to his stress levels. All of a sudden a famous scientist named "Everett Longstreet" (David Warner) comes along and offers Edward his entire estate. But there is a catch. Anyway, rather than disclose any of the mysteries of this film I will just say that I suppose it is watchable--but just barely. Obviously, the main attraction in this movie is Pamela Anderson and her presence certainly helped. Additionally, David Warner and Dean Stockwell (as "Duncan") also performed adequately. But the main problem with this film was the clumsy dialogue which impacted everyone's performance to a degree but most notably that of Brian Krause. In short, other than Pamela Anderson there really isn't anything remarkable about this film and I rate it as slightly below average.

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.

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.

I'm willing to bet hard money you picked this up for the same reason I did. 'Naked Souls' isn't subtle about why we should give it a go. Check out that box cover. So sit back and watch a b-movie plot about mind transfer and wait in anticipation for Pam to show up and get naked.

There's no denying she looked great sans clothes back in 1996 and ultimately that's what its all about here. Brian Krause plays the young scientist who comes up with this tech. Pam his girlfriend. While David Warner plays the rich old benefactor who supplies him with cash and has an ulterior motive to get closer to his work. Dean Stockwell puts in a quick paycheck role.

There's a half-baked serial killer angle attached which allows for the sight of more female nudity, but it never goes anywhere being barely built up. 'Naked Souls' doesn't have a story or characters worth talking about at length. It does however supply what you came for in the end allowing Pam to go topless and get felt up twice looking great.

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....(**)