the plot: In her first year at college, Charlotte (Milano) is finding it difficult to reconcile her strict Catholic upbringing with all the freedoms that life away from home entails. Her boyfriend, Chris (Pruett), is pressuring her to have sex for the first time, but Charlotte, just three days away from her 18th birthday, is reluctant. It doesn’t help that she’s plagued by visions of a handsome vampire (Kemp) who is attempting to seduce her. As the visions occur more often, Charlotte turns to her friend Nicole (True) for support. Nicole drags Charlotte to a party where they meet a pair of guys who follow them to an abandoned building on campus. When one of the guys tries to force himself on Charlotte, her mysterious vampire intervenes. He explains that Charlotte is the reincarnation of his one true love, and that she must submit to his advances within the next three days or he will be cursed forever. He begins working behind the scenes, planting seeds of doubt in the minds of both Charlotte and Chris. Confused, Charlotte wanders around campus, nearly falling into the bed of Nicole’s roommate. Later, she slips on a slinky dress and vamps it up at a cocktail party. The vampire fills her mind with seductive visions, beckoning her to come to the top of the bell tower where he resides. Meanwhile, Chris senses something is wrong with Charlotte and rushes to her aid, only to find her in the vampire’s arms.

why it’s good: Vampire movies usually travel one of two routes: They either focus on the gory, bloody supernatural stuff or opt for the sexy, sensual side of the bloodsucker mythology. “Embrace of the Vampire” is firmly in the latter camp, so much so that even the nuts and bolts vampire stuff takes a backseat to the soft-core sex scenes and endless supply of bare breasts. Most of those naked boobs belong to Alyssa Milano, who worked on “Embrace” a scant two years after she left TV’s “Who’s the Boss.” “Embrace” was mostly an attempt by Milano to shed her good girl image, and while it’s a fairly terrible vampire movie, it’s a decent piece of B-grade soft-core. Director Anne Goursaud’s only previous credits included segments on Showtime’s “The Red Shoe Diaries,” and the rest of the cast is fairly forgettable, except for a small cameo by Jennifer Tilly as one of the vampire’s slinky minions of the night. Viewers expecting any sort of interesting vampire bits will be sorely disappointed. The actual plot mechanics are sketchy at best, with the vampire’s transformation involving some sultry wood nymph-like vampires and a magical ankh necklace that glows blue for no apparent reason. What the vampire’s curse is, how he found Charlotte at the college, why he can’t just drink her blood instead of going through all the elaborate (but sexy) mind games—none of these questions are even remotely answered. But, of course, most people watching “Embrace” do so purely because of the novelty of seeing a former child star naked, and not necessarily for good vampire fiction. Milano went on to star in another soft-core skin flick, “Poison Ivy II,” a few years later, but has since backed away from showing off her body on camera.

why you should own it: New Line Cinema’s DVD features both R-rated and unrated versions of “Embrace.” Don’t get too excited, though—there’s only about a minute of additional footage in the unrated edition. Otherwise, the disc is extras-free. If you’re into soft-core, you could do a lot worse than “Embrace,” but if you’re really into vampires, you may want to take a pass. —Larry Clow