Verdict
Summary
Both films here are on the crummy side: Part 1 is technically a “thriller,” but it’s poorly made and doesn’t add much to the genre, while Part 2 is straight-ahead erotic drama about reincarnation, with genteel sex scenes sprinkled throughout. There’s still an audience for these films or movies like them, but these are not very good examples of what the genre has to offer. It might’ve helped (just a little) if Skin Max had put the Unrated versions on disc instead of the heavily edited R rated versions.
Midnight Temptations (1995) Plot:
A sexy fashion designer is suspected of murder.
Review:
Fashion artist April (Playboy Playmate Wendy Hamilton) believes she’s got what it takes to enter a fashion designing competition and she gets some encouragement from her neighbor friend Christina (Casey Mitchell), a cop on her way to becoming a detective. When she enters the contest, April faces severe competition from other designers, namely a childhood sweetheart who happens to be in the same field. The guy hosting the contest is a swarthy bastard named Damon (Simon Page) who is known for stealing other artists’ designs. During a party, April is swept off her feet by Damon, and they have a hot night of sex, but the next day Damon is reported missing by his colleague. Christina and another detective show up to question April, the last to have seen him, but she claims she doesn’t remember what happened after they had sex. Things get worse for April when Damon is found murdered and April can’t provide an alibi. Her friend Christina risks her own career by giving April a head start to try to prove her innocence, and if she’s not the killer, then there are plenty of other suspects to choose from.
Aside from a cute face and an incredible body, star Wendy Hamilton struggles with even the slightest and flimsiest material that requires her to try to act like a fashion designer, which I never believed even for a second. The script is as thin as onion paper, formed around a lame plot that cheapens itself by padding its flimsiness with way too many superfluous sex scenes that go on and on, sometimes before the characters involved in them are even properly introduced. The movie is poorly directed by grubby genre filmmaker Ralph E. Portillo, who fared not much better with bottom grade erotic films such as Target of Seduction and Naked Lies, which might be his best movie (with Shannon Tweed). There was an unrelated sequel to this five years later.
Midnight Temptations 2 (1999) Plot:
A woman begins having memories of sexy past lives.
Review:
Elizabeth (Jane Daniels who never did another movie before or since) has a steady boyfriend in pilot Tom (Johnny Gardella) who loves her and wants to take their relationship to the next level, but she’s unwilling to commit and basically breaks up with him. Meanwhile, a dress she comes into possession of (she’s some kind of fashion designer with a clothing store) triggers a string of vivid visions or dreams that she discovers are actually memories of past lives. She visits an Oriental mystic (played by character actress Noel Toy who played the surly madam in Big Trouble in Little China) who helps teach her to hone her memories and zero in on her past lives through sexy tantric methods, and fate tips Elizabeth a new possible lover when she meets a new guy completely by chance. They share the same interests and it seems like kismet … but after her past life memories show her the true meaning of love, she steers her heart in Tom’s direction one more time.
Originally titled Devotion, this erotic drama has absolutely nothing to do with the first Midnight Temptations and uses its name just for recognition purposes, and though I’ve never read a romance novel, I suspect it feels very much like one of those thin red-spined Harlequin romance / sex novels with a sappy plot, protracted sex scenes that go on and on (and are only explicit in that there are slow-moving naked bodies tangled up with each other, but the sex itself is rather genteel and tame), and a female-centric point of view that in my view would appeal more to female viewers than male. It’s boring, not intriguing, and isn’t worth the effort to pour 86 minutes of your time into, but I do believe there’s still an audience for this stuff. From director Rob Spera.
The double feature DVD of these two titles from Skin Max feature standard definition transfers, trailers for both titles, and the “R”-rated versions of both films, although the first film does have an unrated version on VHS from York.
